Last Day Of Editing

Comparison of James- Overload to Dot Rotten Overload

Editing- 

Our video has a lot of fast cuts due to the tempo of the soundtrack.  We decided to minimise our use of effects in our video because we wanted it to be neat and different to other student videos in our year and we wanted it to be different to the original video because 80% of dot rottens video has effects in it. Our video starts of bright (Day) to dark (Night) which is different from the original video because the original has a mixture of day and night shots together, whilst our has a strict structure.


Camera-

Our video has a lot of movement within it which is different from the original video by dot rotten. We have different angles of shots of our performer "James" performing to the camera whereas the original has more static and close up angle shots.



Mise-en-scene

The costume of our artist James is completely different to dot rottens outfit in the original video. James has a puffy Jacket, hoodie and jeans on with trainers. This bring out the urban-ness of our video which is what we wanted because of the genre of the video, whereas Dot rotten is dressed up kind of neat wearing all black with a trench coat. We only used one outfit through out our video but dot rotten had different types of outfit. The reason why we kept to one outfit throughout because we wanted to make our video more realistic and more relatable because people living a urban life don't change twice a day, they wear one outfit a day and we wanted to have the same feel throughout the video with the urban-ness

Last Day of Editing !!!

These print screens were taken during the course of our editing today. We have encountered a few problems with editing today but we have managed to sort it out! Firstly, the night shots were really weak as the cuts were not to the beat and we were struggling to find the right footage to use. I edited the night shots twice but we still found that it was ineffective and weak compared to our day shots. Secondly, the ending was also seen as weak as it didn't portray a sense of finality to the audience. Lastly, we still had an introduction to produce...

However, after talking to Lousia about the weaknesses of the our music video we realised what the causes to our problems were. Even after re-editing the night shots again which were all cut correctly to the beat, we still lacked something. Luckily, Lousia was able to point out that the problem wasn't the editing but it was our choice of footage. The build up to 'overload' lacked movement and it didn't mirror the pace and movement of the day shots. As a result we went over all the footage that we had and realised that there were actually loads that we didn't use but could have used. Therefore, I re-selected the footage which had more movement and incorporated into the night shots.

For the second attempt to edit the night shots I included a lot footage from the base track which was an extreme close up of Jame's mouth. However, this was a big issues because most of the time, female artists use extreme close ups of their mouth and not male artists. Therefore, I only kept a couple of shots which showed James'.

After that, we managed to produce a introduction and conclusion to our music video that really pulled the whole thing together. The video introduces James from the back with a mid shot and concludes with a pan of James from the back too.

We decided not to use any video filters as we thought that it was necessary since we have already established the transitioning from day to night in our music video.

Lastly, to enhance the continuity of our music video we added another heavily edited shot through the build up to 'overload' with the falling shot. As well as this, we changed the first shot we used straight after the transition from day to night to a shot in the green screen to show to the audience clearly that we are introducing a new setting.

Production - Editing

As we were editing our video we struggled with using effects in the right places. As a result, I am going to look at similar music videos that are also upbeat and fast paced with a large amount of effects used to gain inspiration as to how we will be able to use effects in our music video.

In order to assist us in creating an effective music video I looked at the following music videos:

Say Aah - Trey Songz

This video has influenced the way we put our falling shot together. In this music video jump cuts are a reoccurring theme that dominants most of the video. We took this into account and played with the falling footage. As a result we cut it so that it jumps on the beat which shows James gradually falling to the floor.






Starships - Nicki Minaj

In Nicki Minaj's video slow motion is used in some parts where the beat is actually fast paced. This is effective in drawing in the audience's attention as a direct parallel of speed is introduced. As a result we have manipulated time in our music video in order to capture the emotions of our artist and to illustrate the line 'or I'll be stuck here to my soul flies'. We introduced cut away shots of James and manipulated the time in order to make this effective.

Production - Last day of editing

 

 

During the last day of editing, we made a few small changes to our music video. We took our rough cut feedbacks into consideration and used the last day of editing to make simple alterations. We also finalised our opening and closing shot to ensure it was as effective as possible.

 

We also watched it several times to see if there was anything else that needed to be changed. One thing we noticed was that the second half of the song was not as strong as the first half in terms of editing. We thought that this was because we did not edit to the beat by mirroring each shot from the first half. It took us a while to figure out that the second half consisted of more still shots which meant that there was not enough movement in the second half. This was a major drawback as the first half of our music video had a lot of movement and it worked very well with the beat in the song. In order to make the second half a lot stronger, we went through other shots that we had a took parts that had more movement and used them instead of the still shots to recreate the first half. After adding the moving shots, we definitely saw a huge difference in the music video.

