Tutorials - How to Create Music Videos - Music Video Creation 101

So? You wanna make your own music videos, huh? Is that right?? Huh?? I can't hear YOU!!!! You do? Good! Much better! Glad to see you were paying attention.

This is The Switcher, and I've taken time off from my busy schedule of goofing off, to write up this tutorial for all you budding music video artists out there. So instead of me just blabbing on and on, let's get down to business, shall we?

I make my videos with two base programs, one which actually pieces together my work, and one which encodes it into RealPlayer format.

Both programs are free, and can be found at a site such as www.download.com or www.softseek.com. The first program which is absolutely essential, is called QuickEditor. This is your main course, and if your serious about making music videos, here is where you'll be spending most of your time.

The second program simply encodes your finished work from QuickEditor in to RealPlayer movies, thus reducing it's size. This program is called RealProducer Basic.

Simply download them both, or only QuickEditor in case you have no desire to encode your music videos into RealPlayer format, and install them like any other program. If you do not know how to install programs, you shouldn't be making music videos. ^_^ With that said, open up QuickEdior, and let's take a brief walkthrough, you follow so far?

To make things less tedious, let's refer to QuickEditor as QE, from now on, okay?

QE is divided up into sections, and each is located by a gray label with the name of that respective section. Such as "Clip" or "Video Effects."

From left to right in the actual program, here are the sections:



CLIP                                   TRANSITIONS

MOVIE                                 VIDEO EFFECTS

SOUND/MUSIC TRACK     AUDIO TRACK      INFORMATION'S



Please note that both "Transitions" and "Video Effects" are right now much too advanced to fool around with, and take a little getting used to. So just forget them for now, and hone your abilities first, and you'll get to them soon enough.

"CLIP"   "MOVIE"   "SOUND/MUSIC TRACK" and "AUDIO TRACK" are the main ones you'll be working with right now. So let's focus on those. Both "Clip" and "Movie" is where you'll be working most of the time.

"Clip" is where you'll be opening up DragonBall movie clips you download from sites, and use them in your video. Please note you can only use clips you find in QuickTime format, which is either represented with a file name of .QT or .mov

Any other format will simply not open up in QuickEditor, which sucks major beaver balls I know, but there's nothing we can do to change it. :(

Now you can plainly see two small black windows under the "CLIP" and "MOVIE" labels. And small bar of buttons to the right of each window. These buttons work just like a CD player, you can fast-forward, rewind, play, pause and open clips with these small buttons. The first button opens up the clips you want, and find them wherever you store them on your hard drive. This works the same way with both the "Clip" and "Movie" sections.

Now, you want to make your music video don't ya? Well first thing to do is know what song you want. I suggest rock/heavy metal songs, as they tend to fit scenes of DragonBall very well. This is not a rule however. I have seen good music videos using rap/r&b, classical, pop, techno, and lots others. Rock is the most widely used as it is the easiest.

When you find the song you want to make a music video out of, go to the top of QE, and click on file, then click on "New Movie."

It asks you two questions, the window size of your movie, and the duration of how long it will be. Your window size can vary depending on what you want, but I suggest 160 for the width, and 120 for the height.

The duration of your movie obviously has to be at least as long as the song your using, and you must type in how long your movie is in SECONDS, not minutes. So if your movie is exactly 2:00 minutes long, you type in 120 seconds, easy huh? If your movie is 4:34 minutes long, then type in 274 seconds. Ahh, now you can smell what I'm cooking!!!!

Okay, so once your done with that, your movie in the "Movie" window is nothing but a black screen that you have to fill.

See right next to each black window of the Clip and Movie sections? There's a small inscription which reads "Selections." And right next to that is a small group of buttons reading, "Start" "End" and "Reset"  see them? Good. ^_^

Now go to the small CD-looking buttons to the right of the upper "Clip" window. And click on the first button which opens up a movie you have downloaded from a DragonBall site. Let's say you've opened up a movie where Vegeta goes Super Saiyan against Android #19, okay?

You can press the small CD-looking play button, and watch the clip. "Whoa! Look at Veggie shove his boot up 19's ass! That was cool! Let's start my music video with that!!!"

Well, when the Veg-Man sticks his nice white boot up #19's fat ass, press the small "Start" button that we talked about earlier. Now you've told QE, that's what you want to "Start" with, now go to where you want to end that particular clip, and press "End."

A tiny bit further below the "Start and "End" buttons there's another small inscription which reads "selection" when you've picked your "Start and "End" points, that selection tells you how long the bit of the clip is that you've selected.

Let's say the scene of Vegeta fighting #19 is 8 seconds long, okay? Now go a bit down to the "Movie" window where you want your music video to be in. And go through the "Start" and "End" buttons again with the movie. Click at the beginning of the movie, and fast-forward. When should you stop fast-forwarding? Well, how long was the Vegeta clip you selected before? 8 seconds? Yeah that's right! Eureka!

So now you make sure the tiny inscription which reads "selection" says 8 seconds next to your "Movie" window. Now right click the black screen of the "Movie", and a few options should pop up. The one you want is "Insert," highlight that, then you click on "Insert CLIP selection in MOVIE."

Voila! a portion of the clip you downloaded is now in your music video. Once you've done this a few times, it becomes easy, almost second nature.

Now to time your music video to go with your song better, take a Discman or walkman, or a CD player nearby, and play your song while you make your video. If your CD player or whatever has a time display, see how long a certain part of the song is. Say a soft, mellow part of your song is 10 seconds, then it suddenly gets really hard and loud. Well, make sure to get a 10 second long clip, that's slow-moving with not much action. Then when the music gets loud, insert a clip into your movie of some action! KameHameHa's, Big Bangs! Time it so that when the song gets hard, action busts out in your video! Oooooo! Super-fun!
^_^

Then, as you get more accustomed to timing and setting your "Start and "End" points, you can get really creative!

If there's a line in your song which goes, "Look down on me......and walk around on me...."   then find a clip of #18 stomping on Vegeta's back! Oooooo! That bitch! I hate her! Vegeta will beat your ass for that someday! ^_^

Be sure to have fun most importantly! If you don't think your video is going well, just get rid of it, and start a new one. Don't force creativity. If your frustrated with something, don't keep doing it, just start with something else.

Some might have seen my video, "Vegeta's Way" which I still think is my best video. Well truth be told, it took me three tries to get that one in a way which I liked it. The first two, I just said, "No! No! This sucks! Get rid of it! Ecccckkk!" and I started over. So please, people have fun!

I'll probably be writing small updates to what else I think is important, and that I should mention. One last parting notation is the gray label in QE which reads, "Audio Clip" this is where you open up the .mp3 of the song you want, where you have it stored on your computer. Beware! Not all mp3's work! Most do, but I've run into a few which didn't open correctly. Wavs always work, so use those if you can. Adding music to your movie is just like adding a clip, set your "start and "end" points, and click on "insert AUDIO CLIP selection in MOVIE."

Okay that's all for now! If you don't follow my rules, be prepared to get sent into the NEXT DIMENSION!!! ^_^