Proving that there is life on the other side of the fast forward button, Jon Lewin completes his guide to making videos on a tight budget.

"ere really like the single, are you doing a video?"

All right, I will admit that last month's piece was just a wee bit dull; all that technical data about tape widths, speeds and stuff isn't exactly racy and exciting, even if it does have its uses. But this month, this is the good bit, the sharp end of making your own promo video, and it's packed with such invaluable knowledge as "how to point your video camera", and perhaps more importantly, "where to point it."

I assume that diligent perusal of part one has left you with a reasonable idea of the types of equipment the amateur has at his or her disposal, from ordinary VHS to Low Band U-matic. My own experiences were with U-matic, so I am writing from knowledge of that particular format and the Special Effects Generator available for it, though I understand that an effects unit for domestic video is due on the market soon, and will presumably be available for hire from specialist dealers.

Things not to forget...

Given that you've managed to lay your inexperienced hands on a camera and recorder, there are a few ground rules and basic points to bear in mind.

Make sure you know exactly how to use the camera. If you've procured the gear from your local community centre as recommended last month, one of your crew will presumably have been informed which end of the machine to look down, how to set up the contrast and colour balance, and how to perform the other varied arcane rituals needed to crank the camera into action.

Make certain you have purchased enough film for the camera. U-matic tape cassettes were the biggest single expense we incurred in making our video, though through lack of planning we bought one more than we needed. As a rough guide, you should allow ten times the length of your final product: if your song is four minutes long, you'll need 40 minutes of video. The tapes we used were twenty minutes long, cost around £9 each, and are re-usable.

Have you access to enough lighting? Not being a terribly theatrical sort of person (except perhaps in the way I walk), I'd assumed that ordinary lights plus a pair of angle-poises would be sufficient. But no – as much light as possible is needed, which means big hot spotlights on sticks.

Lighting your video is very important as it can add depth to an otherwise flat shot, lending interest to ordinary scenes. As to getting hold of the lights, drama departments in universities, techs, and sixth form colleges are a useful source both for lights themselves and lighting technicians, whose expertise can be very helpful.

There are lots of different sorts of lights – quartz film, photofloods, things with barn-doors – and they all have particular uses. It's best not to pretend to know anything about them, but to enlist the services of an expert. If you can't find anyone who knows what they're doing, the rule of thumb to remember is that if it looks good in the camera monitor, then it's OK. Don't trust your eyes, as they are not cameras and do not react the same way. Try to avoid direct lighting in favour of more varied effects, like bouncing the light off reflective surfaces such as white walls, the starkness of bright spotlights tends to bleed the picture of depth and colour.

On the subject of colour, all videotape records in colour, though it is possible to mix down to black and white during editing. Any colour-gels you use to illuminate your epic will show up, so take care. Another suggestion is to try placing the lights in odd positions and then using the shadows they throw. But whatever you do, never shine a bright light directly into the camera, as this will burn out the tubes (whatever they are). This is mucho expensive and renders the camera dead. For more detailed information on the technical side, take another trip to the local library and seek out "The Complete Handbook Of Video" (Allen Lane) by David Owen and Mark Dunton. It's got nice pictures in it too.

Do you know where you are going to shoot your video? If you've lined up any particularly wacky locations, make sure you have checked up with the relevant authorities. There are few things more annoying than being waylaid by irate Jobsworths in mid-flow. If you are intending to film outside, do you have batteries or sufficient power cable to fuel your lighting? If you are staying inside, have you found a suitable room/hall in which to set up? Take care over your backdrops, and make sure you've got enough sheets (clean ones preferably) to hide the uninspiring walls of your village hall. Or try using the village hall as a set – Kajagoogoo did, and surprisingly well. Exploit the options available to you, and be prepared to take advantage of your imagination, even to the extent of considering what seem like truly silly ideas; even the most ridiculous things can spark off fruitful trains of thought.

What sort of video are you intending to make?

The obvious answer is "a good one". But there are other criteria to bear in mind, and perhaps I can help in this area.

First of all, choose the song. You can try finding the number in your repertoire that most lends itself to visual representation, but it's usually simplest to pick the strongest song. After all, if you intend to use the video as a demo, you'll need to impress people with your musical as well as your visual abilities.

Secondly, record the song on the best available equipment before you even touch a camera. It's no use relying on recording with the microphone provided with the camera, as the quality will not be good enough; the microphone is there to record a guide track to which you will later synchronise the soundtrack. You must steel yourself to the realisation that you will have to mime your way through the performance, as it's not feasible to attempt to play in time with a pre-recorded picture – miming is much simpler, even if it lacks the spontaneity of yer actual live stuff. A Portastudio recording will suffice for the soundtrack, though obviously the better the tape, the better it will sound, even on tiny TV speakers.

