Editing

After the filming we began editing and when we began we realised how difficult ahead of us was as we had amassed a vast total of 1 hour and 34 minutes of footage to go through and edit into a mere 3 minute music video. We spent up to 30 hours over three weeks to edit our music video. We probably spent up to ten hours each working on the footage. We approached the job by first of all doing a first assembly, a rough cut of the video and then working and changing shots endlessly to produce several fine cuts which were precisely edited.

We used several different programs to edit our music video and these programs include: Final Cut Pro (Professional Editing Software, used by the movie business), Adobe After Effects (Another piece of Professional Editing Software), and Color (a colour retouching program which allows you to edit the colours in videos or photographs).

We started editing the music video by first logging all of the shots we wished to use so that we could easily find them and input them into the timeline. We used the storyboard to direct us roughly but if there was a shot we like more than the one in the storyboard then we used that one instead. It was quite easy to create the rough cut as the storyboard provided quite a lot of help and kept us organised and focused on what we wanted to accomplish concerning the original idea.

The rough cut was a basic compilation of the shots we wanted to use in the music video. Yet, it wasn’t a complete music video as we needed and wanted to add things to convey certain meanings as well as removing things which conveyed the wrong meaning. Luke helped us with this as he informed us which things were not up to pars and which were. As we heeded his advice we got our fine cut and finished the editing.

As we know Kuleshov stated the 70% of meaning is conveyed visual so it was very important that we considered the shots specifically and carefully to portray the right meaning.

We used several shots the swing as it represents several different things which we are trying to convey to the audience about the artist. For example when we think back to our childhood we usually imagine swinging on the swings as a child, it is a memory of happiness. It could also be seen as a symbol of love as there are some teenagers who have made out while sitting on swings. A swing also represents freedom as it provides artificial flight and makes the individual feel like a bird in the sky. So as the swing represents these three themes we found it logical to involve it often and frequently to build the actresses’ personality as a loving, carefree, happy, individualistic person.

We often used discontinuity editing to jolt and shock the audience into being interested by the music video, yet we also used it to show how the artist is a freethinking person who doesn’t care about the rules as some of the shots are physically impossible to carry out in real life. For example, we have a shot of Lucas walking up a ladder and then Ruby walking down in thanks to editing. This makes the audience feel confused and sees our music video as out of the ordinary, which it should be.

We applied some of Negus’s pop video conventions to our music video so that the audience, like the featuring of the artist, as well as a wide and extensive use of shot types, camera movement and angles just to mention a few we used. Yet, we didn’t use a few of the conventions to keep the audience interested in our music video, as Barthez discusses with his investigation into “plasir” and “jouissance”. One example of this is how we changed the length of certain shots depending on importance as usually shots for a music video would cut on the beat but we even cut without the beat because it made sense with the previous shot considering the performance.

When looking back at the editing process there were occasions when we as a group looked at our footage and thought it a shame that we didn’t explore the jump cut editing to a more interesting level as we could have used it even more to create a more interesting video. We also wished we have more of a band involved in the music video but Lukas did a great job for being all alone with everything the band was meant to do as a group.

Yet, we did say that we created a great piece of work through all that happened on that day and I still believe this to be true, we worked hard and we created a great piece of work.