Making a video can cost anything from nothing (with loads of incredibly nice friends, ideally in film college) to hundreds of thousands of pounds. They can be performance-based, have a story-line, or in the case of the song from a film, use relevant film footage - yes, for example, Titanic. Decisions about how to do the video will depend on all sorts of things. Mostly budget. But if the band is particularly ugly, or they're crap performers, you might decide to do a story-based video - with occasional hazy shots of band members cut in. Alternatively there may be no band at all, as is the case with so much house music, and the most common option would be to use plenty of computer-generated animation. Certain musical genres tend to go with particular video types. Rap artists are renowned for their "dream on, lads" videos of the band suffocated under a deluge of exquisite semi-naked babes by the pool/driving along in outsized cars/frolicking in the hotel room. Musicians like REM would tend to opt for something quite creative, maybe even meaningful, and would choose from the pick of the crop of directors to work with. The more intellectual bands tend to be quite film-conscious.
Essentially, each band has to sit down and come up with an idea; cost the video; then change the idea. Having worked out an idea which suits the budget, bands have to hire a minimum of: camera crew, a director, a stylist (you have to wear make-up to look half-way normal on telly) and some sort of catering crew - bearing in mind it's non-stop work for at least 48 hours. After setting up a shot in accordance with the storyboard (or frequently just verbal communication), the band plays the same thing over and over again, take upon take, for hours and hours.
Then comes post-production. This involves going into an editing suite to edit out the naff bits, synchronise the movements with the music, add in special effects and do any treatment of the film, such as giving it a grainy, arty look.
The role of the record company depends on quite a few things. Bands which are essentially manufactured pop groups generally have little or no artistic involvement - they jump around doing whatever they are told to do. Actual bands often have artistic control built into their record contracts. At the end of the day, the record company dictates how much money is going to be available - which may mean no video at all. These days bands frequently have to wait until their singles are successful to do a video, and even then they might only get a few quid to turn around something quite basic within a couple of days.