 

We included another shot that mirrored the first part of the music video where we manipulated a shot so that it matched the rapid pace before the chorus kicks in, we thought that we would mirror the editing from the first half (day shots) to the second half (night shots). This works well as it matches the structure of a song (repeated chorus). 

Last Day Of Editing

Production - Editing

As the week have been passing by editing has become more interesting. This particular process is in fact the hardest and most effective and it is a struggle to get it right the way you want it.

My group have been working very hard to do so. Changing our ideas of what to do in the music video is also a stress we try not to argue upon which has bee. Very successful in my group. I feel my group is doing the bet to be the best and we are all working as a team to succeed our full potential.

Drawing up an idea of what we are doing to get our video at its best is the way in which we edit. For example we have cut each footage on the beat to make it easier to cut. In doing so I think it's the best way to develop a music video.
As you can see in the photo the clips are all cut into small cut, which still runs through smoothly an ready to be cut or used.

Overall the hard work my group is putting in makes me proud and I believe that we can get the free we deserve!

Production- Improving our video

Recently I've asked a few people from college and at home, what my groups music video is missing, or what shouldn't be there that's not there etc. The response I got back was quite positive. Unfortunately i did not record what most students had said as it didn't cross my mind to; however I recall one particular student saying and in her own words " the thing about your video is that it's fast tempo and lyrical features add something I it's meaning, so for it I be successful you have to add a twist to the video, don't make it like other dub step/grime music videos especially te original one" Fter hearing this I went home and thought about how my group coul make our video stand out and be different. A few ideas crossed my mind like not giving the audience what try expect, for instance they may expect a build up of shots o go with the build up of a beat, instead we can manipulate one shot and reverse or slow it down. I think this effect is very different and shows that we can experiment with our shots so it's not expected.

Rough Cut Feedback Response

After watching and listening to all the feedback from the music video, I realised we had a lot of changing to do. For instance where we put our markers. Didn't exactly hit the beat on point, also a few shots were of the beat, so that all had to be changed. Originally we was supposed to switch over from day scenes to night scenes at the time 1:20, that was the time in which the song hit its midpoint, tho crossover was very hard to process but we use our xtra shots to create this crossover. We used our 360 shots of each location from day to night to crossover from the day scenes to night scenes, my teacher was very intrigued by this.
On the contrary when looking back at our rough cut 1 and the full rough cut, I can see the drastic changes that was made ur on our feedback, so I really think having a structured response gave confidence to all the members in my group including myself, to make our video look better

Production - Our Music Video in One Word

Our music video summed up in one word by a few students 

Production - Our editing ideas

As we have finished our rough cut, it made me think about our editing choices a lot more and how it has effected our music video as a whole and why we chose to use what we used.

I think that editing to the beat is the most important feature for our music video because of the fast beat throughout. Once we got into the editing suite, it made me realise exactly how important it was to edit according to the beat and how much it would help to mark each beat as we go along. Editing to beat determines the overall look and feel of the music video and I feel that it really shaped our music video.

The most important aspect is cutting to the beat so we will be making sure that happens all throughout and also, we will be repeating how the video is editing the first half to the second half so that the music video flows and to make sure that the main focus is on the performance in the video. It also gives the audience something to expect as they're watching. We manipulated a shot at the beginning which I think will be a "stand out" part in our music video and we will repeat this shot into the second half of the music video with another shot. I think this way, it just ties in really well because choruses and lyrics are repeated so the editing can reflect that. This relates to Andrew Goodwin's theory.

We have incorporated mirror effects. This was inspired by the original dot rotten music video. We thought it would be a good idea to use repetition in another way. I also think it is a great concept as it reflects the lyrics and the reflection from the mirror effect almost connotes the performer looking at himself/his life.

The original mirror shot from Dot Rotten's music video

Our take on the mirror effect

Production - Rough Cut Feedback

Once we had finished our rough cut, we received a lot of comments and during our editing time we also had a preview of everyone's music video so far.

Several people commented on the level of performance and that it was great. That he has a lot of confidence and the performance really links with the song and pulls out a lot of emotion which automatically makes it better to watch.

We also had comments on our mise en scene, people said that they liked our choices of location and our use of camera. They liked how we move around with the performer as it gives the video that urban edge. 

We had comments on the editing, people really liked the build up to drop of the beat. They liked the use of transitions and liked our variety of camera shots.

