Editing Journal: Part 2

This is when the actual editing process started to take place and the final product was beginning to come together. We mainly worked on placing the footage we had in time with the music, e.g. lip-syncing and linking the direct visuals with the music to show how well thought out our music video is. We started to cut each clip so that any loose ends of the individual clips were erased and that the exact timings could be calculated. This took some time as we had a lot of clips to get through and a lot of clips to watch so that we knew we had chosen the best ones that we had.

Our group faced huge challenges in that fact that we did not like the way the footage was placed and how it flowed. It looked dull and we found it boring to watch and we knew our target audience would as well. We would have also had to cut clips incredibly short in order to link the intended visuals with the audio, meaning we would have to get rid of some great footage we took and also we would have encountered timing issues if we did that. It took us a while (almost two hours) to figure out what we could do to solve this problem. We experimented with a number of different openings from the car scene to trying to make our original idea work by swapping clips around but none of these worked. In the end we managed to use a sequence of footage (the forest scenes) at the beginning of the music video instead of at the end and we all agreed that in fact we preferred this idea to our original storyboard. Therefore, we went completely against our storyboard idea and where the original footage was supposed to be and changed our music video completely.

Lip-syncing process

Once we were comfortable with the changes we had made we went on to trying to match the lip-syncing clip we had taken in the forest up with the audio. As a group we decided it was a good idea to make sure that we include lyrics to visuals so that it conforms with the traditional conventions of music videos. It also proved to be popular with our focus group and target audience, meaning we have followed the brief.

Creating the time lapse

After completing the lip-syncing process of editing our music video we decided it would be a good idea to sort the time lapse out. Fortunately we filmed enough footage (two minutes worth) of Phoebe putting on her make-up in her bedroom and so we managed to create a time lapse of multiple different shots of her applying it. To create a time lapse in Premiere Pro we just sped up the footage to a much faster speed than the rest of the clips so it was obvious what we had done but not so fast that important details were lost. The only difficulty we faced was we needed to make sure that the main part of the song where the beat drops needed to match the fast pace time lapse as this is what we had intended form the outset as the pace of the time lapse would look so effective with the fast pace music.

We then saved our first draft and spoke to one of our media teachers about what she thought and to give us some feedback on how to improve.

Miss Pearce said: "The bench shot cutting straight to the car didn't make sense to her so therefore won't make sense in your music video". She went on to say how this could be improved by including a shot of the bench with Phoebe not within the shot to show how she is leaving that location and going into her car from the bench. This will then look more effective and realistic. Miss Pearce also said "I like the way the music matches each shot and that the lyrics and visuals work well together. I also like the underpass clips because to me it shows as if someone is watching Phoebe throughout the music video and that Phoebe is unaware of this happening." This is exactly what we has intended and so we are happy with the way our music video is coming together.