ACCOUNT OF EDITING

DISCARDED MATERIAL

After changing our idea, we removed all the clips with the ‘mean girls’ as when we reviewed the footage we decided that the shots weren’t good enough and the original narrative wasn’t working well. Therefore we filmed shots for a new narrative with another guy, played by Ben, as the lousy boyfriend of Zoe, with Jay as Zoe’s friend who knows that she doesn’t love Ben anymore and wants her to stop pretending. We added these shots to the editing timeline and after doing more editing, we thought that the narrative wasn’t clear enough. After adding footage of Zoe in her bedroom looking at photos of her fun times with Jay and thinking of two new narratives that could fit the footage we filmed, we realised that, especially after analysing the feedback from our rough cuts, the narrative had become too complicated and so we and changed it again, deleting all the shots with Ben in them (where we kept the shots of Zoe waiting for Ben in the café before he walks in as we used this to show her thinking about the past) and of Zoe in her bedroom (as they weren’t good enough) to focus on the past relationship between Jay and his former girlfriend, Zoe.

A deleted shot of Zoe and Ben

SHOTS WE KEPT

I really like the shot from behind where Jay and his girlfriend are sitting in the forest watching a polaroid they took of themselves develop. We increased the speed of this shot in editing so that we could see all the footage without it taking up too much time and although it is still one of the longest narrative shots in the video, I think it is a very important shot as it emphasises that the music video is about the happy memories of a couple’s past relationship demonstrating clearly that time is passing and symbolising that they are waiting to see where it takes their relationship.

I also really like the shots at night where the couple are lighting sparklers together. This also gives the indication of time passing due to the comparison between the day-time and the night time shots, and shows that they have spent a lot of time together which suggests the significance of their relationship. The light from the sparklers also added a nice effect to the shots and could be used to signify that at this point in time, the fire was still burning in their relationship.

CUTTING TO THE BEAT

As the music is fast-paced, we had to match this with quite quick editing via cutting to the beat. We did this by carefully listening to the music, and matching the start/end of a clip with a beat in the music, and so we had to do this a lot in order to fit with the fast tempo of the music. We used cross-cutting between different locations and between narrative and studio shots which made these quick cuts more noticeable. In addition, we cut some of the shots so that the movements match the beats in the music, dragging clips across the timeline until they matched, such as the shot of Jay jumping over the fence. This makes the video more enjoyable to watch as it is more aesthetically pleasing. We also cut one clip into 3 quick separate sections after one another as we liked the shot, but it was too long. We deleted the beginning and ends of these shots to create jump cuts of less than a second in the same clip. We also put 3 quick shots together of Jay playing the guitar from different angles which again matched and emphasised the fast pace of the music.

Jump cuts between shots

LIP-SYNCING

Due to the practice lip-syncing task at the start of A2, we have had experience in trying to match the visual of the artist singing to the sound of it. This practice meant that it was easier when editing our actual music video. We placed the song on the editing timeline and every time we added a shot of the artist singing, we would align it with the music so that his lips would move in time with the song. As we filmed a lot of performance shots, it took quite a long time to find the right clips for certain points in the music as we sometimes filmed different parts of the song separately, but it would have taken a lot longer without the experience from the first lip-syncing task.

EFFECTS

As mentioned before, we increased the speed of the developing polaroid shot to show the passing of time. In addition, using Adobe After Effects we changed the viewing mode of ‘Remove Grain’ from ‘Preview’ to ‘Final Output’ through the ‘Noise & Grain’ effect for the night time shots with the sparklers. This was because due to it being a dark shot, there was more grain, and this editing helped us get rid of some of it. We also added more effects to clips back on Adobe Premiere Pro. We used the ‘Fast Colour Corrector’ and pulled the handle towards orange and brought the black input level slighting towards the white side and brought the middle slider down to give the video more contrast and make it more cinematic. We used ‘Brightness & Contrast’ and brought the brightness down a bit and increased the contrast. We also used the ‘Three-Way Colour Corrector’ and dragged the mid-tones and the highlights slightly towards yellow and green, respectively. To add these effects, we dragged them onto one clip and adjusted them how we wanted. We then saved all the effects as a pre-set and dragged it onto all the other clips, adjusting further if needed, except the studio shots and the night time shots as we didn’t want to change the colour of them. Adding the colour effects to the day-time shots outside emphasised the natural environment and helped connote Jay’s organic star image. We did, however increase the contrast for the studio shots to make them more cinematic and for the sparkler shots in order to make the grain even less visible. In addition, we added a PNG letterbox over the entire video to give the video more of a cinematic effect and so make it look more professional and more like other music videos in the indie genre.

The yellow/green tint to the video is clear as the trees are much more saturated

CREATING THE NARRATIVE

We started the narrative with mid-shots and close-up shots of Zoe in a café alone which indicate that she is thinking about something. This cross-cut to a mid-shot of Jay singing and so suggests that the subject of his song relates to what she is thinking about. This is confirmed when the video cross-cuts again to a close-up shot of the two laughing together which connotes that this is a past relationship between the two that used to be happy but now has ended. This happy relationship is shown throughout the music video via cross-cutting between different locations and times and studio shots of Jay singing to remind the audience that the relationship is over. At the end of the video, the video fades back to a close-up of Zoe alone in the café, once again connoting that their relationship is in the past, but they will never forget it.

The first three shots of the music video

LEARNING FROM THE ROUGH CUTS

From our rough cuts, we learnt that the shots with Jay and Zoe worked really well as people we interviewed thought that they were nice shots that clearly demonstrated that they were in a relationship. However, we also learnt that we didn’t have enough shots with Ben and so it wasn’t clear who he was, which we also found from feedback. We realised that our music video had become too complicated with the two different guys, and it was hard to tell who the boyfriend was and who Zoe was cheating on with.

Zoe’s boyfriend – not Jay

CHANGES MADE AFTER THE ROUGH CUTS

The confusion between the two guys concerning who was Zoe’s boyfriend and who she was cheating on with led us to changing the narrative to make the music video more simple. We changed the narrative to two people (Jay and Zoe) thinking back over their past relationship. As we had already filmed many shots with them together, it meant that we didn’t have to re-film anything again.

WORKING AS A GROUP

We worked very well as a group as we each took turns to edit and therefore we each played a crucial part in the outcome of our final music video. We would all communicate and share our ideas in order to come to a decision about the editing that we all agreed with, such as what clips could go where or any creative cuts or effects to add to the video. This meant that we, as a group, would decide whether to get rid of a clip or keep a clip which would then lead to the mutual decision of what to do with the clip.

MY ROLE

I was always in the editing room whenever we did any editing for our music video which therefore allowed it to be a product formed by all 3 of us, where we each contributed. I, like the others, shared an equal amount of time editing the video, helping to cut to the beat and lip-sync the song to the video. I also came up with the idea for the various quick jump cuts as I thought that the music video needed some quicker shots to emphasise the fast pace of the song, and I edited these shots, creating the jump cuts between them. In addition, I did the colour editing on Premiere Pro and came up with the initial idea to do this so as to make the video look more professional.

WHAT WOULD I CHANGE?

In conclusion, I was very happy with how we managed the editing of our footage by coming up with ideas and opinions about how we could improve, and working together to help make these ideas into reality on screen. However, I might have made more of the cuts slightly faster in order to accentuate the fast tempo of the music as I like how the faster cuts look and create aesthetic pleasure due to matching the song.