Once we uploaded it to our blog, I thought it would be helpful to ask my brother for some feedback. He said he really liked our editing especially when the beat drops. He also said that he thought the camera work really gives off the urban vibe and he feels that it fulfils the target audiences expectations. One thing he said we could improve on was the lighting in the night shots with the big screen in the background, as the quality in that shot is a lot weaker than the other shots. 

Production - Screen Shots

 This first screen shot shows sequence one that we were initially going to use to create our music video. However, due to the high number of markers incorporated onto our base tracks, we decided to create a new sequence to avoid confusion. 




The two following screen shows just show the new sequence titled 'sequence 2' that we created with the new base tracks. Also, new markers were created on the top of our timeline which cuts on every four beats.

We found that instead of deleting the footage we are not using, blocking the video assisted us greatly to deciding what footage we were going to use where. Also, we found that where the lyrics repeat, the unused footage could be used.

Rough Cut Response

From watching the rough cut of our music video I have noticed that the editing in the night shots are not all consistent. For example in the day shots we cut after 'inhale' to 'exhale' then we cut again to the next line, however in the night shots (1:49 onwards) we just showed that with one footage. As a result, we need to cut that when we come to edit it again so that it is smooth and consistent.

Also, the build up to 'overload' as we enter the night shots do not cut exactly on the beat. Therefore we will edit that part of the music video to make it as accurate as possible. From 2:04 when James sings the second 'painkiller' we need to cut to another shot as the shot drags on for too long.

After that, we just need to create our introduction, put in our cutaway shot of James falling onto the floor and add any filters and effects needed to complete our music video.

Rough Cut - Whole Video

Production - Editing

Whilst revisiting our music video after hearing feedback from our first rough cut, we had to perfect the editing in some parts of the music video as some shots were irrelevant and some were not effective. We had difficulties choosing a shot to use as shown in the screen shot on the left. However, we reviewed some of the footage and incorporated a section from an earlier part of the song which fits in well here.


This screen shot shows the ending of our music video. Whilst editing I realised that in each of the base tracks James illustrates the line 'my head spinning and spinning' with his hand gestures. As a result I decided to manipulate the transparency of each of the base tracks on that line so that it all shows at the same time to end our music video.

Rough Cut Feedback Part 2

Production - Rough Cut Feedback

Production - Rough Cut 1 Feedback

We managed to complete a rough cut for the first half of our music video which includes all the day time shots. The feed back in which we received from our teacher included the lack of consistency with our editing which was what line of the song or the beat we cut the footage. Also, some parts of the song were not in sync with the song and lastly, the footage we choose to use is extremely important as well. We need to choose our footage more carefully so that meaning can be created.

Our aim for next lesson is to construct the second part of our rough cut which includes all of the next shots we filmed. Also, our second aim is to select our footage effectively so that our music video portrays the meaning explicitly.

Rough Cut Feedback From Students

Rough Cut Feedback

Production - Dubstep on X Factor

2012's contestant James Arthur included a dubstep twist into his song at the weekend. He took on Adele's 'Hometown Glory' and interpreted it in a very unique way. His performance had a great response and I decided to go on to twitter using the X Factor hashtag and found a lot of comments regarding his performance. Several people loved the performance solely because of the Dubstep twist and how well he interpreted the song. 

I think that a lot of artist recently have been trying to add more dubstep into the music industry. Tulisa mentions at the end of his performance that during her festival sets she incorporates a lot of dubstep - "you know I love a bit of dubstep." Tulisa also mentions that she has always hoped that X Factor would find an artist that embraces the urban edge, especially as she comes from an urban background and produces urban music herself. 

Nicole Sherzinger says "Like I said, you took the legendary Adele, you swagged it and then you freaked it with the dubstep. You are the future of music! You take real singer song writers, real melodies, real passion and then you combine them with a fat beat like that!"

Production - Editing Day 3

Production - Rough Cut 1

What we have so far 

Production - Day 4 Editing

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During the fourth day of editing we experimented with our footage widely by trying out effects and manipulating the use of time. Firstly, we had to redo some parts of the beginning of the music video as we were told that there were too many cuts being shown too early. Therefore we made the footage of each cut longer to suit the pace of the song. After that we put more markers onto our track to indicate where to cut as the beat gets faster and faster so that we can create the fast jumpy cuts. We did this by copy and pasting the same footage onto our time line and then cutting it to the beat so that it plays repeatedly according to the pace of the song.

Then we started to use effects during the part of the song where it's only instrumentals. We used a mirror effect of James dancing to create a sense of self reflection in his thoughts. After that we began editing the first rapping part of the song where we focused on using three base tracks to cut between. This section was really successful as the footage was filmed accurately and effectively and also the performance was excellent throughout.

