First draft of our music video

In the media industry, and in particular with the editing of media, be it professional or beginner; feedback is key. In order to receive any sort of feedback it is important to have a rough model for people to comment on and give feedback; most commonly known as a first draft. 

As previously stated, we had an issue when the first draft feedback session took place with the teachers, the problem being that we had only editing the first 40 seconds of the video and therefore had barely anything to gain any feedback on. This was essentially an eye opener for our group, in the sense that we needed to speed up the editing process as time is ticking. 

Although, our argument for the time issue was that we would rather spend more time perfecting the video so that once the final draft is complete it would hopefully be near to the final and finished product and would therefore have little changes to make once received any feedback.

Here is our first draft:

The Rewind

A key feature of our music video is that it features a 'rewind', and in order to distinguish the difference between the rewind and the original narrative, we needed to make it clear, and by doing so we thought it was our best shot to change the colour of the rewind to make it stand out to the viewer. 

We decided on a 'vintage' effect which we collectively felt tied in exceptionally well with the atmosphere of the video and subtly shows the viewer that this is a 'rewind'. Once this was decided, Zach then created three different rewind options, of which we would decide on one final rewind; the brightness altered in each one, which meant that all three had essentially created different moods for the video. 

In order to create the rewind clip for our music video, we would need to reverse all the clips previous to the rewind and then speed them up. We didn't include any lip synching in the rewind as it is separate from the narrative and may also cause confusion and we wanted to keep the rewind as simple as possible for it's full effect. 

Below is a screenshot of our footage on Final Cut and how one can go about 'reversing' a clip in order to create a rewind for a music video. 

Colour correction

Zach took on the role of 'colour correction', which is basically where you simply adjust or tweak the colouring of the footage which we have filmed. In the words of Zach 'colour correction often occurs after the first few rushes have been made and towards the end of the editing process', however we needed to get the colour correction done beforehand. 

The reason that Zach took on the role of colour correction lay in the fact that he has a Final Cut add-on called 'Magic Bullet' which is not available on the school laptops and therefore he needed to do it on his own laptop, and would then be transferred onto the school laptop at a later stage once completed. It was however, important that the whole group were aware of what Zach would be doing to the footage and what the colour correction would look like as an outcome, therefore we needed to discuss what sort of atmosphere and look for the footage that we wanted to achieve from the colour correction. We also wanted a different look for the lip synching scenes and in this look we would have to correct the exposure in some of the shots and to also reduce the background noise, which can become very time consuming, as Zach would know. 

After a short discussion, we chose a look which we feel heavily borrows from the original music video by Passion Pit. This look had quite a vintage finish to it which creates a soft rather than edgy atmosphere to the footage, which should hopefully look really good. 

Here are some screenshots which Zach took whilst undergoing the colour correction process: 

Zach dragged this effect onto the footage in order to activate the 'Magic Bullet' add-on. 

These are the scopes that can be played around with, and the main one which Zach used was the 'Hue/Saturation' ones. 

Three way colouring is key to successful colour grading, slightly offsetting the highlights, mid-tones and shadows helped Zach to achieve this look successfully.

Adding a slight vignette adds a faded look and changing the colour curve on the subject can sway the hue and saturation in order to make the colours softer. 

Here is a brief video in which Zach demonstrates the difference between the colour corrected versions of the footage and the original, and hence stresses the importance and the effect of colour correction. 

Ending open to interpretation

Unfortunately, I was off ill the whole of the past week and therefore have not been in school to help with the editing or shift in ideas.

Zach very kindly sent me a message on Facebook explaining that someone had given him the idea to end the video with the main character smiling, instead of just looking up at the boy offering her a drink, and wanted to know my opinion on this ending. He then told me that he had briefly explained this ending to our media teacher who loved this idea and further offered that perhaps the smile could initiate your own interpretation, that because of the rewinds it is made clear that these are all just possible scenarios which could happen if she takes the drink, and that she is smiling because she knows what she is going to do, but nobody else does; leaving it up to audience's own interpretation.

This is how our video ended before the smile was added in:

This is how our video ended once the smile was added in:

Regardless of our teacher feedback on this shot, as a group, we decided that our interpretation of this is that she is smiling because she doesn't actually know which option to choose and she doesn't know of the different outcomes either, therefore she is still in a positive mind state. What the audience are shown in the course of the video are just possibilities for what could happen if she does or doesn't take the drink. However, this is of course just our group interpretation and it is in fact open to your own interpretation - with no right or wrong answer. 

Encountering some problems with the text used in our video

Since the first teacher feedback session yesterday, the main piece of negative criticism which stood out to the group was the idea that the display of 'Passion Pit' and the song title 'Constant Conversations' gives the music video a documentary atmosphere which doesn't seem to work, and that we need to change it or play around with it. 

However, as previously stated, collectively we decided that we would try whatever we could so that we didn't need to remove it from our video, as we all really like the feature and we think it is a good  inditronica genre convention within music videos; it relates to the Passion Pit's other music videos which feature a very similar convention and it also introduces the artist and the song, which we felt was a good idea as they are not a very well - known band; it therefore helps the audience to become familiar with the band's identity. 

We therefore continued to look into other music videos, in particular Passion Pit's videos, but also from other artists within the indietronica genre in order to see their style of music video and how, if at all, they choose to display the artist and song title. From this research we noticed that in fact many music videos share the same style as we had which obviously wasn't helpful considering we have to remove the text displayed at the beginning of our video - which is a real shame. 

