Finishing touches

It seemed that time was running out and was unfortunately not on our side, and therefore the finishing touches of our video needed to be finalised. In most cases, there would have been approximately 3 drafts, however as we have already discussed, we wanted to perfect the first draft thus spending far longer on the first draft than probably needed in order to allow for minimal changes on our video after feedback. 

The feedback which we received from our teachers and our form class were easily solved and manageable. 

Problem: Again, one media teacher commented on the first 40 seconds looking like a short film. Especially the display of the artist and song name across the screen.

Solution: We will put the titles along the bottom (instead of over the top of the footage) and immediately it will connote a music video.

Because of this, we very reluctantly decided to remove the existing titles; 'Passion Pit' and 'Constant Conversations'.  We then decided that we would just use the traditional display of the artist and song title - in the bottom left-hand corner, which is of course, a convention of music videos anyway.

Ultimately, this removes the 'documentary' feel to the music video.

Problem: No record label

Solution: Put at the end of the video

For this, we needed to go back over our initial record label research in order to discover who is responsible for our artist - Passion Pit. In which, we discovered that Columbia Records, which is a conglomerate of Sony Music Entertainment. Therefore we decided to put a black screen at the end displaying the record company. 

Problem: A few lip synching shots were out of time

Solution: Re-time them in Final Cut

For this, we just shortened or lengthened each clip as necessary and moved each one forward or backward by several frames in order to match the duration of the lyrics. This did however, take a while because most of the lip synching shots were actually fine so it became more difficult to find the ones which were not fine. However, of course, we did eventually find the out of synch ones and made sure that they were now in synch. 

After most of the final editing was finished, we decided that we wanted to connote the 'film look' despite this being a music video, and despite being previously told to take things out of the video because it was too 'documentary' like - we wanted this look. The main thing we wanted to add was a 'letter box', which is essentially two black bars - one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen. This then gives the video a more cinematic feel to it and adds a touch of professionality. 

In order to do this, we simply cropped the footage by 65.0 px on the top and bottom and it then revealed the black background underneath. However, one problem we encountered was that some of the clips needed to be moved higher or lower in order to ensure that nothing important was cropped out.  For example; on the final shot, half of the girl's head was obscured by the black bar, so we therefore needed to move the footage lower to make the rest of her head visible and so that it doesn't look tacky and careless. 

Before:

After:

The final change made was that we decided to extend the smile at the end of the video for another 5 frames. The reason we did this was because when showing the video around for feedback, a few people hadn't actually noticed the smile at the end, so therefore if we extended it's duration then people should hopefully notice the smile.

First draft feedback

Once our first draft was complete we wanted to show it to our media teachers and see what their opinion was and listen to their feedback. We filmed their response to our video, and they gave us some really valuable feedback:

Here are some of the key things which were mentioned, which will need to be changed in our video:

Problem: Again, one media teacher commented on the first 40 seconds looking like a short film

Solution: We will put the titles along the bottom (instead of over the top of the footage) and immediately it will connote a music video.

Problem: No record label

Solution: Put at the end of the video

Problem: A few lip synching shots were out of time

Solution: Re-time them in Final Cut

Overall editing of our music video

When it comes to editing the footage, we are using a software called 'Final Cut Pro'. This software is thankfully quite straightforward to use and therefore doesn't require much practice or tutorial before fully getting the hang of it. 

Throughout the process of creating and editing our music video in Final Cut, we took some screenshots which explain how to use the Final Cut software. 

We put a section of the clips into the timeline in order to see if they flowed and if they fitted well together, we then made sure that it fitted in with the music and the beat.

We took certain sections from each clip and put it into the timeline. We didn't use all of the footage we had filmed and we chose which section we wanted from each individual clip, as we did not need the full duration of each clip. Previous to the editing, Zach had colour corrected these clips; this therefore sped up the editing process for us once the clips were on Final Cut.

Our timeline began to look rather messy and compact. But thankfully, regardless of the messy display of footage, all the group members were fully aware of the stages we were up to and could understand what was going on.

Once the editing was in full swing, obviously we were getting feedback for what had been produced so far, and as a group we were also able to notice and point out little flaws with the editing so far. One flaw which had been pointed out was the fact that we lacked footage and we needed to use up as much footage as possible in order to cover the full duration of our video. Therefore for certain clips we decided it could be a good idea to slow down some clips in order to fill up screen time and to also fit in with the overall atmosphere of the video. Luckily for us, our clips were filmed at 48fps rather than the standard 24fps which means that the individual frames wont be seen when the clip is slowed down as it was filmed at a higher frame rate.

We decided that the speed of the clip needed to be slower than 50%, but this unfortunately meant that some of the frames then became visible. Thankfully, Zach has good experience and skill with Final Cut and has actually experienced this exact incident before and he therefore knew how to prevent the frame visibility from happening. He used a new tool to Final Cut Pro; the 'Optical Flow' with extrapolates and the bits in between the frames preventing them from being visible.

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.