{"id":6079,"date":"2014-09-03T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T14:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toiletovhell.com\/?p=6079"},"modified":"2014-09-03T09:42:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T14:42:10","slug":"rho-stones-audiovisual-adventures-diy-music-video-advice-for-the-unsigned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/rho-stones-audiovisual-adventures-diy-music-video-advice-for-the-unsigned\/","title":{"rendered":"Rho Stone\u2019s Audiovisual Adventures: DIY Music Video Advice for the Unsigned"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Toilet Ov Hell cares about new bands<\/a>. They\u2019re the future of metal, after all. Who needs fancy budgets when you can have FUN?<\/p>\n

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Currently my boss and many of my peers are reading a book whose title roughly translates to \u201cI\u2019ve got no cash for making my film\u201d. Also lately people have been asking me \u201cwhat\u2019s the minimal equipment needed for making a movie?\u201d Everyone seems to think there\u2019s a huge threshold for making something artistically worthwhile in the music, film, or\/or\u00a0macaroni murder ladies<\/a>. Now, as someone who has religiously studied\u00a0Cinemassacre<\/a>\u00a0since 2007 (btw I\u2019m going total fanboy for the AVGN movie for those who know what that is) I can tell you that\u2019s a load of crap. If you are creative and organized enough, you can write a kickass song on a shit guitar or make a film with just your phone camera and your smarts. You\u2019re not contractually obliged to a studio or a label, it\u2019s your own dime and you can do whatever the fuck you please. Here is some advice in case you\u2019re wondering where to start:<\/p>\n

Make sure you\u2019re doing it because you want to and not because you \u201chave\u201d to.<\/strong> Do you think the world needs more of this<\/a>? There\u2019s some unwritten rule that says bands are supposed to make videos. Why? You need to make sure people know that song is your single? There\u2019s no MTV to show videos anymore, they\u2019re too busy showing fake tans and teenage pregnancies. Streaming killed the video star. In most cases nobody\u2019s dying to see a music video. It\u2019s going to end up sitting on YouTube, where people are going to click it to listen to the song while they do something else on another tab. So if you don\u2019t want to make a video with the same vehemence you want to make songs, just don\u2019t do them. If nobody really wants to do it it\u2019s most probably going to suck anyways<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Work with what you have, not what you want.<\/strong> I believe the best art comes from adversity. The original Star Wars Trilogy movies are amazing because they were created from\u00a0setbacks (if not they would have been another cookie-cutter Flash Gordon ripoff). They\u2019re far better than the sequels because they didn\u2019t have everything taken for granted, they had to take what they had and make it memorable. In my last post<\/a> I called R2-D2 \u201ccocky\u201d.\u00a0 R2-D2 is a midget inside a can, but that has more charm\u00a0than any of the cardboard personality characters in Attack of the Clones. Take your available resources\u00a0and make something out of it. Take a look at Jari M\u00e4enp\u00e4\u00e4 in his quest for finding a machine that plays his music for him or whatever else he\u2019s asking his label more money for. Someone should tell him that his idea of perfection is tied to the zeitgeist and as soon as something new comes along his perfectionist ideals will become obsolete. You don\u2019t need big ass sets and a whole production team. You could just take a look in your garage, find a rake and a spare wheel and use your imagination to come up with something. DSLR cameras are able to record amazing video and almost everyone knows a wannabe photographer who has one. If not, most phones today have a camera that films in 1080p. If all else fails, use crayons and magazine cutouts to make an animated viking battle in outer space. Be fucking creative.<\/p>\n

Set the bar really high.<\/strong> I\u2019m not using Star Wars as a random example. The original Star Wars trilogy\u00a0will be long-remembered works of art. If you\u2019re planning to make a video for you and your cat to look at on rainy days go ahead and make your best Solitary Son<\/a> impression, but if you want to make a successful video \u201cgood enough for 5 guys and no budget\u201d is not an acceptable phrase. If you don\u2019t start by believing you\u2019re making the next best music video of all time then you\u2019ll never make it. Want some motivation? Remember you can make a better video than the ones critically acclaimed bands with huge resources have made. Let\u2019s clog this toilet:<\/p>\n

Megadeth \u2013 Poopercollider<\/a>.\u00a0Not content with making a shit dad rock album, they made a shit video. FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Slayer \u2013 World Painted Blood<\/a>.\u00a0I guess Brendon Small was busy saying the word \u201cdildo\u201d into a microphone in different voices that week. FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Soundgarden \u2013 Been Away Too Long<\/a>. Beautiful photography, colors, locations and post-production. Ruined by a video that\u2019s boring as fuck. FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Metallica \u2013 The Day That Never Comes<\/a>. This image summarizes how much you\u2019ll enjoy watching this one.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

