Eight pro tips for making music videos

Making music videos is a great way to begin a career in professional filmmaking, according to Nana Simelius, one half of Finnish photography and filmmaking duo Simelius Simelius. "It's a good place to develop your skills as a videographer or as a director. It's such an open playground and there are no rules – you can do whatever you want.

"It's also a form of art which allows people to see your skills," Nana continues. "We now do advertising work and fashion films, purely because people found us through our music videos."

Nana and her husband, Juhana, offer a hybrid approach to their music video production, with Juhana shooting the footage on a Canon EOS C300 Mark II (now succeeded by the Canon EOS C300 Mark III) and Nana taking stills with Canon EOS DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. They split the workflow too: Nana takes on pre-production duties, while Juhana works through the technical aspects of post-production.

Here, they offer an insight into how they make music videos and share tips for budding directors looking to break into the business.

Once an idea has taken shape, Nana and Juhana put pen to paper and begin working up a treatment – a pitch document that communicates a creative vision, a vital part of the production process.

"A good treatment explains how the story develops through the music video," says Nana. "This includes what mood we are looking to convey, whether the video has roles other than the artist, what kind of location or staging we have in mind, and what camera movements and cutting style support the vision. We need to reference pictures that communicate our vision to the recording artist and their team, and very often we actually use our own illustrations."

Once a project is given the green light, Nana and Juhana develop the creative vision by choosing a colour palette and preparing storyboards. This informs the practical considerations of the shoot, from scheduling and booking specialist crew to location scouting, set building and casting.

Each music video shoot calls for different ways of filming, with smaller-scale productions often lending themselves to portable and easy-to-rig gear. Nana and Juhana have shot most of their music videos on the Canon EOS C300 Mark II and have a Canon EOS C500 Mark II at the top of their shopping list.

Juhana wants to move to the newer full-frame camera for its higher-resolution 5.9K sensor and the performance of the Dual Pixel CMOS AF system. "The autofocus works so well, and sometimes there is just not the budget for a focus puller on a production," he says.

Having a high-frame-rate recording option to create natural-looking slow-motion sequences is also a consideration when shooting music videos. "Slow motion is something we need in many projects now, not just music videos," says Nana.

The Canon EOS C500 Mark II is able to record at 60p in 5.9K, whereas you need to switch to 2K recording to achieve the same frame rate on the Canon EOS C300 Mark II. Both cameras are capable of hitting 120fps in 2K (crop) mode.

Music videos offer creative freedom, often giving filmmakers a chance to experiment with fresh camera angles and framing. A diverse kitbag of lenses helps when composing shots on the fly. Canon's Cine Zoom and Cine Prime Cinema EOS lenses pair beautifully with Cinema EOS bodies to lend a high-end look to music videos. "But every choice is based on the size and the vision of a particular production," says Nana.

"With a larger team, we use Canon's Cine lenses, but for our smaller hybrid productions we're now looking to add the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lenses as they work in so many different situations. These lenses are really sharp, which is important as we like to use filters in front of them to achieve a certain look."

Simelius Simelius' combined video-and-stills approach has complicated their lighting setups in the past, but the sensitivity of Canon's latest mirrorless cameras hugely simplifies the process.

"The Canon EOS R5 is amazing when we have a hybrid shoot," says Nana. "Previously, we had to use flash for photography, which slowed things down because you had to prepare two different setups. But now we are able to use continuous lights for both stills and video, so we can just put all of our energy into planning a single lighting arrangement that works for both of us."

The duo still use flash for stills when shooting sequences that feature a significant amount of movement. However, they favour the way continuous lighting enables more nuanced changes.

Recording footage using Canon Log 3 helps to streamline the couple's post workflow, thanks to its extended dynamic range of up to 14 stops and superior grading potential. It also makes it easier to combine footage shot on both the Canon EOS C500 Mark II and the Canon EOS R5 as the profile has recently been added to the latter via firmware v1.3.1.

Juhana says that he always shoots music videos in XF-AVC with Canon Log 3. "XF-AVC really is good enough for our music videos," he says. "If we were to shoot RAW it would take up too much storage. For now, Full HD output is also what clients need, but I think 4K is going to be the required standard soon."

Bold and expressive use of colour is a distinctive aspect of a Simelius Simelius music video. "Most of the year in Finland is really grey, so we want to bring joy and add a dynamic quality to our videos," Nana says.

It took time for the creative duo to find a colourist who understood the way they wanted to render images. "We think colourists are pretty scared of us because we want really bright colours," says Nana. "But we have found one who really gets us, and our Canon footage which she has worked on gives us the strongest look. Once we created a world using only yellow, as the artist was obsessed with that colour," Nana adds. "So we went with it in a big way. That was actually our first music video, and it's still one of my favourite ones."