Making Music With Less Money

Making Music With Less Money.

There’s an old saying, “Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.”

While making your music videos, all indie artists should remember the “You Pick Two” theory. It remains unchanged for most decisions in life. You may get fortunate where a good friend, who is a successful movie producer, recently finished making a big budget film, has some available time, doesn’t want to be paid for the work he does for you and will offer to help you at work. But that’s a rare possibility. What’s more, you certainly can’t anticipate this. Yet, there are a few things you can do all alone to lower your expenses.

The People

Having a perfect gear is not as important as working with individuals who realize their dreams and are sure of what they are doing. Find some passionate, talented individuals who are enthusiastic about indie music to work with an indie artist.

The Concept

The better the idea the more views it will get. Unless you have all the money to make the video LOOK spectacular (through camera, editing, lighting, costumes and acting), you require an idea that dominates the absence of money.

In my blog “Raising Money for Your Indie Music” I have written about the importance of creating music that is marketable to the general public, because if you don’t have something that interests the listeners on a basic level, it doesn’t matter how good your development process goes. While this may sound basic, haven’t all of us fallen in love with an idea that isn’t marketable and realized only too late that we should have tested it at a much earlier stage. Not everything that appeals to an artist appeals to general So learn, and make sure you have something really amazing and original.

There are costly looking videos and there are costly videos. You need your video to be costly looking, however, it doesn’t actually have to be costly. The look of the video isn’t all that matters. Jack Conte’s videos, shot on iPhones and other not very good cameras got a large number of likes and hits. They were an overdose of creativity.

Go’s treadmill video for “Here It Goes Again” (from 2006) ran insane viral with more than 80 million hits and put them on the top. It was shot in one take with a crappy camera on a tripod. These videos circulated around the web on account of their idea – not the budget.

The Lighting

The better the lighting the better the video. Period. iPhones are famous for performing poorly in dim light. They look the best on the grounds where sun is the only source of light.

Either shoot outdoors on a bright day, or find a friend who can arrange some good lights for the shoot. Pull some serious favours.

The Performance

If you’re going to sing in the video, you must practice re-making the audio from the recording perfectly. If the video and the song don’t coordinate, it will put the listeners off.

It’s not easy to look good on camera and this has nothing to do with your looks. The audio-visual combination is inconceivably unnatural. However, so is performing live before an audience. It takes practice to get the hang of it. So if you will be acting in it – practice that with an expert. In the business, these individuals are called Directors.

In my blog about “How to Become a Better Indie Artist” I have talked about the importance of contacting a label for publishing your indie music. When you contact a label, it gets you connected with a lot of pros in writing lyrics, recording, business development, marketing, branding and distribution. All of them work together to make an indie artist’s music a success. If you think you know a bit about all of these, know also that it just makes you the jack of all trades. If indie artists think they have made good music and the radio will be able to get you listeners, they are living in a different era.

The Edit

It doesn’t matter how incredible the components of your song making are, if what turns out is not good. Editing is the most critical part of your video making process. Either master the editing tools or hire a professional video editor.

A good video editing program will help you a lot in this profession. If you ever need to create a speedy 15 second Instagram video, you would prefer to do it yourself and do it perfectly.

Your smartphone is fine for now, but for more complicated indie music videos, it’s somewhat restricting.

The Song

If the song sucks, it obviously doesn’t matter how incredible the video is. However, if the song is great, you wouldn’t require a costly looking video – simply something that does justice to it.

The video must improve the song – not spoil it. It should tell the complete story. That story, however, shouldn’t be “a crappy local band that makes music videos because they read on a blog that it’s the in-thing.”  You know what I mean!

I hope my blog helps indie artists in making music and videos. Please leave your comments to share more experiences and i will add them in my future blogs!