The 50 Worst Band Pictures

It's time to laugh a little, unfortunately at the expense of others. Today's post is centered around a something I found called "The 50 worst band pictures." The problems with most of the photos is that the bands just don't know any better. They think a picture is a picture and a photographer is a photographer, but just like a great musician, engineer or producer, you get what you pay for. As the saying goes, a pro is expensive; an amateur costs a fortune. Let's look at a few.


These guys are from Finland, so maybe things are different over there, but:
1) Do these costumes have anything to do with the band, or do they just think they're cool?
2) The post growing out of the head of the 2nd guy from the left is a bit of a distraction, as is the house on top of the head of Thor on the right.
3) Are these guys actors or musicians?
4) Cellphone cameras are nice and all, but it sure would be nice to see some depth of field.
5) There's this really nice grassy knoll in the background. Think they could've used that instead?

Here's a good example of a photo that's just plain bad. Let's count the number of things wrong with this.
1) Band doesn't care enough about the photo to dress for it
2) No matter what anyone tells you, it's never cool to give the finger in a photo.
3) Bad picture of the band that's not very clear
4) Even worse Photoshop job.
5) If the little guy on the left was raised up a bit, they could've used the natural cut toff point at the waist to frame it better.
6) Would you hire this band? Yeah, me neither.

I can't believe that anyone would even consider this as a band photo.
1) Fat and out of shape guys should never take a picture with their shirts off. It's even weird for a guy who's really cut to do it.
2) Once again, "Let's take a really bad picture from your girlfriends iPhone and Photoshop the background out. Yeah, that will do it."
3) "While we're at it, let's Photoshop some lighting bolts in there." That has exactly what to do with shirtless fat guys? Shirtless fat guys have exactly what to do with music?

Here we go again. Just the kind of photo to NOT get you the gig.
1) "Let's rub fake blood all over us to make us look like crazy killers." This has exactly what to do with their music?
2) "Hey buddy, take a picture of our band with this little pocket camera. Make sure the flash is on."
3) Doesn't the fact that the guy on the left is in the dark bother anyone?
4) How does the setting and background relate to crazy killers who think they're a band?

This one's a little better on execution, but does it make you want to hire the band? Does it make you think that they're even a band at all. As the caption on the original website said, "They'll get you a good deal on cell phone accessories."

To see all fifty of these gems, go here.


Here's an excerpt from the Electronic Press Kit chapter of The Musician's Video Handbook that covers band pictures.
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Make sure that the still photos are professionally done. Nothing screams out “amateur” than pictures that are blurry, aren’t framed well, and worst of all, aren’t suitable for use in an article. This is one of your key assets and will be used more than anything else except your bio. They don’t have to be studio portraits - they can be crazy and creative if it fits your image. 

If you don’t have any pictures, avoid the temptation to have a friend take some unless he’s a really good photographer. An amateur-looking photograph is almost as bad as none at all. That being said, almost all the techniques used for lighting and framing video also apply to taking photographs, so you can check those chapters for some help.

If you decide to use a pro photographer, stay away from one that does family-style portraits because you’ll get one that makes you look like a family. They don’t do music and most don’t have that kind of mindset. If there’s a local modeling agency, ask them for some suggestions. That way you’ll get someone who’s a lot more inventive and that will result in some photos that are more interesting. If you go this route, make sure that you get an agreement up front that you own the copyrights on the photos, if you can.

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5 Reasons For Bad Concert Videos

I hate concert videos. Not all of them, just the majority. It's not the music or the artist, it's mostly the directing. It seems like a whole generation of directors learned the wrong way just like a lot of live soundmen did (more on that gripe here).

Many times there's a concert I'd love to watch on VH1 Classic, Palladia, or PBS that I can't get past the first minute or two because it's cut too fast and flat. That might work for music videos (I'm not sure it does) but it sure doesn't for a concert. I want to be engaged, I want to be pulled in and I want to really see the performance in a way I never could before.

So here are my 5 reasons why I think concert videos are so bad. By the way, there's a lot more about shooting and editing concert videos aimed specifically for musicians in The Musician's Video Handbook.

1. The cuts are way too fast.  Give me a moment or two to get a feeling for the artist.  If you cut on every beat I never get pulled into the performance.  There's no rule that says you can't keep a shot on the artist for 5, 10 or even 30 seconds.  I promise, if the artist and the music is great, it's not going to be boring!

2.  There's never enough of the supporting players.  Let me see the rest of the band.  And not just for a second either.  I want to know who the players are.  I want to see how much they're into the music.  And just maybe there might be a great mini-performance within a performance that's worth seeing.

3.  Too many audience shots.  Who cares about the audience?  Unless there's something really special about the audience, I don't have to see them in every song, and not more than once or twice at that.  This constant cutting back to generic audience shots just makes me loose interest.  Sure they like the band.  That's why they're there. You don't have to keep reminding us.

4.  Too many long shots from the audience.  Once I get the feeling of how large the venue is and how many people are there, I don't need to see it again.  Giving me that same shot over and over just disconnects me from the performance.

5.  The shots make the performer look smaller than life.  Please, learn how to frame a shot.  I'd like to see the performance from a perspective I can't normally get, but I don't need to count the singer's nose hairs.  Too many times the shooter frames the shot flat.  A concert is bigger than life so let's shoot it that way.

Too many times a director thinks that the project is his. It's not. It belongs to the artists. Let's give the fans more of them and less of you.

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5 Criteria For Online Video Stardom

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times gave the 5 ways to become the next online video star as outlined by Mike Polk, a producer for the comedy site break.com. Break.com specializes in male-oriented get-hit-in-the-crotch humor (see the break.com recruiting video for an example), but their criteria still works for musical artists. Here's my version of their five criteria for online video stardom:

1) Immediacy: There has to be something that grabs your viewer right off the bat. The Internet is flooded with artists who can get your attention quickly and they're the ones that have a chance for big-time viewer numbers. Our modern attention span is such that if you don't grab them within in the first 5 seconds, you've probably lost them.

2) Eye-catching thumbnail: Thumbnails are incredibly important but it's not about being attractive - it's about having presence and charisma. Unfortunately you have to convey that on a picture about the size of a postage stamp online. Given the limited nature of thumbnail selection by YouTube, getting the right thumbnail for your video can be a crapshoot. The only way you can get a better selection of your thumbnail is to become a "partner" (meaning that ads are shown before your video), but it could mean the difference between a just a few or a massive amount of views.

3) Versatility: There's a one-man-band nature of online videos. You have to be able to incorporate your music, do your own camera work, and know how to edit video. There are so many artists who don't know how to do any of this and that's why I'm currently writing a book called The Musician's Video Handbook. Look for it next year.

4) Originality: You need a concept of what you want to do and how you want to get that across that's both unique and original. Originality is easy to demand, but difficult to produce, especially in these days of increased competition.

5) Likability: Everyone wants to watch someone that they would want to approach, who's not full of himself, and is able to laugh at himself. If you can't evoke some sort of of empathetic emotion from the viewer, they're not going to tell their friends.

Is that all? Hardly, but it's a start. So many videos are created with a serendipity that makes them huge online hits, but not very reproducible. The really hard part with having a hit video is to follow up and have another one, and regardless of the type of artistic endeavor, that's the sign of true star.