We have done a rough cut for half of the song so far which are all light shots that were based in Mile End, Limehouse and Greenwich. We have yet to incorporate the night shots for the second half of the song with the 360 shots to lead into it. Also, we will be adding more effects and filters into our music video including cutaway shots to make the music video smooth.

Production - Editing day 4

Today we finalised our rough cut for Thursday lesson, where we discussed further ideas and completion of our clips. We encounters a few problems that related to making or video make sense and not using random clips.
During our discussions we decided to add a few effects to reflect on our Artists thoughts. For instance the use of having kaleidoscope adds confusion and the use of mirror effect reflects his thoughts with the use of the kaleidoscope together. We didn't want to make the video as confusing as his thoughts so we will do it in a way if will make sense and flow.

Production - Editing Ideas

We constructing an introduction which was a long establishing shot of James walking over the bridge. In this shot we manipulated the time of it. So when the beat changes we quickened the pace of the footage. However, after reviewing it, we realised that it wasn't as effective as an opening should be as it doesn't establish the artist immediately. As a result we haven't decided to leave the introduction and the ending of the music video until the end of our process of editing.

Production - Editing Facilities

As this was the first time I have had the chance to use this keyboard to edit, I have learned a lot of techniques and short cuts which has assisted me in editing our music video. 

Skills learned:
- command + m to add marker
- command + j to alter the pace of the clip
- alt + left/right arrow to move marker
- command left/right arrow to move a marker frame by frame

By the end of our editing process, hopefully I would be very familiar with this keyboard.

Production - Editing Ideas

Whilst editing we were discussing how we would show the transition from day time to night time in our music video without it looking unprofessional. As a result, we have decided to use the day shots in the beginning, then using the 360 degree shots that we filmed from each location, we are going to put that altogether so that it is one long 360 showing every location. We are going to show the 360 shots from day to night then from that we will fade into our night shots at the end. Also, after the base tracks have been cut, we will add in our cut away shots, and the falling shots to end our video.

Production - Day 3 Editing

Production - Day Two of editing

Day two of editing really hit my group as we encountered problems of syncing the sound. Although it was a day of tryin to get every single base track down, we found ourselves going back and synching parts together. For instance on our opening word of the song 'inhale' our artists James was in sync an correct , but our second marker we put down for 'painkiller' although our markers was right our artist James was slow, which was not his fault but was told it is natural for our human bodies to receive music faster or slower. Therefore this problem is only done naturally and to solve it, my group and I discussed cutting away or jumping shots to fit the beat as well as not showing the misleading lip syncing.

Production - Day One of Editing

The first day of editing was an exciting feeling and process. My group and I managed to put half our base tracks down and marking them thoroughly throughout the song and videos we had taken.

During this process we encountered problems like not marking on the right places etc. At the the end of the lesson we learnt that this will be an ongoing problem that I guess is normal in which any group would face. In addition we also learnt to save our work literally after every other edit we do- this will limit our chance of loosing our work.
Overall the first day of lining was productive and eventful.

Production - Editing resources

As from our first day of editing it has been going smoothly, especially thanks to the new keyboard that is in our editing suit. It has quicker and easier ways to edit why we want, get to what we want etc.
It took a lot of getting use to, but now it's very useful and my group and I feel like professionals already

For example to mark our soundtrack or video we use M as fpr marker

Production - Day Three of Editing

Today my group managed to get all our base tracks down and start editing. It's a very stressful period especially deciding what cut or jump shot should go where. We managed to put all our markers down. We also felt it was useful to mark the beat of our song which we counted every 4th beat. This helped us to know where to cut from. Enabling less difficulty and stress, and encouraging our perseverance!

Again it was a very successful day, as we also found it useful to cut every vase track at the beat then resisting it to fit what we want.

Production - More Ideas for Editing

During the editing process, it is natural for ideas to trigger as we begin to lay down shots. Since we have started editing, we always seem to come up with ideas but never manage to catch our discussions on camera. There are many different things that we want to include in our music video in terms of editing as our song has such an upbeat rhythm particularly in the middle so we feel that editing is an important aspect of our music video.

The opening of our music video which we have edited already shows the performer walking towards the camera. As soon as we shot this particular shot we knew that we would manipulate it to either make him walk faster every few seconds or cut it so that he suddenly gets closer every second. In the end, we chose to manipulate it so that he walks faster every second and

Production - Editing Day 2

During the second day of editing we reviewed all of the footage that we had again and as we placed them onto our base track we renamed each one so that we were aware of which base tracks we have used. We began by marking our original song on 'inhale' and then lined up our base tracks. We decided that we would begin the video with all the footage filmed in the day time then from 1 minute 20 seconds onwards we would introduce the night time shots and the shots from the green screen.

