A music video shoot spends most of its day repeating the same three minutes. The repetition is required by the edit, which cuts far more frequently than any other short-form work.
Cutting rate determines how much coverage is needed
Music videos change shot every few seconds, and every one of those changes requires a different angle covering the same point in the song.
A three-minute track cut at that density needs dozens of usable angles, and each one is another complete pass of the performance.
Unlike drama, the material cannot be broken into separate scenes, because the audio runs continuously and every shot must align to the same timeline.
Sync makes partial takes expensive
A take that fails halfway leaves the second half of the song uncovered from that angle, and the editor discovers the gap only when reaching for it.
Shooting full passes rather than fragments guarantees coverage everywhere, which is why performers run the whole track repeatedly rather than working section by section.
The cost falls almost entirely on the performer, who delivers a complete performance many times over while the crew changes position around them.
Lighting is rebuilt between angle groups
A lighting setup designed for one camera position rarely works from another, since the position of sources relative to the lens is what creates the look.
Angles are therefore grouped, with all shots from one broad direction completed before the unit turns around and relights for the next group.
This is the main reason a music video day is long despite the short duration of the finished piece, and why schedules are organised by lighting rather than by shot list.
Energy has to be sustained, not built
Because takes are assembled out of order, the performance must be at full intensity in every pass rather than building across the day.
Later takes commonly show fatigue, and directors schedule the most exposed angles early while planning wider shots for the end of the day.
Some productions shoot the close work in a separate session for exactly this reason, accepting the added cost to get performance at full strength.
The edit is assembled from a grid
Every complete pass is aligned to the track, producing a set of angles all synchronised to the same reference and switchable at any frame.
Editing then becomes a matter of choosing which angle plays at each moment, rather than of building a sequence from unrelated material.
That structure is what allows a music video to be recut substantially without reshooting, and it is worth the redundancy the shoot day pays for.