I’ve been thinking about a music video. Seems like a good thing to have, and all the other bands have them. You can put it on YouTube and other sites, and people will watch it and hear your music, it’s publicity and promotion and incredible wealth and success will drop in by the following morning and you’ll be all set for retirement.
Well, maybe not quite. But I’d like to have a music video, I think having something on YouTube would probably help with spreading the word about my music. So how do I make one? I was reading Polybore’s blog the other day and noticed the ad for Animoto in the corner. Animoto is a site where you can create your own flashy flash videos by uploading pictures and music, which then get put together with a bunch of cool transitions and effects, and the result is a video. You could easily use this to make a music video. If I understood things correctly, you can make a 30 second video for free, or a full length video by using up credits that you have to buy. Doesn’t seem too expensive, and it’s definitely way cheaper than hiring a music video director and all that comes with it.
While it definitely seems like a cool service, I didn’t like the fact that you really don’t have much control over the end result, since the effects and such are applied automatically. You upload your pictures and music, then press a button and Ptooie! Out comes a video. You can always re-render the video until you get something you like, but it doesn’t seem possible to step in and actually set things exactly the way you want them to be manually.
Another, even cheaper option (if you have a digicam) is to just go out in the garden and film yourself. There’s plenty of video editing software out there, so I’m sure I could add all kinds of cool effects and get something that looks nice, but I must admit I don’t really like the idea anyway. I think I want something a bit more creative and original. I have an idea involving a bunch of still pictures, but it would take a while to finish and it’s not exactly an easy project. I’m going to try a few things out and see if I like how it looks.
