ton of big music videos over my career and I’ve seen a lot of music videos. So music videos are a wonderful way to get started in the film business and if you want to try to make a career of it. God Bless go for it. It’s a little rougher and I want to go on a little bit side note here on the business of music videos.

Right now doing music videos and trying to make a living doing music videos is really tough because the budgets for music videos have drop so dramatically that something that normally you know I remember the days that you know I was working on music videos back in the day in the ninety’s where second and third level artists from labels not even the big artists but like second tier, third tier artists were getting hundred thousand, one hundred fifty thousand dollar budgets for their music videos shooting on film big visual effects the whole ball of wax and now you hear these big, you’d be surprised at some of the biggest celebrities, biggest music stars out there. They’re doing music videos for ten grand.

And I know a lot of you in the audience are saying ten grand. That’s a lot. Well you know when you start adding it up if you want to try to make a living on this if you make one of those a month or two of those a month if you’re lucky you’re not going to make a whole heck of a lot of money. So it’s a very, it’s a very tough hustle at least from my point of view where I’m standing right now, it’s a tough hustle. So and ten thousand is a huge budget for music videos nowadays. That’s a big star. That’s a star that if I mentioned the name of the star you would go oh I know them so don’t get me wrong.

You know Taylor Swift and Beyonce are not doing ten thousand dollar music videos but they’re the top of the top tier of the top tier. Some other big stars that are doing side projects or just, you just be surprised. Now every song gets a music video and they can’t afford the artist and the labels can’t afford to just be putting out two hundred thousand dollar music videos for every song. You know there’s eight songs in an album or so on. So they can afford it so they have to drop the cost of it and also because there’s so many people do music videos and so many people doing them so cheaply.

They brought the budget down so that happen with commercials and happened with everything else but they brought the budget down so much that now it’s almost a joke to shoot a music video. So you know what I do a music video has to be at a certain level. Certain budget level at least for me where I am at my career at this point. If you’re just starting out do what you got to do if you don’t get paid. Don’t get paid. Just start getting out there start you know experimenting stuff, making a real for yourself and then slowly you can build up at when you first starting out you’re going to, not going to get paid.

You are not going to make a whole lot of money right up front but at least you can start building the experience, building that cache and a lot of the big big music video directors that I work with did exactly that. I worked with one director who was lit that literally camped out at the label until finally they gave him a shot to do music video and then from there he started growing and growing until he finally got Rianna and when he got Rianna that the door opened. Once Riana, he did with Riana music video then everybody came calling. Jennifer Lopez came calling in. And I have all these big huge rappers and artist started coming out of go after him but you know that’s a one in a million kind of story. Most music video directors are just hustling man and I know them.

I’ve worked with a lot of them. They’re hustling and you know a lot of them are trying to get into commercials because they’re like man I can’t keep doing this. You know it’s fun. Maybe for the first six months or a year but afterwards you are like you know I’m going to keep doing this, the budgets are not going up. You know have a hell of a real ready and I’m still you know.

It’s a tough gig. It’s a tough hustle. But music videos are a lot of fun and if you can get in there and get to those bigger budgets and get to those artists and sign up with the proper production company that can get you those kind of gigs then that’s the way to go for it but that’s a little bit of the side note of the business of music videos. One of the reasons I don’t do a lot of music videos anymore is because the budgets went down so much that it’s just I just can’t do it anymore. You know I