What makes a good music video?

Well I believe the most important thing to have in a music video is a variety of different shot types and angles.

Some examples are: -

This is a high angle shot usually used to show a landscape or a person walking, running or in this case riding a motorcycle.

These shots are usually followed by a pan or a quick cut simply because although they are nice shots to avoid the viewer becoming bored and the shot needs to move on they are the best ways to achieve this.

This is a Low angle shot of someone coming down a flight of stairs.

The Low angle shot is the opposite of a High angle shot but follows the same principles.

But to shoot a low angle shot the camera man must know clearly what they wish to shoot and to actually be tilting the camera or in this case actually be beneath the performer to shoot that particular shot.

This is a close up where only one feature (part) of the body is in the shot.

And in this case we see that it's the man's face that is being enhanced so that it fills up the shot and it's the main focus of this section of the music video.

And it's not always body parts it can be things like objects, numbers and dates. Basically anything you want to fill the screen with and make the focus of in the shot.

This shot is called a medium or midshot where the upper torso of someone is visible in the perticular shot.

And you can also have a mid shot of other things as well because all the shot has to be is too far zoomed out to be a close up but close enough not to be classed as a long shot which is the next example.

This is a long shot used to show an objcet or person at a large distance away.

In this case it shows a car speeding down a motorway.

Now this kind of shot is very rairly used and it's called a walk into shot where the subject (usually always a person) simply walks into the shot and does something.

This was the hardest example to find and this one is from Oasis's Wonder wall viedo right at the start where the guy wallks on and put's the record player on.


And you should also consider how light is used when shooting shot's for instance: -

This is just simply using the lack of light in this hallway and the light from the window to creat this intresting shot of the performer looking almost like a shadow.

Where's this one has been shot using a projector and the camera man shooting the shot from a specific angle.














Other techniques a good music video should include are: -

To avoid viewer fatigue (which in my opinion is the most important thing to try to avoid)and to entice them to watch the video all the way through.

Second would be that the actual lip syncing is in time to the music involved otherwise it makes it look unprofessional and not much effort has gone into making it.

And finally is the facial expressions and the emotion and motivation of the singer/ performer because if they are doing it half heatedly and they don't look like they are having fun then we as viewers aren't going to have fun watching it and enjoy watching it.