Hopefully, yesterday's first part gave you an idea of what this series of posts is all about, so now let's get down to business

Before getting too fancy, why not have a go at simply filming yourself or your band playing? I don't mean getting your mate to record your next gig on his camera phone. I mean picking a track and really thinking about how you could record this in the best possible way to do it justice. How can you bring it to life? How can you show the viewer what you are all about?

Dry The River show what you can achieve with just one camera and one take in this session, filmed in somebody's living room:

By simply choosing the right lighting and environment, you can really get a feel for what this band are all about. It's not like they've spent mega bucks on lighting; a few fairy lights and Ikea lamps positioned in interesting places and you have some really effective soft lighting. Watch how the camera moves slowly and smoothly between the people and the instruments, and as the music speeds up the movements get a little quicker. Not only do you get a feel for the band, but you also get a feel for the song. It comes to life.

There are lots of beautiful examples of this on You Tube channel watchlistentell, which all feature videos made on one camera, in one take. OK, granted, these were shot on a very good camera, but getting that beautiful cinematic effect may not be as expensive to achieve as you may think, as you will discover in our next post about equipment.

The beauty of filming yourself in this way is that it might end up being half of your first music video! I’m sure you're used to the format: band plays song in interesting location, random story is told in between. Take this video from Chucky’s River for example. Band performs in abandoned house, guy goes crazy smashing things up in between. And the band informed us on Twitter that the budget for this was a chicken burger and chips!

If you manage to film something half decent, then the balance between you performing and the rest of the video is really up to you. If you love how you look and want to get your personality across then feature a lot of performance shots, and a little bit of a story. But if you're shy or reckon you have more of a 'face for radio', you could opt for the complete opposite and go for pure storytelling, like in this Jakwob video. Simple story, told visually with stunning beauty, and fits the music perfectly.

When I first saw this I thought it must have been made by professionals using a pretty hefty wad of cash provided by a record label. But when I got in touch with director Lucy Bridger, I was pleased to discover it was made in a much more DIY fashion, so I asked Lucy to share her experiences of making this video. Here's what Lucy said:

When I first listened to the song, I thought there was definitely something melancholy about it. I liked the idea of having these two characters that could only connect at night, when everybody else was sleeping. I’ve always found the night quite magical, like when you go into 24 hour supermarkets, that eerie silence with just you and two other people in this huge space. I definitely wanted to get that across in some of the scenes.

The characters were based around childhood. Doing things they’re not meant to, like going out by yourself at night and playing with fire. And with the characters having that naivety there wasn’t meant to be a romantic element to their relationship, it was just a friendship. The masks are to do with playing dress up as a child, but more like when you wanted to wear it all time, even out the house.

James (Jakwob) has been a friend of mine for about four years. We both lived really close to each in Lincoln. We were in the same sixth form so I guess we both saw each other’s work quite often. I remember James sending music now and then which I really liked, so I guess since then we've had a mutual understanding of what eachother likes. Before the video, I took a lot of photographs of James, so when it came to the video it was so easy to talk about ideas.



We decided to shoot the video in Lincoln because we grew up here; we know the area and the people. Originally we were going to shoot the video in London, but we worked out that logistically it might cause too many problems. Shooting in Lincoln worked out well though; for a lot of people who watched the video, it’ll seem like any town in the UK and I prefer that the settings were anonymous. We definitely wouldn’t have had that feeling if we'd shot in London. Plus, the morning we shot the final scenes in the field and abandoned house couldn’t have been more perfect.



We had a visit from the police once during the video, but they left us alone when we explained what we were doing.

We kept the whole thing as minimal as possible, I think we all agreed that we wanted to keep it small because the larger the group of people, the less refined ideas become. You also lose a lot of intimacy with more people in the video. I think we were very specific who we let join our project, and that’s why it worked so smoothly. The video wouldn’t have happened had one of us not been there. Ben, who also worked on camera, was great at working out the logistics and editing the whole thing. Our strength lay in our collective knowledge.



We kept the equipment to a minimum. We used a Canon 5d MKII camera with Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 L USM and Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM lenses.



The equipment cost us £450to hire for two days. Fred, who was one of the camera men, drove us around in his dad’s pick-up truck. We used the pick-up to do the moving bike scenes, and spent £50 on the petrol. We spent £100 on food, but we were way ahead of schedule and ended up cutting out a day of shooting, which meant we didn’t eat half the food. We spent £50 on props and costume. The wardrobe on the video was a collective wardrobe belonging to me, James and Frankie. I love that the wardrobe is a complete reflection of us at that time.



I think that through working with friends, your personality resonates in your work a lot more naturally. And in some ways it's easier working with friends because you can be a lot more honest.



Jakwob came from a DIY background, he used the resources he had to create something and we did the same. This was our first production of this nature and I feel really happy with what we achieved. I think it goes to show how much excess a production can gather and that something professional can be done efficiently by a small group of people, as long as you have a mutual understanding for each other.

Thank you, Lucy. A wonderful example of what you can achieve when you have an idea that's connected to the music and can gather a close group of creative people together to pull it off.

In the next post, we will be delving deeper into the world of equipment, looking more closely at the type of camera used in this Jakwob video, as well as lighting and editing.

Tomorrow: Part 3 - A Bad Workman Always Blames His Tools

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