APPLE'S GUIDE TO FAN VIDEOS
The Fan Video. It's a cliche across all fandoms, as famous as they are infamous. Me personally, I know that fan videos aren't the butt of so many jokes because they're some kind of fabulous. The majority of them are downright terrible.
Now, I'm not claiming to be the end-all expert on the subject, but I am very well acquainted with the one basic convention that needs to be followed. It's called editing.
1. MUSIC CHOICE
The first mistake happens here. It's impossible to express in words how much a video can be ruined by a bad song. Just impossible. Nothing is more bitterly unsatisfying than watching a fan video that can't honor its very purpose as a music video. And a song can be bad for a variety of reasons, the most common being that it's a lousy song to begin with, with no musicality to speak of.
The point is, your standard love lyrics can generally summarize any of these K-dramas, but that doesn't necessarily make it video-worthy. Any idiot can take a generic love song, cut some clips, and throw it all together in Windows Movie Maker for some tepid result. Great videos, however, use the music as a guide. Music should set the mood and tone of the video, whatever it is you're going for.
As a very important footnote, a hurdle that most video makers still haven't jumped is language. It's hard, but I had to learn this lesson too: American songs will never do justice to Korean dramas like Korean songs will. It has nothing to do with talent or musicality. It's about aesthetic and cultural continuity. I don't watch these shows in English, therefore I never associate the English language with them. America and Korea are two separate pop culture realms, and crossing the line between them officially spells "Asian-American Fandork." You know the phrase, it always sounds better in another language? By extension, you can't make another language speak as powerfully for something as its original one. You want to make videos for Korean dramas? Start by using only Korean songs.
2. EDITING / TIMING
The second most common mistake: loooooooooooooooong clips. I get it, most people are NOT musical and have no idea how to follow music. Fine. But I really wish those people would stop making all the craptacular fan videos in the world. I have to quote Phade from animemusicvideos.org on this one: "Listen to every beat, symbol crash, rise and fall in dynamics, tone, melody, bass, rhythm, everything. Pick the song apart piece by piece on every layer."
Yet there goes the chorus of the song or some great musical crash and we're still stuck on the same dumb, talking head shot of whatever character.
If music is 90% of the video, timing is 9%. Clips don't need to be any more than 3 seconds long, and even that's pushing it. And by clips, I mean completely different shots. Contrary to what you might think, quicker editing is rarely too fast for the human eye. If anything, it's more natural. What's unnatural is watching clips that are so long, you could go outside, check the mail, call your grandma, and have three cups of coffee before it's over. The bottom line: music videos are CONCISE, and faster editing is the incredibly simple solution to so many atrocious videos.
3. LYRIC MATCHING
Lyric matching can be very effective. I've used it myself. It can also be very ineffective, thanks to some idiot ten years ago who said that good fan videos match all the song lyrics with the clips. It's like there's some cool factor in knowing what a word means and putting its action there at the same time. I remain unimpressed.
The trick is to know where to draw the line. If you match every lyric, the video becomes strictly technical. We know you know the lyrics, you don't need to emphasize it to us every second. Pick maybe 4 or 5 lines (*MAX*) in a song where you know there's been an action onscreen to match, and then just continue editing. The song should sum up the overall theme of the video, not narrate every onscreen action like some instructional video.
4. POLISH
And the remaining 1% that makes or breaks a music video: the quality. A bad quality video is doomed faster than any of the other elements on this list. Even a bad song with long clips can have me around for a minute or so, but bad picture quality has ten seconds max before I go blind.
Yes, I know it's excrutiating to wait for the whopping 700mb HQ rips, especially if you really love the show and can't wait to see what happens next. I don't condone LQ leechers, but music videos have to come at that price. Think about what a music video is, first of all. It's an art form. It's a montage of all the great, thematic moments in a series that DESERVE to be made into another artistic medium (a music video) because you want to bring it to something beyond just the episodes.
But a few hundred pixels and blurry shots later, your art has been cheapened. Literally. Don't settle when it comes to music videos, there are ways to get your hands on HQ clips at all corners of Soompi and D-addicts. Appearance isn't everything, but good quality shows professionalism and a better eye for artistic appreciation. We want to know that you at least tried to make your video look nice.
It all sounds simple, but the dazzling world of conventional editing still remains out of sight in most fan videos. So here's my small guide to no hassle fan videos that are enjoyable and, if you get really good, sincere.