#but ultimately i cut them in favour of yes theyre fun but they're not really saying much beyond what i have in the category already

[sanstropfremir]

Hello! I was wondering if you had any favorite cheap kpop mvs? Ones like gr8u where they used an intresting trick or idea to make the mv stand out despite the lack of budget.

HI HELLO AGAIN THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE QUESTION THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

okay okay okay. so there's a bit of a scale i'm gonna operate on here, because there's some pretty large gaps in between what i would consider 'cheap' for specific groups vs like, actual monetary cost and access to resources and stuff like that. i've separated these out into a couple of categories, because i could and to make some more distinctions. i'm judging a lot of this based on expense in terms of set, because that's generally where you're going to sink the most cost. if you want custom sets of any kind you have to have 1) the space to put the sets (a studio/warehouse), 2) the people to design the sets, 3) the materials to make the sets, and 4) the people to build the sets, which all is going to cost you. i'm also likely forgetting ones here but there's a lot of kpop mvs in the world and my memory sucks.

ok to start off, some flops (complimentary):

hair short - wings : unironically this is one of my fave songs+mvs from this era, it has such a creative premise and it's so smart and i'm sad we never got anything else from them.

annie - toppdogg : toppdogg mvs were never particularly expensive, but this one is really restricted, literally. also they get bonus points for being the only group to ever find a way to integrate the members' names into the mv without it being obnoxious.

baby i'm sorry - myname : one of the best story mvs of all time. i don't think this one was actually that cheap because there's a lot of actors but it likely had very little physical production costs because it's all shot on location and it's probably only shot with a handheld camera. there is actually choreography and styling for this and it's very inexplicably 2013.

she - vromance : i'm pretty sure they shot this mv with 12 dollars and a piece of lint and technically i think star is a more interesting mv with better thought and planning but idk. there's something about she that i think is very charming and i forgive the low budget-ness of it just for the fact that it's so wholesomely cute.

"it's just a guy hanging out":

2 kids - taemin : i know taemin would rather forget that 2 kids exists but genuinely it's one of my favourite mvs of his and hot take it's one of his best. it is the epitome of low budget stealth filming with maximum impact; he filmed this and the think of me mv in the off time he was in paris while he was on tour with superm, and the exhaustion and bitterness and sadness and remorse in this really shine. it perfectly captures that watery feeling of being awake for the dawn during a bender. taemin actually does so well with these smaller scale atmospheric mvs but they tend to be underappreciated; see day and night.

after we ride - brave girls : 99% of this is shot on location in mostly public + outdoor areas but the mv really rides on the performances of the girls and the skills of the editor and cinematographer, who really knocked it out of the park in terms of establishing the atmosphere. this has some really really phenomenal colour grading that gives everything that high sheen 'neon lights reflecting on a wet street' look that really amps up the feeling.

-> sub-genre: pandemic bottle mvs

mayday - crush : maybe the most iconic pandemic mv, which also purposefully looks inexpensive due to the camera equipment and editing techniques.

lazy - woosung : really clean colour palette and i love the integration of the feature, as well as the styling change at the last chorus. i can't remember if this made it onto my best of 2021 list in the end but it was in my runners up for a while.

down - a.c.e : one of the best things about a.c.e is their creative directors and designers, who are frankly incredible at their jobs, because they can stretch a shoestring budget and make it look so good. it was kinda tough to pick just one mv from their catalogue but i settled on down because it's all shot in a single location in one day and really utilizes the vertical format in a way that i've seen few mvs do. runner up is changer, which was shot somehow somewhere during the promos for higher, which holy shit they were so busy last summer.

unusually small budget for a big 3:

view - shinee : view changed the kpop mv game. this isn't case of low budget because no budget, this is a case of concept that doesn't play out to be very expensive to produce. by shooting everything on location (including the dance sequences) min hee jin took the money that would have gone to set building and used to pay more for location (it's shot in malaysia) and for better and more unusual editing than kpop had really seen at the time.

