1-Week Music Video Camp

Music Video: one of the most accessible and hands-on ways that individuals can begin a career in directing. By its very nature, the music video is stylistic, expressive, evocative, and free of many of the constraints of standard narrative filmmaking.

In today’s market, no band or recording artist puts out an album without an engaging music video. The video should capture the style, essence and music of the band, and many bands use videos as calling cards to get gigs and major label interest.

However, most bands lack one necessary skill when it comes to making a video: the knowledge of how to visualize, conceive, produce, shoot and edit the project.

With this in mind, the New York Film Academy has specially designed the One-Week Music Video Camp, taught by music video directors in a hands-on program of total immersion. Students will eat, drink and breathe music video from start to finish. The pace of this course is feverish, and each student will complete his or her own version of a short music video to be screened at the conclusion of the course. The curriculum is designed for people with little or no experience in making music videos.

Course Overview and Curriculum

From day one, students are fully immersed in the various facets of directing music videos. By the end of the course, each student edits his or her own version of a short music video subject that was conceived, produced, and shot by the class as a group.

The Music Video Camp students may make a video for an up and coming band or shoot highly stylistic footage for an already published song.

Students are taught the most essential elements of what goes into making a music video, including: choosing the right band and the right song, creatively visualizing the look of the video and its overall aesthetic style, planning the music video in storyboards, learning how to shoot and keep the film in sync with the lyrics and beat, on-set shooting techniques, pacing, editing and adding visual special effects.

The program begins with two days of intensive study in music video style, shooting and editing techniques. During this time there will be an in class play back demonstration. This will prepare students for the class project, which they will shoot in the middle of the week.

The end of the week will be devoted to post-production during which each student will edit his or her own version of the music video using the material shot by the group.

Equipment and Facilities

Students enrolled in the Music Video Camp will shoot with DV cameras and edited with Final Cut Pro on Apple computers.

Music Video Camp Goal

The One-Week Music Video Camp was designed to serve the needs of different types of students. For students contemplating a longer-term education in filmmaking or a career in the industry, it is an excellent introduction. This course gives students an understanding of the requirements and rigors of directing music videos, as well as the exhilaration of seeing a completed project. Some students are simply interested in learning about how music videos are made. Many of our students get "bitten by the film bug" during the program, and realize that one week will not fulfill their desire to learn all they can about the process of filmmaking, and therefore return to complete a longer course of study.

The limitations of a one-week course should be apparent, given that many people spend years studying and perfecting their craft.

Please note: curriculum, dates, prices subject to change. Classes, editing & shooting occur Monday through Friday. Additional editing and/or the final screening may occur on Saturday morning. Residential students should make arrangements to depart Saturday afternoon.