I don't like to create difficulties before they occur, but it's important to remember the dread problem of "synchronisation". This is the science of getting the film to run in time with the sound, and it is very important to get it right, especially if you are thinking of showing the singer mouthing the words. If your backing track is out of sync with the picture, your video will look very silly so be careful with your miming. It's useful to record, mime and playback all on the same machine, as it only takes 0.01% of error to put the picture noticeably out of kilter. Take care.

Once you have finished the soundtrack, it becomes necessary to consider how best to approach the filming of the video. Not that I wish to set myself up as (ahem) a style councillor, but it has come to my notice that there are really only three different types of music video: Performance, Narrative and Abstract. These are usually combined in varying proportions, but they remain three distinctive themes. But before we continue, a word about each:

Performance video is the simplest form, being a straight representation of the artist's live act, albeit shot from all sorts of wacky angles. Many commercially available videos are just VTs of concerts, pushed out to make a rapid pound after the event. They are the simplest to produce, but the most difficult to make exciting. Live performance, television has taught us, does not translate well to the small screen.

Narrative video purports to illustrate the words of the song, even if it is often confused with odd shots of the group playing in incongruous locations (cf Big Country's "Wonderland"). Narrative video is dependent on the imagination of the lyricist for the imagery and the director (that's you) for its interpretation. It's a very easy medium to make a laughable mess out of, as Dire Straits have demonstrated with "Skateaway"; Duran Duran have perfected the art of the home adventure movie, featuring the podgy quintet singing their lullabies in exotic locations, in an attempt to imbue the group with a hint of the imaginative and mysterious. They have yet to surpass UB40's sublime work on "Red Red Wine", which provided a straightforward filmic interpretation of the song without resorting to the Hollywoodisms of the obligatory singing popstar, posing in the obligatory environment of urban decay. Cliches are very difficult to avoid in narrative video.

Abstract video is a potentially more interesting medium. Using footage from any available source, and not necessarily including the performers, sequences are edited together to enhance the atmosphere and rhythm of song. Lyn Goldsmith produced a hilarious example for Will Power's "Kissing with Confidence" single, using cut-up images of American suburbia to subvert the message of the song. In Britain, Cabaret Voltaire and 23 Skidoo are the chief exponents of the use of newsreel footage and the like.

How to do it (sort of...)

The first priority is pre-production. By the simple expedient of careful planning you can avoid all sorts of problems. One that beset us in the laborious construction of our video was lack of footage. We attempted to use our day of shooting to provide us with enough film to complete two songs – big error. We ended up with too much for one, and not enough for the other, which quite naturally was the one we wanted to use. Ho hum. Decide which number to film, and concentrate on that. Don't overstretch.

Work out beforehand in as much detail as possible what you intend to do. Use a storyboard to map out scenes and even individual shots: A storyboard consists of sketches of frames and camera angles, mapping out the progress of the video like a cartoon strip, pulling the story into focus. It will also help you to avoid any Peter Powellesque errors in continuity, like wearing different clothes in succeeding shots (I knew I should never have taken my jacket off). Make certain, as far as is humanly possible, that nothing is left to chance on the day, as that is undoubtedly the time that things will choose to go wrong. Although it's not feasible to guard against leprosy and other contagious diseases, you can stop the bassist going on holiday the day before you start filming.

Whichever approach you select – narrative, performance, or, most likely, a combination of the two – make certain you have enough film of individuals in close-up. Ideally, you would film each member's playing for the whole duration of the song, though this is not the most economic way of using video-tape. Close-ups are very useful in breaking up longer perspectives of the whole group, making an essentially dull sequence interesting through their use of punctuation.

If you intend to employ narrative techniques throughout, it might prove fruitful to immerse your eyes in as many other videos as you can. Not only will they give you an idea or two, but they will help you spot some of the common features (and failings) of most music videos, like popstars falling in the water (another namecheck for Duran Duran) or running through deserted landscapes (hello Terry Hall, and the Cure), or pretending to be something they obviously aren't (like Queen, the Alarm, and myriad others). There is a book to be written about the new doggerel of video (I'm open to offers), but if you watch closely and think carefully, it's quite easy to avoid the pitfalls that come from having too much green stuff and not enough grey stuff.

Once you've arranged your ideas in coherent form, have set up lights and camera, and covered up the pimples with Shadeaway, you can start shooting. This is the easiest bit, so make the most of it. Consumption of stimulants/relaxants is recommended for those in front of the camera as their effects can be remarkably beneficial to even the most nervous of performers. If you have storyboarded properly (and we didn't), filming should be a doddle. Performance videos are best arranged – most easily arranged – from a basic shot of the group playing the song in full, later intercut with close-ups and other footage of individuals doing their own things. That said, don't be afraid to use any ideas you have on the spot providing they don't interfere too far with your schedule as there are always situations that push the human brain into great flights of imagination, and filming is occasionally one of them. Anyway, you can always ignore the silliest bits when you come to the...

Editing

Just like making a record, the mixing is often the most time-consuming part of the process. Editing the video is essentially "mixing", as the final product is patchworked together from the 30 to 40 minutes of video tape you will have accumulated.

