• One Month of Content in One Day

How Music Artists Can Capture One Month of Content in One Day (More Time for Music)...

As an Artist you should not be making content every day. Full stop.

You need to have time to make the music, and you need actual recharge days to rest so you can continue to run at this thing.

Many music artists, when you even hear the word “content,” it immediately feels like more work being added to your plate, usually doing something you don’t love doing in the first place.

And I get it whether you’re an artist who is heavily touring, producing, doing press and playing three shows a weekend, or someone that’s just juggling a regular job while trying to make a run at this music thing, you already have an ocean of things to do.

Now add “content” on top of all that.

Film constantly. Research content. Think of hooks. Follow trends. Edit videos. Write captions. Post every day. Even thinking about it can be exhausting.

Having you wake up every morning trying to think of something engaging to post that day is a terrible system for making anything consistently good. But content, or what I prefer to call communication, is still one of the primary ways you connect with like-minded people.

Communication is the way…

Thru a combination of strong storytelling and organic content (communication) many artists have been able to grow their audiences exponentially. And that growth is how they were able to alter the trajectory of their careers.

But could there be a happy medium of both? A more efficient way to create compelling content? A new kind of strategy that allows for more time to make the music and live a normal life?

Stop making content every day. Start building content systems.

Through our creative agency, The Cult Creatives, we’ve spent the better part of 15 years focused on creative direction and brand strategy for music artists and fashion brands. And one of the biggest problems I see isn’t necessarily what brands are creating for content. It’s how they create it. Their process.

Many brands treat every piece of content like it requires its own shoot. We once worked with a major fashion brand and, when we looked back at the previous year and realized they had done 155 separate shoots… a wild number, but through proper planning, strategy and optimized execution, our team reduced that to 12 shoot days for the entire year while actually getting more content than they had the year before.

And when we work with heavy touring or emerging music artists, we use the same philosophy. Instead of waking up every day asking, “What should we post today?” we build the strategy first, figure out exactly what needs to be captured, and then design filming days around that plan. Sometimes just a few hours of focused shooting can generate a month or more worth of content.

So what is this process?

Start With the Story, Not the Shot List

Before I’m thinking about what cameras we’re shooting on, locations, wardrobe or individual content ideas, I want to understand something much bigger: What chapter is the artist currently living in? And how does that chapter play into the current era of the brand?

Before getting into content, we first define the current brand story. Who is the artist and what is the brand and its point of view? What are they trying to say with their work right now? How do their current perspective and inspirations play against the story they’re telling? Who are they trying to tell this story to? And how do we hope the people watching or listening might feel about this story?

Once you understand those things, then you can ask: How should we tell this story? Because a list of random “content ideas” without a larger story connecting them is usually just noise…and if it works its usually just a one off moment.

But once you have the story where do you go next?

Structure the Sandbox

One of the number one things I hear from developing artists who aren’t heavily touring yet is, “I don’t really have anything to post. Content would be so much easier if I was playing sold-out shows every weekend.” And sure, once you’re touring heavily, there’s a simplified version of content available to you. But the artists headlining those stages today still had to build audiences before they were headlining those stages. They still had to make content, communicate their brand and story tell.

So for this example instead of basing the strategy around performance footage, we will base it around the brand and the story.

So when we focus on brand and story we need to define what kind of story it will be.

In order to do this we’re asking a simple question: what sandbox does the story live inside?

Maybe the brand is incredibly human and real, like Fred Again, The artist is then presented as a real person living in the real world, so the content should feel candid, personal and intimate.

Or maybe the brand is built around world-building, like Gorillaz. In that case, the content should help expand the universe around the music through fictional places, characters, visual mythology and recurring creative elements.

Maybe it’s a Creator brand, like Peggy Gou. The content should consistently feel stylish, artistic and creatively considered. Even the more casual moments should still feel like they belong inside the same visual world.

Or maybe comedy is the sandbox, like Dillon Francis. In that case, the content naturally lives at the intersection of humor, personality and music.

