Music videos are a great outlet for filmmakers to explore and experiment with their creativity but getting your career off the ground can be a little tricky.
Music videos are pleasant to watch and adds a sensory feel to songs which is quite different from when you just listen to the audio.
The authenticity of music video is the responsibility of the video director.
Music video directing is a lucrative field of endeavor in the entertainment industry, a career here comes along with the perks of fame, money, and pleasure. Fantastic music videos are products of amazing concepts from the directors.
If you want to start making music videos, here are step by step on how to become successful music video director in Nigeria.
If you’re unsure of where to start, this tips will help you not only launch your career but also make your work more professional, exciting, and relevant in a highly competitive field.
How To Become Successful Music Video Director
Below is the list of steps on how to become successful music video director in Nigeria.
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- Start with Local Musicians
- Make Practice Priority
- Work on your Creativity
- Attend Training and get Certificate
- Take Internship
- Must Know Right Costume and Setting
- Stay original
1. Start with Local Musicians
You may dream of making videos for the biggest names in the music industry, but starting locally in the beginning might be a good idea. Reach out to local bands and musicians and see if they’re open to you shooting a music video.
If you have a few friends who are also musical artists, this process seems to be much easier and often less lucrative but your rate is honestly not the most important thing you have to worry about at this point.
2. Make Practice Priority
Don’t make the money your priority in the beginning, Make Practice Priority! Get out there and start honing your craft so you can start adding good work to your reel.
If someone wants you to shoot their music video for peanuts, you might want to do it. Experience is much more valuable than money in the beginning, so take every opportunity to get some.
3. Work on your Creativity
The work of a music video director is to translate the lyrics and meaning of a song into motion pictures. This can’t be done without a creativity hat.
So if you want to evade making mediocre music videos, you need to work on your creativity first, birth ideas on the go, bring new concepts out of mundane things, and infuse them into the videos.
Suffice to add that, as a music video director, you can also direct commercials where your creativity is highly needed. Most of the time, the brand you are working with might have a great idea, it’s your job to refine that concept and make it stand out.
Humor sells every day, allow your creativity to veer into the comic lane. Bits and pieces of humor infused into a music video adds a healthy spice to it.
4. Attend Training and get Certificate
There are lots of film academies around. Music video directing is not one of those skills you learn by the roadside and start practicing, it’s a professional career, you don’t find these guys around on a daily basis.
You can get the music producer’s often but not video directors. So if you want to be like this valuable elusive lot, then a professional skills acquisition is the way to go.
Go abroad if your pocket says so, but if it refuses, find one in the country you’re resident in and acquire proper video directing skill and certification. Find the best around in the country and enroll in a program and avoid wacky ventures.
5. Take Internship
Every field that requires technical activities demands at least half a year internship to hone the skills learned. Internship exposes you to more fieldwork and practical experiences. There are things no school can teach you safe for the experience.
Little wonder, employers always ask job seekers how many years they have been in a field of discipline because they know experience counts in a great deal.
The internship gives you your experience, sharpen your skills, and gives you an edge. There’s no specific duration for an internship, but anywhere from six months to a year is reasonable.
Apply for an internship with someone who’s a guru in directing and play the rookie card. Act like you’re dumb and mask whatever prodigy you have.
If you act like you know more than the master already, the master takes the back seat and allows you on the wheels, limiting your chances of acquiring the experience you came for.
6. Must Know Right Costume and Setting
An eye for details on these video ingredients listed above is one quality every music video director must possess, even before going to get professional skills.
You must be able to identify the right costume that suits a particular song and the right environmental setting to match up.
Some songs require a little bit of drama, you are going to direct it equally.
The costumes must be on point and in line with the setting.
Knowing this is very important because you don’t want to get caught shooting a video in a village setting with all your dancing crew attired in French suits.
Perhaps, the shooting is just a studio thing, the backdrop is yours to decide because it needs to be sharp on your camera.
The right colors and design are decisions entirely up to you.
Although you’ll be thought most of these things in the academy, a piece of basic knowledge and prodigy for these things come in handy any day.
7. Stay original
Develop your own original style that speaks to who you are as a music producer. Yes, it’s important to be versatile and be able to give your clients what they want, but it’s also important to be able to inspire them with your own vision as well.
