Do you want to make your music on YouTube and other video platforms more visually appealing and engaging to the audience?
Soundcloud, bandcamp and other “pure music” platforms does not have the same attraction as a music video, even if that music video is simply an animated graphic video created from 1 single image.
Let me give you some practical tips that I have used personally to make music videos in this style:
5 Creative Tips on making Music Videos from 1 Image
1 – Start by Finding a Great Looking Image
It can be a photograph, an illustration or graphic made by an artist, or even an AI generated image. But it needs to be visually appealing, and of course it should work together with the style of your music.
2 – Add Movement Animation
You can do this in many ways, but slowly fading slightly in and out is a tried and tested way. I also like to experiment with “warping effects” in very tiny degrees that add some movement across the image and slowly and randomly twists the perspective as well.
The most important thing is that all movement effects you add should still be slow and light, just like a very careful and slow camera pan or zoom in a movie. It adds visual interest, without being distracting.
3 – Use Noise Overlays
Particle effects like dust, snow, rain and similar small particles can be a great addition into your music video to make it look more like a video, and not a simple image.
You can also experiment with various film grain effects, as well as what type of overlay method you use: for example “screen”.
4 – Create Light Animation
Lense flares, flickering lights, color fades…any type of animations you can add with light effects can make a huge difference for the overall cinematic vibe of your music video.
I especially like to mix warm and cold colors for the light animations to make it even more visually interesting.
5 – Add Graphic Overlays
Using graphics overlays like lower thirds, text, your logotype or any other “branding” can add some extra visual interest to your video.
You don’t have to keep it through the entire video, but adding it in the beginning as a kind of visual hook can be a great way to keep your viewer’s attention.