Ben Peters

Early in the year we had a visit from Ben Peters the music video director. Ben Peters has had a successful career in the music video industry and has directed many music videos. Some of his most popular music videos are:




One of the first things Ben said to the class was "The shorter the better". He said he had learned from experience that if your music video is too long, the label will cut it no matter how stupid the ending of your music video seems. This was something i considered when editing my music video.

He told us that there are 2 types of music videos - Performance based and Story based.  Most music videos will follow these lines according to the artist. For example, this is a typical and and famous performance based music video:



This music video is performance based because the band is perfoming the song on the roof top as if they are on an ordinary stage like they would be in a concert.

Ben also gave the class a break down of all the people and eqipmentSteadycamthat are involved in the making of a music video, from the Director to the to the Runner. The list goes like this:

Director - the decision maker
Producer - at the top of the tree. Decides who is going to direct the video
Spark (Best boy) - the electricians assistant
Grip - is the person who builds the dolly
Steadycam - the camera that is attached to a person for smooth moving shots.
Gaffer - the lighting expert above the sparks.
Grader - the person that will master the video and enhance the quality of every shot to create a particular style.
Colorist (Jet) - the person that will tweek the colour of the video. They will ask for no less that £2000 per music video.
DP - the person that will operate the video camera.
Art director - will find every prop that you will see in a shot.
1st AD (Assistant director) they will schedule the whole video and decide what to shoot and what time
Runner - will learn to make tea and coffee for anyone above. WILL WORK VERY LONG HOURS!