ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

6 years, 5 months ago - John Lubran

This sort of aspirational question comes up regularly here Meredith.. I'm not surprised that 'cold calling"' production companies is an uphill task. Any production company of any actual provenance is probably getting such requests every day. There's a conciderable over supply of young aspirants including college graduates and talented self starters. You've learned how to use the tools and how to organise a production. Making best use of any such tools and skills that you have find music artists, ideally performing their own stuff, who have yet to make a video and offer to collaborate with them.

In most ways music videos are the easiest films to make on limited budgets. There's no complex narrative and no demanding sound issues. Compelling and even top notch videos can be produced with minimal equipment and even no money. Artistry, imagination and easily exploitable locations is all one needs. Oh and of course, performers worth making the effort for.

Whilst a written list of academic diplomas suggests some virtues, for most producers it's examples of work and engaging gumption that's much more compelling.

6 years, 5 months ago - Mark Wiggins

If you want to be a Music Video Director, then you have to go and direct Music Videos. Find amature bands in your area, approach them, start building up a body of work. Sign up to RADAR, start pitching to bands on there and shoot their videos, join Directors UK, then, when you think you are ready, start approaching Production Companies with a view to getting on their roster of Directors. Its a long road and it is talent that will get you through.

With regard to being a runner or assistant. There are no, Music Video Runners or Assistants, just Runners and Assistants. One day you can be doing a Music Video, the next a Commercial or TV Drama or Feature Film. It is all the same, all the same pool of people doing them. They are all just jobs and people go from one to the other regardless as to whether its a Music Video or not.

Becoming a Runner is not a step to becoming a director. It just gets you on set so you can start to learn how things work. The only thing that will help you become a director is directing.

6 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

The golden age of music videos has passed, now MTV is all "reality"! £50k budgets used to be normal, now the common offering is about £8k - that's 8 grand to get a studio, crew, dancers, lighting, camera, edit, grade, insurances, contracts, the lot. There's not a heap of real profit in that, and there's always someone who'll want to undercut to "win" the business and effectively work for free. Then there are awful competitions like the Deadmau5 one a while back - you made a spec video for him, and if you won, you got $5k. So you had a low chance of winning back a part of your production costs - terrible deal.

It's tough, that's what I'm saying. Of course the flipside is that there are more musicians wanting videos than ever, and if you are savvy you can keep production costs constrained, just the possibilities for doing something spectacular are more constrained too.

6 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Oops - back to the actual question ;-) Be a runner for anything, talk to camera and electrical depts, they might take a trainee for a video, then you're in the right place to network away.