Editing Process

Throughout the making of our music video we used many different software's to tweak and change certain things. For example we used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our music video itself and this allowed us to change the length of shots and also the speed of them, use techniques such as multi cam and also to add transitions to the video to make it more realistic and professional.

Firstly when it came to editing our music video we focused on at first the timeline on the software, using this software allowed us to lengthen or shorten clips, change edit points, stretch certain clips so that they sync with the lyrics of the song, create multiple layers of both video and audio for example with video creating titles etc and with audio voice overs and the music itself. We were also able to add transitions to our video and special effects from using the timeline.

This timeline shows how the clips can pieced together to create a series of shots and also that there is a lot of different techniques and elements we could of used to help with our video. This image was taken at a much earlier stage of the editing process and it therefore looks fairly empty but as time progressed this was full with clips and sequences.

This image was taken towards the start of the editing process and also towards the start of filming for our music video. At this stage we had used little effects on our clips but we had shortened and lengthened them to make them fit right and look suitable in relation to the lyrics of the song.

This was the first clip we edited and compressed and from this it helped form a basis for our ideas and decisions in terms of editing and the techniques used. We used adjacent shots in order for the audience to feel involved with the sequences thus hopefully noticing more the realisation of the piece.

The image shows a cigarette and this clip had been slowed down to introduce the thief to the audience and portray a bad image as he is smoking.

With regards to this image, it was taken fairly early as well and it can be seen that we have cut up many clips to make them fit in sync with the song. This clip was a performance shot and in order to make it as realistic and as professional as possible we edited this and linked it up with the lyrics of the song. This was quite tricky getting it just right so that it looked in sync but it worked well in the end and the mouth expressions of the artists works very well in combination with the lyrics.

This footage of the traffic in Lincoln city we took was very effective although we tweaked it to some extent. The reason we did this is because we wanted to portray a feeling of time passing from looking at this shot, which meant we had to increase the pace of the traffic. We used the duration tool to change our footage. This allowed us to effectively change the speed of our footage to either a faster or slower paced. We chose to use this effect to indicate in our video the passing of time which suited well with the fast tempo of our music song. We increased it to 3000% which effectively gave us the appropriate speed we initially wanted.

This image is the speed tool and this tool played a important role in the editing process. We used this tool on various occasions such as when syncing the artists mouth expressions with the lyrics we had to slow some shots down in order for them to look effective and in some cases we also had to speed them up. We used this tool mostly on cutaway to emphasise a progression of time and the passing of a day in which the artists reflect upon. For example towards the end of the music video there is a sunset and we sped this up to emphasise the end of the day and the end of the video and we felt that this worked well in balance with a fade transition. 

We also with regards to the editing process used a software called Adobe Photoshop. This programme was used to edit texts and titles for our music video and also to create our digipak which consisted of a front cover, inside cover and back cover and also a magazine advert.

We loaded the image up onto Photoshop. After doing this, we decided to use different effects, to enhance the artists making them more noticeable as a band to empathise that we are promoting them. By doing this I wanted them to stand out in the foreground to create a more direct address to the audience. First, I used the history brush tool to create a dim grey background but keeping the artists in colour artist we were promoting therefore making them stand out. We then used tools to give the magazine advert a professional finish which included the same font ‘praetorian’ used for the digipak and created stars using the shapes tool to create a rating for our advert.

The font added to the realism of an urban environment however as we are also trying to promote the band, the text as a whole looked too bland and didn't stand out enough to grab audience’s attention. Our group then used another font with a bolder colour effect to achieve this. After choosing the appropriate font, we used a gold highlighted colour effect to portray a wealthy symbol to create a contrast between the wealth and the clear lack of it which is empathised by the grey colour from the urban background.

We created information about the band such as a website and a rating from a newspaper. We took the iTunes logo and made it clear as to where it is available on. to make it stand out we used the brush tool to gently highlight in white the surrounding areas around the logo, then using the blur tool, effectively added a professional and smooth finish to it.

This image was one of our main ideas for the back cover of our digipak and we felt that it worked well in terms of one band member isolated from the other to relate to the music video of the young characters suffering. We felt that the text worked well to some extent but then after some consideration we felt that the text did not relate to the music video very well and there was no aspects of urban and run down and a poverty stricken environment to both the text and the image.

We used tools such as emboss to make the text stand out more, we also added more layers to layer the bar code, website and text itself onto the image. We made the text look like it graffiti on a wall by reducing the colour aspect and making it look more faded, I felt that this worked to some extent but the colours we used did not work as well.

I felt that this text suited and related to the genre of our music video and that the style of text connotes the urban location of our music video. Although once we put some thought into using this text we found that it was too plain and simple and did not fit into the our music video. We tried to tweak the text using tools on Photopshop such as drop shadow and colour overly to match the text with the run down element of our video. Overall we felt that this text did not appeal to us for our back cover as it would not work with the rest of the image. 

With regards to editing our Magazine advert we used Photoshop again as our experience had increased over the progression of the year. We used tools such as the history brush to make the environment black and white and the artists in colour to make them stand out more. I felt this technique worked particularly well in terms of promoting the artists positively and also I felt that it catches the audiences eye.

The font added to the authenticity of an urban appearance however as we are also trying to promote the band, the text as a whole looked too bland and didn't stand out enough to grab audience’s attention. This led us to using another font with a bolder colour effect to achieve this. After choosing the appropriate font, we used a gold highlighted colour effect to portray a wealthy symbol to create a contrast between the wealth and the clear lack of it from the urban background.

We then had to create information about the band and upcoming album we were promoting. We took the iTunes logo and made it clear as to where it is available on. to make it stand out we used the brush tool to gently highlight in white the surrounding areas around the logo, then using the blur tool, effectively added a professional and smooth finish to it.