The point is that the sandbox gives you a framework for how the story should be told. Once you know the world the brand lives in, it becomes much easier to decide what kinds of content actually belong there.

There are endless versions of this. The point is that before you decide exactly what you’re posting, decide the world in which those ideas are allowed to exist. Your sandbox gives you boundaries, and boundaries make creativity easier. But once you have the borders how can you refine to know exactly what you need to shoot for a single piece of content?

Define the Exact Formats

What is a format? A content format is the repeatable structure, container or style you use to communicate an idea. It could be a song preview, studio performance, photo carousel, behind-the-scenes clip, livestream, interview format or recurring series. The topic changes, but the format remains.

For the kinds of capture days we’re talking about, having somewhere around four to six formats can be a great target. There are definitely brands succeeding with only two key formats, and there are others using ten. There’s no magic number. The important part is finding formats that actually fit your brand identity, you resonate with (meaning if you saw it you’d likely be into it), and something you can actually achieve. And the most important of these three. YOU SHOULD LIKE IT.

Don’t just make something you don’t really like because you are “suppose to” or because you’ve seen other artist similar to you do it.

FIND THINGS THAT RESONATE WITH YOU AND THEN MIX AND MATCH THOSE FORMATS TO CREATE NEW RECIPES.

And once you find some things you like be sure they fit your brand and its story.

If the brand is candid, real and DIY, the formats you reference should have that spirit too or if your world feels highly art-directed and cinematic, your formats should reflect that. Format references are a big part of the process because they help lead some of the the creative. They inform location, styling, camera angles, lighting, framing, editing and ultimately exactly what needs to be captured. The formats help define the plan.

But before we get into actually planning the day, there’s another step that I think a lot of artists completely skip. And this is really the secret sauce to the WHOLE THING.

Look for More Meat on the Bone

Before locking anything in, ask: “Is there more meat on the bone here?”

Meaning: Can one piece of content become multiple pieces? Can one core idea be captured in multiple ways? Can the same creative work harder for us?

One idea. Multiple formats. You’re getting more meat off the bone.

A music example of this would be Knox and his song “Not The 1975.”

One song gave them the opportunity to create multiple expressions around the exact same core idea. Instead of treating the release as one song that needed one promotional video, the team treated the song itself as an opportunity to campaign.

Some of the campaign included:

Multiple original short-form concepts, essentially a mini music video
A studio or live-session performance
The story of making the song
An acoustic performance
Video BTS footage of creating the videos
Photography BTS
Interactive promotional concepts that brought fans into the song

And none of these concepts required being on tour

One song. One core idea. Multiple uses.

Some of the brands I’ve worked on will do a shoot for one video concept and use the whole day for that. In some instances depending on the creative this makes sense, but where many are missing is they aren’t doing this exercise of asking is there more meat on the bone we can get in the same day. This is an important question to ask especially if you have a crew of people who are helping you make something. If you’ve got them for the day why not maximize what your brand can take away from shoot?

And once you have a high level view on the kinds of things you want to capture next comes some of the fun part…

Define the Creative and the Rules

In this phase you are creating the moodboards, the write ups, sketching out the ideas for the creative. This stage is where defining the finer points of creative direction and art direction are crucial. Its laying out how you are going to take the references, but convert it into your brand and your brand’s POV.

The creative deck that will house all these elements is how you will communicate your ideas to the other collaborators involved. The shooters, the editors, graphics artists anyone that will be aiding in bringing the vision to life. But that vision needs to be clear and the deck should act as the guidelines on what the brand is and even more importantly what its not. This needs to be properly spelled out to all involved.

Take your time building this out and wether you are doing solo or collaborating be sure to make sure the vision on each thing you are going to create is ultra clear.

But once you’ve got a sense of the creative and what exactly you are going to capture there’s a vital step that if done poorly can ruin everything you’ve creativity laid out. This step will make or break the whole thing.

