What is a performance video?
A performance video puts the artist at the center and keeps them there. The band plays, the singer sings, and the camera finds the best way to watch it happen: on a stage, in a rehearsal room, on a rooftop, in one unbroken take or across a dozen setups. Most performance videos are mimed to the finished recording using playback, which lets the director shoot the song many times from many angles and cut between them. A live performance video records the sound as well as the picture, so what you hear is what happened in the room. The line between the two is often blurred: many mimed videos have the band playing for real underneath the playback, so the energy is live even if the sound is not.
Performance is the oldest form of music video and still the most common, either on its own or woven through a narrative. Plenty of story-led videos cut back to the band between scenes, because the audience wants to see the people who made the song.
Why it matters
Why a performance video matters
A performance video shows who the artist is. Before an audience knows the songs, they decide whether they believe the person singing them, and nothing sells that like watching someone mean it. For a band building a live following, a strong performance video is also a promise about the show.
It is not the easy option, though it can look like one. With no story to lean on, everything rests on the artist's presence and the director's choices: where the camera is, how it moves, how the light changes across the song. A flat performance video is the fastest way to make a good band look ordinary. The format rewards an artist who can hold the lens, and a director who knows when to get out of the way.
In practice
How a performance video works in practice
- 01
Pre-production is about place and coverage. The director picks a space that says something about the band, plans the lighting so it builds with the song, and decides how many cameras and passes the edit needs. A common plan runs a wide master of the whole song, then a pass on each performer, then close details: hands on strings, the drummer's sticks, the singer's eyes. Multi-camera shoots cover more in each take; a single camera on a moving rig gives a more intimate, directed feel.
- 02
On the day the song plays back loud and the artist performs it in full, again and again, so the energy and the sync stay real. Movement can be designed with the camera, as in cinematic choreography, or left loose and caught. In the edit the cutter builds the performance from the best moments of every pass, locked to the master track, and the grade gives the space its final mood.
At RIOT
Performance videos at RIOT
Performance runs through our music video work. "Daydream" for The Xcerts set the band's live performance against surreal imagery. For Wild Rivers we filmed "From The Sidelines" live at Le Poisson Rouge in New York, shot and edited by a small team for a global Moment House stream. And in lockdown, Old Sea Brigade and Luke Sital-Singh staged a live EP session with us.
Watch out
What people get wrong about performance videos
Thinking more cameras make a better video. Coverage is only useful if someone has decided what each angle is for; ten cameras pointed at a band from the same height give the editor ten versions of the same shot. The second mistake is letting the artist save their energy. Performers often mark the song on early takes, and a mimed performance at half effort reads as half effort on screen. Play it loud and play it full. The third is forgetting sync. If the playback version differs from the release master, every lip and every drum hit will drift in the edit. The fourth is the location that does all the work. A beautiful space with nothing happening in it is a postcard; the space should frame the performance, not replace it.