Our video was edited at the 33 Centre in Luton on a Sony U-matic VCR editing suite, using a Sony edit controller and a wonderful device known as a Special Effects Generator which gave us the use of such exotica as freeze-frame, solarisation (when the picture goes funny and the colours seem to blur), colour- blocking, grabbing (picture-sampling, which makes the image jump from one position to another), and picture-wipe (framing/bordering images). These facilities offer professional quality treatment, going far beyond the financial capabilities of even the flashest domestic video; we got them free with the use of the community centre's editing suite, as our cameraman/director/key grip was a member of 33's Film and Video Group.

At commercial rates, the 12 hours we spent with the equipment would have cost us around £400.

Images are recorded from one VCR to another with the use of the edit controller. This wonderful little keyboard enables you to sample video-tape frame-by-frame, in divisions of 1/25th of a second. It allows you to synchronise the two machines, so that you can select precisely the frame to cut from one shot to another, even compensating for ten second pre-roll on both machines. The process involves giving the edit controller the length of the proposed "drop-in", and also the point on the mastertape at which you wish the edit to start. The machine does the rest, even "dropping-out" after the prescribed time has passed, preventing accidental wiping of the master-tape. It's a clever little bugger that is as simple to use as the average cassette recorder. Technically, you will have few problems; artistically is another matter.

Having recorded an initial sequence from the original U-matic cassette on to the master, it will soon become necessary to use the first overdub (drop-in, edit, call it what you will). Run through the original in picture-search until you find the desired shot (don't forget the storyboard), then use the slow-motion facility to find the right frame. This is difficult. Accuracy is essential here as a discrepancy of 3/5ths of a second is enough to make an edit seem out of time with the backing track. Always try to cut on the beat as this emphasises, visually, the rhythm of the music and can be exciting in itself – remember Herbie Hancock's "Rockit"?

Use the edit controller's preview mode to check the drop-in before you record it, as "preview" allows you to see what the sequence looks and sounds like without having to commit it to tape. Edits and dropping-in of shots can be used to disguise shooting errors in the original footage, so don't despair if that intensely emotional expression on the singer's face actually looks like a yawn as you can always plaster another shot over the offending grimace.

Spend some time playing with the Special Effects Generator before you start. Getting to know the effects may stop you from using them just for their own sake during the final edit. Their novelty soon wears off, and even solarisation has become a tad passe (hello, Siouxie & the Banshees) despite its undeniable beauty (sigh). Experiment, but be careful. Try mixing out the colour. But monochrome videos are now understood to be "arty", so you may risk accusations of pretension when you might not want nor even deserve them.

Don't lose sight of the fact that you're not working with EMI's budget, so emulating the gloss and flash of commercial videos will just make your ideas look cheap when translated to the small screen. The eye is used to seeing expensive artifice on TV, so low cost copies will appear doubly rank. Try humour instead of expense.

If you are contemplating using other footage (ie material recorded from television or film) make sure you've prepared enough beforehand. Use it sparingly and sensibly, as Queen have only recently demonstrated how easy it is to turn a silk purse (Fritz Lang's "Metropolis") into a sow's ear ("Radio Ga Ga").

Try to maintain the theme of your song through the edits and storyline, if there is one. Establishing an identity during those three or four minutes is very important; the nature of that identity isn't. It is not necessary continually to press the acne-ridden physiognomies of the musicians against the camera. Make the video about the song, rather than simply representing it by acting it out. Very few musicians make good actors, and vice versa (a big Hi! to Hazel O'Connor), so don't bother.

All this "try this" and "don't do this" apart, the best advice I can offer is to ignore (almost) everything I've said and just do it yourself; if it looks good, use it. There are no other rules.

Put this one down to experience...

Our adventures in video construction demonstrated that there is no substitute for experience. We went to Luton with only vague ideas as to how we wanted the final product to look. Of the 12 hours we spent there, much of the time was taken up with trying edits and effects, checking them against the video as a whole, then deliberating on their effectiveness. With greater preparation, we could have forgone this tedious task and concentrated more on the accuracy of the cutting – which unfortunately left a little to be desired in our final product.

In an attempt to liven up straight performance footage we tried to increase the frequency of the edits as the song progressed chopping from one shot to another with great rapidity. After the first 15 edits (two minutes of song) we started having trouble finding new footage to cut to. Not enough film, too few close-ups.

After a full day's work in front of two TV monitors (one for each VCR), eyes grow pink and square, and judgement goes out of the window. Editing is a gruelling process which requires great stamina on the part of all concerned. By the time we'd edited our way through the song, none of us was in any fit state to tell how wonderful it looked.

When I saw it again two days later, I realised it appeared only half-finished: too many long shots of the group playing, not enough zippy cutting, rather too many blurs of solarisation, the odd syncing error. However, this being videotape, it's quite feasible to go back and add to the master and improve what we've managed so far. By the way, the name of my group is – rather ironically perhaps in this case – Perfect Vision.