Over the next three issues, we’ll take an in-depth look at the process of creating professional film. We’ll use a music video as the base, but the techniques we’ll apply are valid regardless of what you want to create. In particular, whatever you hope to film and edit, you’re not going to get very far without at least a basic grounding in the art of preproduction.

What is preproduction?
Preparing and planning everything that you’ll need to make your film is one of the most important things that separates an amateur from a professional. It’s this stage that enables you to chart the path ahead, plan a route through potential troubleshots and avoid potentially fatal pitfalls between your idea and the final, polished film. Without adequate planning, the complex process of making a movie may find itself charting a stormy course. At best, this might mean that the problems encountered extend the time and effort that goes into the production, while, at worst, the whole enterprise is doomed to crash and burn, never actually appearing on-screen.

Why make a music video?
It’s important, when embarking on a creative project, that you’re clear about exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This clarity will drive the process forward. Music videos are a good creative form to work with for a variety of reasons. A friend’s band may be looking for a helpful promotional leg-up, which your creative talent can provide, or there may be a certain song that you’ve always loved and know exactly what visuals it needs. Whatever the reason, the music video is a common format that many of us encounter on a daily basis. It’s also the ideal form to experiment with in terms of new technology, style and approach. It’s short (or manageable), experimental, and you already have the soundtrack, relieving you of one of the most time-consuming parts of making a film, and giving you a fixed structure to work with.

Brainstorm session
Before you embark on the task of making a video, it’s a good idea to do plenty of background research for inspiration. While there are hundreds of music videos out there, you need to find both the cream of the crop and those that are doing something a little more interesting in order to make your video stand out from the crowd. As well as admiring originality, take the time to look at the other aspects of the video: the editing, the composition of the shots and the way visuals accentuate the music. It’s also worth looking at the use of simple effects that can be achieved without a helping hand from Industrial Light & Magic.

We don’t have the space to provide a comprehensive list of recommended hits, but we can suggest a few interesting starting points. Probably the most infamous of our examples is Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy, starring tiny demonic children (who would later find work in a survival horror game) running around creating mayhem. You can find information about it here. Next, when the Smoke Clearz by Taalam Acey/Dead Prez uses a simple but effective idea of a man talking, weaving into a barrage of cut and past images. You’ll find that here. Finally, Parasite’s Distance Over Time, from here (ourselves), shows that you can get beautiful results without a huge budget, in this case using the video option on a Canon Powershot S200 digital stills camera to build layer upon layer of images around the music.

You’ll notice that some of the videos we’ve given as examples have a narrative. Come to Daddy, in particular, has a definite sense of the story progressing as it moves along. (One the more famous examples of a video with a strong narrative is A-Ha’s 1980s hit Take On Me.) By contrast, Distance Over Time has no overt narrative and is more a reaction to the music’s ‘feel’ than its ‘path’. Deciding on a narrative or non-narrative approach to your music video is often the best way to establish a framework.

Storyboarding your ideas
Once you’ve got an idea, you need to commit something to paper. Normally, with a film, the next stage would be to write a script but, as this is a music video, the music itself will act as the script (we don’t need to get too complicated for a first project). The next stage is to plan the video, shot by shot, using images with accompanying descriptions. This is known as storyboarding and is a vital part of the process. Not only will it force you to commit your ideas to paper, it’s used to plan the shooting schedule and as a guide to editing the final film.

Common terms used by filmmakers to describe various different shot types include Close Up (used to pick out the details and/or actions that are important to the narrative), Long Shot (showing events, actions or a landscape from a distance), Medium Shot (a view at the mid-point between the long-shot and close-up), and Panning and Tracking (the camera itself moves – horizontally and vertically respectively). A good storyboard should be a self-contained descriptive document containing enough information for somebody else to go away and make your film. You can find a free PDF template here but, in general, every page should have the project name or project, filmmaker and page-number, while each individual box needs to contain the shot number, type and space for any notes you need to make.

Many music tracks will contain elements that enable you to describe the form of the track on paper: lyrics, breaks, instrumental section and so on. Place this information in the ‘Details’ section of the storyboard. In the large box available for each shot, draw an image of what you expect to see and don’t worry about the quality of your drawings. Stick people are fine, as long as the sketch adequately conveys your intentions and it’s simple for a third party to follow.

Doing a digital recce
There’s a new process to filmmaking, one born of the digital age. You need to make sure you’re familiar with all of the processes necessary for converting any footage you intend to shoot into a digital format. For instance, you should know how to connect your camera to your PC, and how to capture raw footage using video-editing software. Most video software will handle this for you, and all you’ll need to do is plug your camera into the USB or FireWire port. However, if you’re serious about filmmaking, you should become familiar with manual settings, so you can tweak incoming and outgoing digital footage to suit your goals. As long as you leave editing software to automate everything, you won’t feel completely in control of your project.

Writing a shooting schedule
It stands to reason that shooting is not normally done in narrative order, but in order of location. List the shots you need in the order you intend to acquire them. To compile the list, work through the storyboard and group together the shot numbers by location or type. By the end, you should have a list of locations, what shots need to be taken and in which order. Finally, list all the equipment and props you’ll need for the shoot, along with equipment: camera, accessories and batteries, and anything else you think may be necessary during the shoot.