The Editing Process

I have recently started editing the footage for the music video that my production partner and I are making. We started by copying the footage into Final Cut Pro because this is a better programme to use as it is easier to understand and it looks more professional. Firstly, we put some shots of the band in so that we could see exactly where we wanted to place the shots of our narrative story. In order to make the shots of the band look effective we had to synchronise them so they matched the exact pace and timing of the music, this was very difficult because if we didn't do this correctly then it would just look unprofessional. Once we'd synchronised some of the band shots onto the timeline we began to make plans of what else we needed and where it would go in order for the music video to look good.

After we'd filmed some of the narrative scenes we proceeded to place them onto the timeline so they fitted with the song lyrics, this would make it synchronous and it would therefore help the audience understand what the video is about. Putting the narrative scenes onto the timeline was very easy, because my production partner and I knew exactly where we wanted them to go. However we came across some continuity problems which meant we couldn't use certain shots that we'd taken. We then had to crop and cut some of the other shots in order for the continuity to be correct, this was a tricky task because we had to make sure the footage looked good once we'd cropped it and if it didn't then we'd have to do some more filming. During the music video we have crosscutted between the narrative shots and the performance shots in order to create a richer and more entertaining structure for the video, this allowed the transitions to be smooth with no jump cuts as this is something we didn't want because we felt that it would make the video look unprofessional.

Once the video had all of the major conventions of the indie genre my production partner and I began to incorporate more shots from the narrative scenes in order to make it flow better with the band shots. We wanted the band shots to be synchronous with the overall beats of the song, with a match-on-action so when there is a drum fill we wanted a long shot of the drummer doing this fill as it involves audience members who are interested in this sort of instrument. This shot lasted for about 8 seconds so that the audience could see the drum fill properly, because cutting it would've made it look unfinished and may have given way to a jump cut. This makes the pace of the music video and the transitions flow smoother and reflect the conventional indie music videos that are seen nowadays.

Once my production partner and I felt that we had included enough of the narrative scenes we began to experiment with filters. We did this because we thought that by having a filter our music video would look more professional due to the type of genre the song is from. We looked at a filter called "Cold Steel" because we felt that it fitted in with the genre of our chosen song. This particular filter reflects the ideology and the mood of the song due to it being flat and melancholic, so then an active audience would be able to deconstruct the meaning behind the lyrics when they watch the video because of how the filter makes them feel about the song. Some of the other filters fitted with the genre as well but we didn't feel that there was enough light being shown through some of the others, and this aspect would make our music video look unprofessional which is something we didn't want. On the day of the shoot the sun was very bright and it therefore overexposed the actors so their facial expressions couldn't be seen, by adding this filter it gave a consistent flatter tone to the music video that was monochromatic with the use of blues and greys. This sort of colour scheme reflects the simplicity of the digipak as well, even though a sepia filter is used on the digipak and poster, it represents the ideals of the band and the song itself.