How much does a music video cost?
We have a pretty large portfolio of music videos on the website now. You can check them out here.
One of the most common questions we get is
“How much does a music video cost?”
The answer used to be quite philosophical.
Well how long’s a piece of string? What is a music video? You could shoot it on your iPhone and it would cost less than getting a helicopter to film you climbing a mountain.
With the prevalence of drones, even the more expensive concepts are getting closer to the amateur band’s budget. So now I give the short answer:
“Prices start at £500”
So what can we offer for £500?
£500 gets you a days filming, a day’s editing, and then we deliver you a final video with some instagram teasers and some stills for the socials. We’ll also write a post about it here in order that we can explain how we were influenced by Hitchcock, Kubrick and the Chuckle Brothers and how everything was intentional and planned.
How does that all work?
Every job’s different. Some start with a concept and then find a band. Sometimes a song gets written and recorded off the cuff and needs a quick music video. Sometimes there’s loads of footage from a tour that needs a song to go with it for a music video, but here’s the general creative process:
Step 1 - What is the concept?
A music video can be pretty much be anything. A blank canvas to fill for the length of the song it promotes. Sometimes it’s a simple live video. Sometimes it’s an existential abstract short film. Maybe the band will be in it, maybe they won’t.
We start this bit by sitting down with the band or artist and banging out some ideas. Listening to the song. Presenting a few ideas. This can be done over a pot of tea, a pint, or more commonly in the last year remotely on zoom.
Sometimes the concept all comes from us, sometimes it all comes from you. Sometimes it’s based on a simple idea or a great location and sometimes we just gather footage and then hope that something makes sense in the edit(the worst videos). We have a bundle of different ideas sitting waiting for the right band.
Often after the initial meeting there’s some back and forth via email or whatsapp where we demonstrate a few concepts with some examples.
Step 2 - Planning
Once we’ve settled on some sort of idea, we start planning how we are going to pull it off. This might be as simple as agreeing a date when everyone is free to go to your rehearsal studio and run through the song or it might require lots of planing and external folk.
In most cases we write out a storyboard and a shot list so that everyone knows what to expect. This lets us plan what equipment, wardrobe, props and makeup are going to be needed and how long we will take to collect all the footage.
Step 3 - Filming
If the video need footage, we’ll meet up and film everything. This might involve all of the band, it might involve actors, there might be multiple locations. Anything is possible.
Step 4 - Editing
Once we’ve collected everything we need, we start the clever stuff. We’ve got a decade of experience of playing around with video editing software to provide transitions and effects and colour grading to make footage more interesting. Some of this stuff is subjective, so we usually do a fair bit of back and forth with sending you work in progress examples to minimise your surprise at the final product.
Step 5 - Post-production
Beyond the basic edit, there’s sometimes graphics and animation and more involved CGI. We’ll discuss this at the planning stage, but this can be the time consuming part that involves more budget. In general we assume that some basic title text and some colour grading and conditioning is included.
Step 6 - Promo
Its as important to us as it is to you that our work gets seen by a large audience, so we’ll always give you pointers as to where you can promote the video. We’ll put together a package of teaser videos and stills and blooper reels(if relevant) for you to build as much hype for your track as possible. We also like to boast about some of the thinking and concepts behind the videos by writing about them here.
What makes it more expensive?
Basically anything outside of that rough plan makes it more expensive. We’ll always bring any of these up at the planning stages and there won’t be any surprises. This could include almost anything, but the main additional expenditures are:
Location. If you want to shut down the centre of Glasgow and put up American street signs up it’s gonna cost you. More realistically venue hire is a common cost.
Actors. You might have a video planned which requires acting skills beyond your bass player’s abilities. You might also need some extras for an audience at a mocked up gig.
Wardrobe/Make up/Props. You can sometimes build a whole concept out of the band being in costume or a make up artist doing their thing.
Additional equipment. Many people don’t realise that professional filmmakers rent a lot of their equipment. We don’t often have to do this, but there can be additional costs for something specialist.
Additional video ops. If we plan an elaborate shoot, we might charge you extra for people to control lights or an extra camera.
What makes it cheaper?
We appreciate that bands can be on a really tight budget, so we’re open to helping you reduce the costs of your video so that we can still help out.
You do the filming. 2020 was the year of creatives learning to make do with what they could at home. While it will probably be better if we film it using our equipment, you can half our man hours by just sending us the footage. We even put together a simple guide for filming stuff on your phone.
Remove the need for filming. Many videos have been put together through using archive and montage. While I wouldn’t recommend it for every video, collecting footage is a great habit to get into as a band
Reduce the editing time. I would generally say that editing is more important than filming if you are looking to keep the budget down, but there are a few occasions when a video won’t need much editing. One example this is a single shot video. In many of these cases it makes for a more involved filming stage, but it’s something to think about.
Bulk buying. If you’ve worked out your budget for your next 4 singles for the year we’re open to discussing how best that budget can be spent. We’re not quite offering buy 2 get the third free, but we’re open to offers. We also might be open to some price reduction if we produced the track
As always, if you like this and you want to see us do more. Like, Share, comment and interact.