Six recent works
Six recent music videos, commissioned and self-initiated.
Your music video
quoted per project, reply within 48 hoursEvery quote starts with the song.
- Main video, short, visualizer or lyric video
- Art direction, editing, color grading, post-production
- 4K master and social cuts delivered by link
Music video director in Paris
The picture comes from the music
Takuya Studio is a music video director and production studio in Paris, and takes care of the film from start to finish. A good music video looks like its song, not like its technique. Camera, editing, post-production, digital processing: each one is picked the way you pick an instrument, for what it lets you say.
The studio makes music videos, short-form pieces, visualizers and lyric videos for independent artists, record labels and cultural organizations. Work begins with listening to the track, several times, before anyone writes a visual brief.
A method rather than a style
About ten careful listens come first, with no reference in mind. The song sets its own constraints (its length, its breaks, its intensity, its silences) and the art direction starts there. An idea pasted onto a piece of music shows on screen. Budget doesn't hide it.
Then comes the conversation with the artist or the label. Films, paintings, photographs, other videos. What they like and what irritates them, what has been seen before and won't be done again. None of this is visible in the finished video. A large part of it gets decided here anyway.
Studio tools
The production chain uses the standard tools of the trade: Adobe Premiere Pro for editing, Photoshop for stills, After Effects for effects and animation, DaVinci Resolve for color grading and, on some projects, Kling.ai and Midjourney. Software doesn't replace art direction. Most of the work happens before and after it, in preparation, selection and the joins between shots.
One visual language across the studio
The music videos share a visual vocabulary with the album covers the studio designs. An artist who orders a cover and then a video finds the same hand at work, from the still image to the moving one.
There's a practical side to this. Fewer rounds of revisions. A look that holds from the streaming thumbnail to the looping visualizer. And for the audience, a signature they can recognize from one format to the next.
Studio research
Three Fibonacci shorts, personal research in vertical format.
Alongside commissioned work, the studio publishes a series of short pieces on its YouTube channel: formal research, sound and image experiments, made for no client. In the same spirit, the studio is developing TPF, a generative music installation.
- Music videos: quoted per project
- Fully animated music videos: €1,000 per minute (excl. VAT)
Process
Five steps
- Listening to the track Several attentive listens, with no visual brief and no references. The music sets the first constraint, before any image exists.
- Brief and art direction Conversations with the artist or the label. We settle on the angle, the references, the narrative breakdown and the technique that suits the song.
- Pre-production Storyboard, casting, location scouting, permits. On a shoot, this is the longest phase. On a project built in post-production, it's the one with the most back-and-forth.
- Production Shooting and processing the images. The raw material gets worked on before anyone thinks about the final look.
- Post-production and delivery Editing, color grading, matching shots, a mix if needed. The 4K master and every social format are delivered by download link.
Articles & resources
Everything on the music video, in detail
Longer pages that go into each side of making a music video: a complete guide, streaming formats, the directors who matter, generative AI and temporal consistency.
Approach & method
Formats & streaming constraints
Generative AI & the music video
Reference directors
Frequently asked questions
Before you hire a music video director
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A music video is a work in its own right, narrative or visual, with its own dramatic arc. A visualizer is a visual loop, often abstract, that sits alongside the listening without competing with it. A lyric video stages the words, in animated type synced to the track. Which one you need depends on how the release will be used.
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Fully animated music videos are €1,000 per minute, excluding VAT. Everything else is quoted per project.
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A 4K UHD ProRes master for archive and broadcast, a 1080p H.264 MP4 for YouTube and Vimeo, a vertical 9:16 version for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, a square 1:1 version for social feeds, and a short loop for Spotify Canvas if you ask for one. All files are delivered by download link.
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Three to six weeks, depending on the project. A shoot needs scouting and casting; heavy post-production has its own time for sorting footage and matching shots. Work starts with several listens to the track, before any visual brief.
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Both. The studio works with independent artists, labels, cultural organizations and composers on commission. The size of the outfit doesn't count. Whether the project holds together does.
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The studio is based in Paris, but shoots happen wherever the project needs them. Travel and logistics costs are included in the quote.
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On video work, composition, art direction, editing, color grading and finishing are done entirely by people. Takuya Studio may combine them with a multi-model generative AI method developed in-house, alongside other techniques such as photography, collage and 3D.
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Fully animated music videos are €1,000 per minute, excluding VAT. All other videos are quoted per project.
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A director, with a studio behind him. Léopold Dumont directs and edits the videos himself; the studio brings art direction, post-production and the social cuts. You deal with one person from brief to delivery.
Contact
Write to the studio
Free quote, reply within 48 hours. A listening link and a release date are enough to get started.