Build the Plan Pre-Production

Benjamin Franklin famously said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Having been in the music industry and creative arts for more than 20 years there is an absolute truth in my mind…

The artists who either are good planners or surround themselves with good planners are the one’s who see the highest levels of success.

Proper planning is the key to the whole thing.

The pre-production phase is where good ideas are truly born or where they die. Not on the actual capture day.

I once asked a DP (director of photography) what his favorite kinds of artists to work with were. He said the meticulous planners. They made him feel more safe and confident. He goes “a bad plan” is like being given a fork to eat soup with.

In this phase you will lay out every shot you need to get. And every shot should be laid out. Not lets shoot a bunch of stuff and figure it out in post. Know your shots ahead of time.

You’ll be answering questions like this.

Then what locations do you need. Do those need to be rented? If so reserve the date.

Are their props needed? Do those need to be sourced?

What’s the styling and the looks for everyone involved?

Do we need any special permits to shoot where we are going?

This is also where you build your day. We actually usually structure our shoots in 15 min increments. I know basically how an entire day will go down to 15 mins. Now of course like any production things happen, but your schedule is so detailed that you know if something does happen how you can pivot and where you may be able to make up time.

If you’re in a place where you can afford it all of this work is usually reserved for a producer. Having a producer on shoots like this can be a game changer. These are really are the unsung heroes that bring the creative visions to life.

But once you have all the shots, location, and the day mapped out you’ll want to house that in a production book.

Our production books with the Cult agency are pretty elaborate and detailed, but we do have a Basic Pre-Production book that we’ve used on some of our smaller shoots. If you want that comment “Production” for this issue on our Instagram and we will send it over for free.

And now you’re all set and all that’s left to do is execute the vision.

Hopefully these steps all makes sense, but now how does this all actually work in practice? What does a 1 day for 30 days of content actually look like in practice?

Artist Case Study

Now lets look at a real world example of how we use this method to maximize the content. For this example it was a longer shoot day 9.5 hours for the artist with a 30 min lunch, but we had some extra things we were getting on this day outside of typical content which added some hours.

For this shoot we intentionally booked a location that could work several different ways. One area was normally a recording live room, but we converted it into a photo and video capture room. It also became our interview set. Another room was an actual music studio. Another was more of a vibe room with couches and decor.

One location. Multiple visual backgrounds.

The schedule looked roughly like this:

9am: Crew Load In

9:30am: Artist Arrival

10am - 11am: Yap Videos

11am - 11:30am: Reset / Break

11:30am - 1pm: Photo

1pm - 2:30pm: One Shot Brand Videos

2:30pm - 3pm: Lunch

3pm - 4:30pm: Social Show Episodes

4pm - 5pm: Reset / Break

5pm - 6pm: In Studio Creative Process videos

6pm - 7pm: In Studio Performance Video

7:30pm: Shoot Ends

As a bonus on this same shoot we captured a few different spotify canvas motifs, live visuals for upcoming shows, and new press photos that would be used for tour flyers.

So you see this is a longer day, but it’s one day one location and we ultimately got hundred of pieces of content from that one capture day.

And I can already hear some developing artists thinking, “That’s great, but I could never afford that.”

You don’t necessarily need to.

We’ve done versions of these exact shoots for almost nothing. The artist had a friend who was a photographer. Another friend was a videographer shooting primarily on an iPhone and gimbal and the location belonged to a family friend.

We’ve also done versions of this idea for major touring artists where the budget was closer to a million dollars and instead of capturing one month of material, we were looking at closer to three months while other teams simultaneously created additional pieces.

The system works at both scales. The questions are the same.

In either scenario you have to be creative.

Because most of the time, this isn’t actually about a lack of resources. It’s about a lack of resourcefulness.

It’s about preparation and planning ahead.

Define the story. Construct the sandbox. Choose the formats. Search for more meat on the bone. Create the rules. Plan the day. Then capture as much as possible.

You DO NOT need to make content every day. You need to build a proper system with a proper strategy.

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Los Angeles, CA

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