Nile Rogers, Funk and Daft Punk

Here's a great video where funk guitar virtuoso Nile Rogers talks about his style and his collaboration on the latest Daft Punk record Random Access Memories. Nile just oozes groove, which too many guitar players don't get, unfortunately.

Another thing to watch is how well this video is done, especially the editing. It's a good template to work from if you're editing your own videos.

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Make Your Videos More Interesting With The L-Cut

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Musician's Video Handbook which outlined the many things that I learned while producing music television shows like Guitar Universe and Desert Island Music (check out my YouTube channel to see some segments). In the book I tried to show some of the common techniques used by Hollywood producers, directors and camermen to make any type of video that an artist or band might need (music, concert, interview, EPK) more professional looking.

Recently I came across a video on reelseo (of all places) that outlines a well-used story telling technique called an L-cut, which is the shape that the edit makes on your video editing timeline. What it means is that the video from a new clip begins to play over the audio from a previous clip, like in the case where you might hear the end of the dialog from an interview from the previous scene but see the band on stage. There's also an opposite of this called a J-cut where you hear the audio from the next clip while you see the video from the previous one.

While these cuts won't help you too much in a music video where there's music over the top, they can make any interview footage seem to move a lot faster and feel more professional. Here's the video that shows how it's done.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

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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Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.