However, from this extensive research, we noticed that Passion Pit's original music video to Constant Conversations (as previously shown) features the artist title and song title in separate shots, which didn't help us considering we needed to find an alternative way of displaying these titles. We then stumbled across Passion Pit's video for 'Talk A Walk' which displays a different way of the song and artist titles: 

Therefore, we decided that it was probably best to scrap the initial display of the artist and song title being separate, and to merge them together at the beginning of our video, in order to remove the documentary-feel:

Teacher feedback session

FIRST FEEDBACK SESSION FOR FIRST DRAFT

During our double Media lesson on Monday 26th January, there was a teacher feedback session in regard to the 'first draft' of our video.

However, of course, we were met with problems. Problems including that we have only edited the first 40 seconds of our video so far, and therefore we only had a 40 second clip to show the class and also the teachers. Seeing this was supposed to be our first draft, therefore this can be conceived as a major issue because 40 seconds worth of video was most obviously not our first draft.

Therefore, this showed us that we had a poor judgement of timing and therefore needed to work quicker and more effectively with our editing. It is also important that we meet the next deadlines required of our group.

However, we still had to show something to the teachers and class, therefore we had to show the 40 seconds which we had edited. The first 40 seconds of our video don't include any lip synching scenes, therefore we were asking the teachers to comment on the introduction of the video and the setting of the scene and atmosphere.


The two pieces of feedback which we received were:

1) The writing over the footage which introduced the song title and the artist and giving it a sense of identity gave the video a 'documentary - type' feel, and not a music video atmosphere which is what it should have been.

However, as a group we were all really fond of the displayed font and we felt that it added to the sleek atmosphere of the video. Passion Pit's official video for Constant Conversations also includes text in their video. Therefore we got the idea from that, and I do not feel that it gives it a 'documentary' feel as opposed to a music video feel, therefore for the moment, we are going to keep the text as collectively we all really like it. 

2) The scene where everyone is entering the 'party in the woods' was too fast and needs to be slowed down and therefore lacked a party atmosphere. Therefore we need to look at alternate ways of editing this footage to add to a fast party pace without it actually being sped up, which is what most of the teachers seemed to comment on.







SECOND FEEDBACK SESSION FOR FIRST DRAFT

Re - filming the lip synching

When looking at some of the footage of the lip synching from the second shoot, we noticed that the lead singer lost track of some of the lyrics and because he was in a hurry some of the footage was rushed and we did not get complete coverage of all the lip synching needed for our video.

Therefore, Zach rearranged to meet Danny (the lead singer) in order to re film the lip synching for our video. Unfortunately because Zach managed to reschedule the lip synching with Danny at quite late notice, neither myself, Amy or Abi were able to make it to the filming.

The footage which Zach came out with looked much better than the first attempt at lip synching, as did the quality of the footage.

Some organising for the schedule of editing

Now that we have the majority of our footage filmed, we will now need to dedicate our time to editing and creating our music video.

Although the actual editing has not yet begun, we still wanted to make the use of our time effective, we therefore spent today discussing our plan of action in regard to the editing.

Our plan of action is as follows:

• Use most media lessons to edit.
• Follow the storyboard as close as possible, while using creative decisions and lyrical cues to decide when to put an appropriate lip synching clip.
• Review all footage twice to ensure that there are no mistakes or problems with it e.g an actor laughing in the background.
• Cut on the beat, as we learnt from the previous Final Cut Pro task.
• If we do any individual editing, show all other group members before clicking save.

Digipak layout

Some brief outcomes from the footage

After the first failed attempt, there was much room for improvement for the second attempt. Therefore we made sure that any previous errors which had been made were not made a second time around. For example; we chose a much closer location which was easier for us all to get to as opposed to Essex which only 1/4 of the group could easily access. We also started filming much much earlier, at 11am as opposed to 3pm, meaning that the lighting would be far greater than the previous attempt which had made the footage very grainy and unprofessional-like. The location of the woods was in a much more open area and thus meaning that the light could be seen and reached easier and therefore the 'ISO value' didn't need to be as high (the lower the value, the clearer the quality!).

In order to allow more freedom, we decided to add a prologue scene and also go slightly off storyboading, which therefore meant that it was easier to allow creativity and non-scripted events to happen. Filming off of a script or storyboard can often mean that the footage is more realistic as people aren't having to act in a certain way and thus can be seen as more natural. After looking over the footage after the shoot was finished, we decided that this was a successful decision as we managed to capture some interesting shots and the acting looked a lot better than the previous video. 

The first major problem that we were met with was when the sun began to set around approximately 4pm.  We decided that it was more practical to get all the narrative shot first, however the lip synching was yet to take place, and the darker it was getting the more we realised that we really needed to get some lip synching done, if not all, then we would have to shoot again on another day. Luckily however, we brought a fill light with us which was utilised to its full potent ion; the close ups looked amazing when the light was directed as the lead singers face. Unfortunately however, some of the long shots had more grain than expected which don't look as great on the bigger screen. 

Here are two screen shots from the footage where the difference can be seen:

No noise.

A slight bit of visible noise, but not a massive problem.

One other issue we were met with was that Danny, the lead singer, was in a slight hurry and so some of the lyrics were rushed and thus some of the shots were not perfected as you can see that Danny is not reciting the lyrics very clearly, and therefore some of the lip synching might need to be reshot. However, this shoot was definitely more successful than the first shoot and the footage we got was much more professional looking than the first. We also gathered up more footage and therefore there was more to play around with when editing.