Editing the last bits.

On Thursday (last day of half term) I went to the media lesson in my free period and continued to edit our music video. The reason I carried on editing was because last lesson Mr Roberts watched our video and he told us that the editing needed to be changed in order to make our music video look great. Before we changed our ending, we had a shot of me (the actress) sitting at the top of the stairs and holding the wooden banister singing the lines 'like raindrops', because this was a full body shot and not a close up Mr Roberts felt that the actress was not interacting with the audience enough and as this would be the last time we hear her singing he wanted a close up of the actress so that it creates more of an impact on the viewer. I understood his comments and decided to delete the stairs shot and I began looking for a close up of me singing 'like raindrops' I could not find any so I thought it might look good if I used a shot a we have previously used (a close up of me laying down on the bed). I dragged this clip in and of course it was not in sync, so I had to make it a lot slower by adjusting the speed tool. Myung was also with me to help me do this. Myung and I became much focused and it took us some time but we managed to tweak the speed enough to get the shot into sync and the end result was brilliant as the new shot we dragged in included lots of impact and dramatic effects. We decided to add a transition in before the close up so that the last two scenes overlap one another in a dramatic way. The transition we included was ‘cross dissolve’ and it worked very well.

Once we had finished editing the last scenes, Myung and I looked over the whole video about 8 times trying to find any faults that we could improve. We came across about 1 fault each time, this was things like the colour of the scene did not match the next clip and they looked a bit jumpy with one another so we decided on a colour to use on both of them that would make them match. Another fault we found were one of the shots still had the original audio on it so we took the audio out and then went on to each clip making sure the audio was on mute for every clip. Once we made all these changes and we were happy with it, we showed it to Mr Roberts again and he was very impressed and satisfied with our final project. We then had to save our video on to a quick time file and once that was complete we saved our project onto the 'Media Archive'. This means that we can not go back and make any changes to our music video as we have given it to our teacher and we have met our deadline.

Mariam Nikpour

More editing (Nearly completed)

Today in our double lesson, we worked in a team trying to get the lip syncing to perfection. Bit by bit we watched the same parts over and over again to try and get the artist to be more believable to the audience. If the lip syncing, which is a significantly important part is not done to an accurate level then the audience is likely to disengage with the artist which is not what we want. What we want, is for the viewer to 'sing-a-long' and merge with the artist.

After the lesson, mariam went to media and tried to sync up the music video for some time. Later on, after mariam left I came back to see how much more needed to be done. And i noticed that the syncing had improved very dramatically, and that there were only one or two spots which needed to be changed.

So i took a few hours plugging my headphone into the mac to get rid of background noise and started trimming the start/end of several clips on the Imovie program. I found for alot of the footage, where it was hard to sync that the problem was that the artist had sung the lyrics slightly differently to the actual song.

The main solution was to split the clip so it was separated from the footage which was synced and to slow down specific parts that weren't so that the audience believe that the artist is actually singing the lyrics. It was important however when slowing down the clip to be precise and not slow it down too much or else, the timing was not right.

Then if this didn't do the trick, trimming the start and end of the next clip was a good idea or go redrag a longer version of the same clip (some edited footage were too short), so that the length can be increased to go with the beat.

There were two main parts, where this was particularly difficult near the end of the song (part where Ellana Rose is by the tree and singing continually onto the spotlight scene). Because it needs to continually engage the audience, with interest. However after an hour or two, it finally worked. I tried to listen to the dramatic cymbal beat in the song carefully and sync the spotlight scene to it, so that this would have more dramatic effect. It finally worked.

It was possible to fix other minor syncing errors too using this slowing down and trimming method. Other alternatives used, include changing the duration of the clip.

Finally i changed the contrast of the swimming pool part because i thought that it was a bit too dark, as when the music video is burnt on a CD/DVD the quality could be effected and the very details and ripples in the water may not show as well as it should.

-Myung-

Camera Work: We filmed a lot of close ups of our artist because it is important that music videos have these due to the desire we had to create a sense of intimacy for the viewer. It also emphasises half of the commodity on sale, meaning not just the song, but the artist and her voice. Because we included many close ups in our music video, it was essential that the lip syncing was perfect as it becomes a lot more noticeable when the viewers attention has been brought to the artists face and lips as they listen to the lyrics.

Our artist gives good eye contact and facial gestures via the close up. Role playing through the narrative and mise-en-scene will present the artist in a number of ways which helps the audience interact on a more personal level.

