Why Make a Video at Taylor Sound?
By T. Perry Bowers
Soul Asylum, Poliça, Tickle Torture, By the Thousands, Color Tab. Just a few of the names that have shot scenes in my studio. In the last ten years or so I’ve seen a lot of videos get made!
Directors come to me because I can deliver a great room at a great price.
I cater to bands that have a small budget. Most of the videos done at Taylor Sound have a $3-$10,000 budget. It may seem like a lot to someone who hasn’t made films, but 10k can easily be sucked up in a day, or even half a day depending on how big your crew is. Making films is really expensive!
The gear is insane. I’ve had cameras worth a hundred thousand dollars in my studio. A rap group hired a guy who said he had to have a particular camera to get the shots he wanted. Don’t get me wrong, the shots looked great, but they were boring. It was a scantily clad woman dancing the same dance over and over again for the whole video. No one cares that it was shot on a million dollar camera because it’s lame!
Lights and grip equipment are ridiculous too. A nice sturdy stand for a light can cost a thousand dollars. I’ve seen people rent a hundred thousand dollars worth of lights just to use one or two lights as they shoot a single subject. Sometime they rent lights with a particular type of bulb because the bulb has the perfect warmth. But then the shot is a boring singer who forgot the meaning of style back in the eighties!
If you’re going to shoot a video in my studio, it probably means you don’t have a huge budget. So, spend your money where it counts. Spend it being creative. No piece of gear is going to make you a star. The best light in the universe won’t push your career over the edge. Of course, you want your video to look great, but don’t overlook the creative aspect of it.
Take time crafting your image. What does your clothing say about you? What kind of attitude are you bringing to the song? What imagery can you use that won’t cost a lot of money but will be high impact?
I just had a conversation with a “director” who I wanted to hire for a job. It was a simple four-camera shoot of a live jazz band. A one-day shoot and he would have to edit three songs. I’m not saying that it would have been easy, but it would have been quick. I had set it all up, so he could walk in and make it happen. He didn’t land the client and he wasn’t going to handle any invoicing. All he had to do was shoot and edit the thing. But he quoted me a price that that was out of this world. He didn’t keep in mind this was a self-funded jazz band. I understand – he has big corporate clients. He doesn’t have time to shoot “low” budget music films. But, that is not how we roll at Taylor Sound.
We work with all kinds of budgets. If you can’t afford our production costs, you can produce it yourself and just rent the video studio. Having a great place to shoot can make all the difference. A clean white cyclorama is industry standard. If your subject is interesting, the infinite white wall will highlight that. Because of the solid white, it doesn’t take a lot of sophisticated lighting to make something stand out. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is a great example. It was one of the biggest videos of the last decade. If you have some shooters and editors to help you out, using the video studio will give you a great look.
If you want to use the recording studio as a setting, that’s an option as well. We’ve had many artists and bands film in the vocal booth or behind the mixing console to get a studio look for their music video. It’s just another option in the Taylor Sound facility.
We also offer full-scale production.
Here is a video by “By The Thousands” that we did in 2015:
We produced this from top to bottom.
Here is a video where the director just rented the room from us for Soul Asylum:
And here is a video that was on a bit of a tight budget, but we made it look great for Sweet Colleens:
So whatever your music video needs, we can provide it. Our specialty is independent artists and bands and we love finding creative ways to get a great video at an affordable price!
