Editing

We have taken five weeks of our schedule to edit our Music Video. I feel this gave us enough time to edit our footage successfully and with a positive end result. Our previous planning throughout the year, along with our animatic and storyboards allowed us to edit our filmed footage relatively easily as we knew the basic structure of our video.

I started of by capturing back our footage of the tape in the Camera and onto the Apple Mac which I were using to edit our footage. The program I used is called 'Final Cut Pro', this is editing software which allowed us to cut, crop and use special effects on my clips of footage. Once I had my footage captured onto the Mac I then separated it into 'Testing Footage, 'Beach Location Footage' and 'Woodland Location Footage'. By doing this it allowed me to be able to find the piece of footage i was looking for easily. This in turn made editing a lot easier.

Once I had all our footage on the Mac and saved in the folders I could then start getting a basic layout of footage onto my timeline. I had uploaded the song so I could place certain pieces of the video to certain beats of the song to give the video a bit more structure which made it look more realistic. By getting a basic order of all my footage onto the timeline it allowed me to be able to then go back and add in other effects and clips once i had the main order. This worked well because it let me be able to keep an order to all the footage that i was using.

When I had placed all the basic sequence of footage onto the timeline I was then able to add effects like quick cuts and fades into the sequence.

Effects, Techniques and Fades.

The first 0.00 - 0.06 seconds of the video have been designated to quick shots, I chose to do this because it allowed the video to establish its opening set. The shots consist of some painted leaves, the actress and the book which is called 'Swimming' therefore which directly links to the song title. By doing this we know in the first 6 seconds that it is set in a leafy area and the video is going to contain a girl in a black flowery dress. I think this is a good establishing opening.

At 0.06 - 0.08 of the video I have used my first fade to black and out again to go from one view into a close up shot of her face singing. i think it was right to use a fade her as a quick shot from panning up her body to then be directly on her face didn't look right, so it was necessary to put a fade in here.

0.33 - 0.35, here I have another fade to black and back again because the footage which we shot did not fit in right with how we wanted to edit it. In the footage I had she was in two different sections of the woodland area, so by adding a fade we were able to make it seem as if time had passed whilst she was walking from one section to the other as the fade ends with her still walking.

0.43 - 0.44, another fade is used here because once again she is in two different positions and these were not the positions that would allow the video to go smoothly, so I put in a fade to allow us to be able to use the footage which I had already. The outcome in my opinion was successful because I were able to end one scene of the woodland and carry on smoothly into the next scene.

1.35 - 1.37 is this clip of the video I have used a bright white fade in contrast the the black fades which i have previously used. I think this works really well in this scene because the brightness of the sun behind her as she is walking down the steps allows us to be able to use this bright fade.

2.19 -2.26, in this 7 seconds of footage we have used quick cuts on the beat and when the song plays the words 'And then I realised'. We have cut the footage to get closer on each of the three beats, starting from a long shot then a closer shot but still and long shot and then ending with a mid-shot of her singing the words to the song. I think this is effective because it adds a bit of variety into the shots which we are using.

2.30 - 3.02. In this section of footage we have added in a 3 second shot which changes the position of the actress when the songs plays 'Your song reminds me of swimming', the shot plays overriding shot plays whilst this bit song is being sung and then returns to the previous footage. This happens three times, I did this because it is quite a long section of footage and I felt it needed a bit of variety so by adding the same shot in when the same line was sung it gave the scene a bit if variety and stops the scene looking so static.

3.02 - 3.11. In this last section of the video I wanted to create something a bit more dramatic to end with. So i did this by adding in two shots per second for 9 seconds. The shots that I used are in reverse order of the video itself. In effective it is showing her journey through the video. I think this is effective because it adds a bit of edge and dramatises the video. You could say that it leaves it going out with a bang.

I end the video with a high angleshot of the actress laying down next to the book with 'Swimming' written on it. This is therfore relating the ending to the beginning of the video as we see her reading the same book at the start.

In conclusion I think all the effects and techniques i used were effective in creating the right view of the video that i wanted to achieve. I feel that the effects have improved sections of my video by allowing me to use certain footage which i may not have been able to use if the editing and effects were not avaible.