FLUSH<\/p>\n

Black Label Society \u2013 In This River<\/a>. Am I supposed to be moved by this? I\u2019m sure that\u2019s what Zakk Wylde looked like when he was 8. FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Gojira \u2013 L\u2019Enfant Sauvage<\/a>. Dear Gojira, stop being so french (Dear reader, you probably didn\u2019t have to study movies for years. I had to. You won\u2019t believe how often I had to sit through shit like this<\/a> and had to take it seriously). FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Dio \u2013 Rainbow in the Dark<\/a>.\u00a0So far in AV Adventures I\u2019ve gone out of my way not to criticize old videos because I have a huge amount of respect for people who had to make videos with tape and a guillotine, but this is just awful. FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Danzig \u2013 Ju Ju Bone<\/a> (NSFW).\u00a0Yes Glenn, women have tits. Yes, Army of Darkness was a great movie. How\u2019s that pile of bricks doing? FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Saxon \u2013 Live to Rock<\/a>.\u00a0Because Bill and Ted where THIS tedious. Also, this was made in 2008, Autodesk Maya was already out and this is the best 3D you can get? FLUSH.<\/p>\n

Black Sabbath \u2013 God Is Dead<\/a>. Peter Joseph made this. Trust me, if you\u2019re able to point a camera at something and hit record you\u2019re already a better filmmaker than he is. FLUSH WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.<\/p>\n

Ok, look. You don\u2019t need to have the story of the decade. I could have stayed in my house watching Pocahontas (illegaly, I don\u2019t own<\/em> Pocahontas, mind you) instead of going to the movies to see Avatar to\u00a0see the same story. But\u00a0the presentation was the purpose. Also don\u2019t get me wrong, you don\u2019t need to produce Avatar in your driveway, just find a way to take your art to it\u2019s greatest potential.<\/p>\n

Be organized.<\/strong> Here\u2019s a rule of thumb: If an idea has not been written down, it does not exist. I\u2019m not going to give you the professional version of organization because I don\u2019t want to scare you, but follow this and you should do fine. Before you even turn the camera on, you must make a list of everything you have: all the people involved, their roles, schedules and availability, all the props, objects, and locations that are going to be used. Then, when writing the story, everything must be put textually. Every character must be written by name, description and the way he acts. No \u201ca man walks down the stairs\u201d, you write \u201cMAN 1 [about 25 years old, unkept look and overweight, clumsy] walks down the stairs\u201d. Every object, location and situation must be expressed in this manner; there\u2019s no place for figures of speech or idioms here, everything must be unambiguously understood. Then you separate everything by locations. If two parts of the story occur in the same place, they go together. Chronology doesn\u2019t matter here; it\u2019s better to film everything in one location and move than to be going back and forth. You must plan accordingly. If, for example, a character has half his head shaved in the beginning but not in the end, you film the end first, and then shave his head. Make a storyboard. Draw every camera movement, every pan, every close-up. That way you have everything planned out. Once you start filming, someone has to keep track of everything. He or she must write down which takes are good, which are bad, what is missing, etc. This will be useful for when it\u2019s time to edit, so the editor already knows his material. I\u2019m not going to cover editing or AV language here, or I\u2019d be writing a whole book. I recommend you watch a shit ton of movies and see what looks good and what doesn\u2019t. That\u2019s how I started. In regards to software, I use Final Cut for editing and After Effects for post. For amateur Mac users I guess iMovie does it\u2019s job fine (more than once, after presenting\u00a0a budget, clients have told me “But I can just do it in iMovie”. Btw fuck those people). In regards to Windows, I remember Movie Maker on the XP was somewhat functional. I really haven\u2019t used a PC since then.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s an actor.<\/strong> There\u2019s no such thing as a bad actor, only bad scripts and directors. Everyone that\u2019s willing to act is able to do it. Now, maybe you want to do a serious thing and it\u2019s coming out unintentionally hilarious, remember that you must work with what you have, not what you want, and in that case you probably don\u2019t have what it takes to make something serious, so you should take another approach. It\u2019s like trying to play sweep picking solos when you\u2019re still not good at it, you still require practice (After countless hours of practice and this video<\/a> Rho Stone is able to sweep pick).<\/p>\n

This all might sound complex, but it\u2019s really fun. At least I find it fun. Hey, beats raising cattle I guess. No seriously, it\u2019s really fun. Now, amateur up-and-coming bands, go make your videos and show those production companies you don\u2019t need them (Rho Stone doesn\u2019t endorse the boycotting of production companies, or he\u2019d be out of a job).<\/p>\n

(Shameless Editor’s note: Are you in an unsigned band? SEND US YOUR SHIT.<\/a> If we like it, we’ll feature it!)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Toilet Ov Hell cares about new bands. They\u2019re the future of metal, after all. Who needs fancy budgets when you can have FUN?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":6082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,370,403],"tags":[1000,997,484,43,1005,1004,998,999,414,1002,1003,85,1006,131,399,1001],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/av_diy.png?fit=750%2C505&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}