What are somethings that you as filmmaker need to invest in so that can make your low-budget music videos look better? Today I wanna talk about 5 things that EVERY filmmaker needs to have in order to shoot better music videos.

If you’re a solo filmmaker most of the time, like me, then shooting a music video at night could be a challenging thing to do especially when you’re working with small budgets. We have all watched hundreds of movies and TV shows that have made night scenes look stunning but also know that there’s probably at least pretty big crew working to light the scenes. But my focus for this video is filmmakers that want shoot night scenes for music videos but just need some tips and tricks on how to make their shots look better.

As a DP, I was given the task of shooting and lighting an entire performance music video with an iPhone 11. When I first read this on the brief, I almost had a panic attack because I got so worried that this was going to look horrible. I’ve worked on projects with iPhone footage in the past and it’s just incredibly difficult to color or tweak footage that comes out of it. But after this experience, I was convinced that it’s possible. I mean look at all the more recent Apple commercials that are entirely shot on the iPhone. They look really well done, granted those commercials are shot with commercial budgets not with music video budgets. It’s like comparing a great dane to a chihuahua.

Having a shot list for your shoot is extremely important and crucial. It helps you save time, money, and gives you guidelines to work in during the shoot so you don’t get sidetracked from the objective of the shoot.

After about 3 years of editing on the FCPX, I was forced to edit in Premiere on this certain project because I had turn in the Premiere project files to the client I was working with. After editing a couple of projects on Premiere I discovered that I liked it better and stuck with it ever since. So here are 3 reasons why I edit my projects on Premiere Pro.