JP - The Process of Making a Music Video

Commissioning is the first major stage in the making of a music video, the label, artist and management will look through their album and agree on what to release as a single. Then there will be a person at a record label, or someone operating on a freelance basis, who is assigned the role as the video commissioner. The video commissioner makes a shortlist of possible directors and sends the track with a broad brief, summarising ideas for the project, including the budget, the deadline and other important information, to the shortlisted directors.

Planning will fall largely to the director, who will look at the lyrics and other material that is supplied to him, such as previous videos by the artist and the brief he has received. From this he will outline a proposal, which could be a storyboard animatic or just a couple of paragraphs of text, that will indicate the directors general idea for the video. If the commissioner approves then they will hold a meeting, often including the artist, where they will finalise the treatment and agree upon it for the next stage of making a music video.

Budgeting is the next stage following the planning of a video. The producer will draw up a budget, which is approved by the head of production. This will be submitted to the client who may wish to negotiate or change the video idea to satisfy a manageable budget. Once this is agreed a deal memo is countersigned on director and budget. The production team at this stage has committed itself to expenditure as the director and producer need to put together the main team of creative personnel, the production unit.
This stage is taken very seriously due to the recent economic downturn and has led to the reduction in money available for the budget and more corporate involvement. To minimise mistakes record companies are reluctant to green light a project, unless they are sure it will be a success. This is why for example Sony have to have 6 different people at different levels of the company sign off the video budgets before shooting can commence.