1of1 - shinee : again, this was all about style, and the main feature of this is absolutely the clothing. otherwise it's quite literally just filmed in a white box.

i want you - shinee : there were FOUR mvs shot for tsol and they all are absolutely fantastic. i wouldn't say any of them are cheap but i want you is shot primarly in a single studio space and on a greenscreen, so it's not the most expensive of the bunch. countless is also filmed on a single set, but i think i want you shows a much more effective use of style (even though i do love countless). i've talked about tsol before and as a full work it's one of the best kpop comebacks of all time.

blooming day - exo cbx : she's an icon. every minimalist colour pop kpop mv thinks it's blooming day and guess what? there's only one blooming day. in this case similarly to view, it isn't about a lack of budget and instead it's that the concept itself does not require a huge amount of expensive spectacle.

breath + last piece - got7 : i'm putting these together as a double feature because they were filmed back to back on the same sets and although they are not cheap by any means, since these are custom sets, but comparatively (to other jype mvs) both of these have very low production value and a high economy of shots. i remember watching these at release and actually going 'oh these are cheap....???'. however, despite being limited to these twoish locations these are very well filmed and there's a lot of very good editing here that makes them interesting.

call me baby - exo : maybe the least expensive exo mv but also one of the best. i know there's supercars but those are definitely rented and there's a grand total of three locations (and two of them are empty warehouse/studio spaces). i really like this mv because of that absolutely ripping intro with kai/baekhyun/xiumin/suho/sehun in the car, and it shows a really strong consistent creative direction that makes it look more expensive than it is.

not necessarily cheap but very good use of a gimmick:

goosebumps - onf : ENTIRELY greenscreened!!!!!!! we moved on TOO fast from this and we need to talk about it more!!! beautiful beautiful was predominently vfx but goosebumps took it to a new level. other than a few shots in a white box this mv is built entirely by a vfx team and that is neither that cheap or fast but it is a FEAT.

skinz - onlyoneof : i wrote a post about skinz here and i'm sticking to my guns about this being one of the most interesting mvs released this year so far.

gr8u - vixx : great gimmick, 10/10. honestly most vixx mvs are pretty low budget and i think this is in the middling bit but it still counts.

take over - do hanse : this is all shot in the same black box studio with a single projector screen. i'm not joking. the director of this mv is insanely smart and very good at getting bang for their buck, so i bet you that the most money went towards hiring the horse and neonmilk, probably.

rain to be - onewe : they sacrificed a whole bunch of equipment in order to film this and that's why it's not a particularly cheap mv, but it was quite literally shot all in a single session in a single location, which is more restricted than 90% of most kpop mvs. and yes i know onewe is a kband but i literally think about this mv like once a week.

fantasy - fei : another vfx heavy mv that is supremely effective. it's obviously got funding behind it but it's got quite a restricted scope that makes it feel as close quartered as it is.

face id - epik high : epik high are very good at high impact mvs with limited scales and their two from last year are both soooooo good. they were both on my best of 2021 list so i'm not gonna go into a lot of detail but face id in particular really works that gimmick good.

i'm tempted to put a couple of jackson's solo mvs here, because his mvs are very very good for being limited in funds (as he's paying for them himself) and he's really good at capturing specific styles and feels (lmly and pretty please with that 80s/90s hong kong cinema feel) but they're not technically kpop so i'll settle for just mentioning them here at the end.

#i meant what i said in that exo ask about how sm does NOT want to pay money for mvs #i was genuinely surprised by the last got7 mvs like those were SO cheap for jype i still marvel at it #kpop questions #fave posts #kpop mvs are SO expensive and a lot of them follow such an obvious formula #so this was actually a bit more challenging than i expected #there was originally a lot more in the 'its just a guy' category like most eric nam mvs and b.i's illa illa #but ultimately i cut them in favour of yes theyre fun but they're not really saying much beyond what i have in the category already #OH luna's free somebody mv is also pretty inexpensive and fun #answers #text #gunwoo standing centre stage and wailing those adlibs in his leather skirt >>>>> #me watching call me baby and yelling 'WHY ITS GREASED LIGHTNING!!!!' at the chorus