Overall, we found that using markers were very effective in laying down the base tracks correctly. However, we found that in some base tracks James sang slower than the original song. This isn't huge problem as we can manipulate the time and match up the lip syncing when we cut the base tracks.

Production - Editing day 2

Day two of editing was very similar to day one. We went through the shots that we definitely wanted to use. This time however, seeing as we are happy with the opening of the music video, we went onto laying down all the base tracks we want to use. We went through the shots through the audio view and marked them according to words in the song that we thought were easiest to edit by, this allows us to line up the base tracks in order for it to all be in sync. In the slide show below, one of the images shows us laying down the base tracks and as you can see, we have several base tracks and many more to lay down.

One thing we noticed whilst watching back the videos after laying down the base tracks was that although some parts of the song may be perfectly in sync, half way through, it can go out of sync and the performer will be either faster or slower than the original track or vice versa which is likely to happen but we will cut between base tracks to ensure that we avoid using those parts in the shots.

Today was solely about getting most of our base tracks laid down onto final cut pro so that we can slowly start cutting away to form our music video. We got through half of our base tracks as we had to fiddle around with the shots several times as it was hard getting it to be in sync perfectly but we did manage to get a lot done. When we next come to edit, we will be laying down the rest of the base tracks and then beginning to cut away and play around with the shots.

Production- Last day of filming

This post is quite late, apologies.
Nevertheless, on our last day of filming we went to the 02 to do about 3 more base tracks. During our time there we also shot a few extra scenes that we could cut away to. It was a very productive day filming our night shots and jump shots. We did many close ups, long shots that we said we would do.

Editing

These pictures were taken whilst I was editing our music video. During this session we managed to construct the opening of our music video. We will be taking turns to edit within our group each week.

First Day Of Editing

This is us modifying the speed of a clip that we are going to use at the beginning of our video. we had to cut up the clip with the blade on final cut pro and increase the speed of what part of the clip we wanted to be fast.

This is us trying to sync the clip with the soundtrack on final cut pro. We had to listen to both soundtrack and clip and put a marker on the same point so it could sync into each other.

This is use picking what clip we wanted to use at the beginning of our music video

Day 4 of Filming

Day 3 Of Filming

Production - First day of Editing

Today we came into the editing suite to begin our first day of editing

 We started of laying down the shots that we wanted to open the music video with as oppose to laying down all our base tracks which we plan to do straight after the opening scene, we thought that this would be easier as we would have something small to work with once the base tracks have been laid down.

We played around with the opening scene of James walking over a bridge towards the camera. As he walks towards the camera, we manipulate the shot to fast forward his steps as he gets closer. This reoccurs three times till he gets towards the camera.

To ensure that we get the lip syncing in time with the music, we started off marking one word in the song - "inhale" so that we knew when to cut from the first shot we laid down as well as syncing the singing and the music. 

Throughout editing, we found that the shots designated in the box on the bottom left was quite confusing so we made three different files that included the different shots that were spread out on three different days. This made editing easier as we want to start the video with the shots in the day and ending the video with the night shots, so having the shots in different files made it easier for us to edit. 

The first day was very fun and it was great to finally start putting the shots together and having some idea of how the final music video will look. It was really exciting to see the opening of the music video come together  and I really look forward to editing some more. 

Production - Day 3 of Filming

Day three was our final day of filming which took place at the O2 in North Greenwich. This was one of my personal favourite places to film at, everything was lit up and looked incredible. The only down side to filming in front of the big screen was that, the camera kept focusing on the light in the back and less of James. Nonetheless, the view and the backdrop looks great and it was very successful. We were also very lucky that it wasn't too packed, we were worried that we were going to have people walking pass like on day one. But it was fine and we filmed for about an hour or so, until it got very dark. All in all, the last day was successful and I think we captured some very nice shots.

Production - Day 3 Filming

  
Our last day of filming was in North Greenwich outside the O2 Arena. We wanted to film with the bright lights in the background as light is a reoccurring theme in our music video. This was very effective as the change of lights was emphasised when we watched the footage. However, we found that the camera was trying to focus on the light and on James at the same time which made the footage go in and out of focus. Also, some of the footage was quite dark so we are going to considering how we will be incorporating this into our music video. We also filmed establishing shots of James walking along lights on the floor and of him sitting down in front of a mini waterfall. these are also effective to use as cut away shots.