Previs for music videos.

The shape of the problem

Every other kind of production decides its running time last. A music video has it first. The track is three minutes and forty seconds, the chorus lands at fifty-one seconds, the bridge is where the look changes, and nothing the director does will move any of that. So the plan is a plan against a clock from the start, and the first question of previs — does this shot hold for as long as the beat needs — is asked of every shot.

The second thing that makes it hard is the artist. A performance video might have one look; a narrative video might have six, across six sets, in one day. The artist has to be recognisably the artist in every one of them, the jacket from the second chorus has to be the jacket, and the label will look at the board with the eyes of someone whose job is the artist's image. And the third thing is money: the budget is small and the shoot is a day, which means a setup that does not work costs a larger share of the whole than it would anywhere else. A music video cannot afford to discover its shots on the day, and most of them do.

From treatment to board, step by step

Start from the treatment, not a blank page. A treatment is prose: the looks, the sets, the moments, the references. Put it on an Infinitum board with the references and the track's structure — verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus — and let a director agent propose a sequence against that structure. Or write the sections as scenes in Script: "Chorus 1 — rooftop, night, performance" is a slugline, and once it is one, the breakdown and the shot list build from it like any other scene.

Lock the artist, then lock each look. One cast lock for the artist from a reference — a recent shoot, a frame the label has already approved — and a wardrobe lock for each look, scoped to its section. Every frame is made under those locks, and the character consistency page explains why that is the step to do first rather than the fix to do last.

Board the structure, then time it to the track. A frame against every beat, at the density a label review needs. Then Storyboard's timeline view lays the board out as duration-proportional time: each card as long as its shot, the chorus visibly longer than the transition into it. This is the animatic's job and the place a music video is actually designed — where the director sees that the second verse needs one more setup and the bridge needs one fewer.

Separate performance from narrative, and plan both. Most videos have a performance spine that cuts against everything else. Board the performance as its own coverage — the wide, the close, the move that will be repeated for every chorus — and the narrative as its own scenes. On the day they are different setups with different lighting; in the plan they are two tracks that share a clock.

Sign the hero and stage the one set that has to be built. The frame the single's artwork and the socials will use is locked in Keyframe. A set that has to be built — the rooftop, the car on a stage — is staged in CineForge so the camera is numbers and the move can be rehearsed. The 3D previs page covers when that is worth it on a small shoot.

Motion where the pitch needs it. Director makes takes from approved frames with the artist reference attached, cost and duration quoted first, for the moments a label wants to feel before committing. The output is a sequence for the pitch, not the video.

Leave with the day. The shot list ordered by setup rather than by song, the board timed to the track, the looks sheet with its continuity pass-rate, and the schedule. On a one-day shoot that document is the difference between wrapping and not.

What goes wrong

Boards that ignore the clock. Twelve beautiful frames for a chorus that lasts twenty seconds, and two for a verse that lasts forty. Time the board before showing it.

The artist who drifts between looks. Six looks is six chances for a face to change, and generated frames will take all six. Lock first; read the scores.

Performance coverage discovered on the day. The chorus is shot once from one angle because the plan only ever described it as "performance". Board the performance spine as real coverage with the move that will repeat.

A plan ordered by song rather than by setup. The day is shot by location and light, not by track order. Export the list sorted by setup, and let the timeline hold the song order.

Where PREVIZ does it

In the film rooms, which is where a music video belongs: the treatment on the Infinitum board or as scenes in Script, the board and its timeline in Storyboard, the hero in Keyframe, a built set in CineForge, pitch motion in Director, and the Continuity Lock holding the artist and every look across all of it. To say it plainly: there is no music-video module; music and live-concert work is on the roadmap with nothing scheduled, and this page describes what the film tooling does today. The commercials page is the sibling for a shoot with a client sign-off; the rooms page describes each room; pricing is by credits, with every room open on every plan.

Questions people ask