Editing: We decided to include what is called a ‘fast cut montage’ to our music video, this is when many clips are put together where appropriate to make the scenes so interesting that it is impossible to grasp on first viewing which means the viewer will keep watching the music video over and over again.

Because our character is typical a female solo artist we felt it would be necessary to include slow place scenes and a few gentler transitions in order to establish moods and create a sense of intensity for our audience.

Mariam Nikpour

What is editing?

Research on Editing

I researched into the meaning of editing before taking a role in editing, to gain a better understanding of what i want to achieve.

Editing is the process of manipulating and rearranging video shots to create a new work. Editing is usually seen as part of the post production process. Other post production tasks can include for example: sound mixing and colour correction. Editing is a term which is used to describe all the post production work, this usually occurs in more non-professional situations and amateur film producers.

Although there are many reasons why editing may be done, it really depends on the desired outcome. Before you begin editing, it is important to understand which editing goals you aim to achieve at the end:

Removing unwanted footage- This is the easiest and most common task in editing, as many videos can be dramatically improved just by removing unwanted footage.

Choosing the best footage- It is a good idea to film as much footage as you can, so that you can choose the best footage to use for final editing. There is much more choice, if there is enough footage and often cameramen will shoot the same footage several times to get the best shot.

Creating a flow- Editing is important to making sure that the video serves the purpose of what it wants to achieve, so that the audience understands the message that is aimed to be given across. This is the same even if the video is telling a story or providing information.

Adding effects, music, graphics ect.- By adding extra elements you can improve most videos and give a 'wow' factor to the viewer.

Altering style, pace or mood of the video- Editors who are experienced, will be able to create a specific mood to a video which can influence the audience to react in a particular way.

Angle of the video- Videos can be tailored to support a particular viewpoint, give a message or serve a agenda.

There are also different types of editing:

Film Splicing- A more traditional method, which was the first method developed for editing moving pictures and conceptually forming the basis of all video editing. This process involves cutting sections of the film and rearranging or getting rid of them. It is a very mechanical and straightforward process. In theory a film could be editing with a pair of scissors and tape, although a splicing machine would be the only practical solution. Because it holds the film in place and lined in order, while it is cut and spliced together.

Tape to tape (Linear)- Before editing computers became available in the 1990s, linear editing was the original method of editing electronical video tapes. Although it is a less prefered option for more professional work, it has its place and sometimes is a better option.

In Linear editing, footage is copied from one footage to another. It needs atleast two machines connected together, where one acts as the source and the other as a recorder.

1. Place the video to be edited in the source machine and a blank tape in the recorder.
2. Press play on the source machine and record on the recorder.

The idea of this method is to record parts of the source tape you want to keep. This way the desired footage can be recorded in order from the original tape to the new tape. So that the new tape becomes the edited version.

Digital/ Computer (non-linear)- Recorded footage from a camera is put onto a hard drive on the computer then edited using specialized software such as Finalcut Pro. Once editing is complete, the finished product can be recorded on to a CD, DVD or other forms of media.

An advantage of using this method, is that it is more flexible in terms of time and being able to change parts of the video anytime. However a disadvantage would be setting up the editing system can be a challenge, or losing edited footage because for example the computer froze.

This method is easier to learn than the linear method and after mastering, you can work much faster and efficiently.

Live editing- Multiple cameras and other video sources are routed through a central mixing console and edited in real time. Live television coverage is an example, but this method is more specialist and won't apply to most people.

- Myung -

Filming on the day 'Raindrops'

When we all arrived to Roshi's Godmothers house we began to set up the two cameras and get the rooms ready that we would be filming in. As I was the actress for our music video I had to go and get in to my costume and do my make up as appropriate for the character I would be playing. Myung and Roshi began to film footage and at times Evette took over, but Evette was mainly preparing the next room that I was going to be filmed in. When Roshi and Myung were not filming me I was looking at the story board and creating a checklist of footage that we will need to film by the end of the day and I was ticking off the tasks as we went along. The filming went really well, we managed to film all the footage on time and we had more than enough shots. All in all we had about 6 hours of footage on the two cameras. As I did not have a huge role with filming on the day because I was the actress, I took on the lead role as editor along with the other members of our group, we took it in truns and all gave in our personal in put for each scene. A lot of team work has been involved within our project and I feel that overall we worked really well together.

Mariam Nikpour

Editing 'Raindrops'

We have now finished editing our music video, and we have gone back numerous times to make sure it is perfect. When editing Raindrops we followed our story board that we had previously prepared (we also used this when filming). We uploaded all the footage from the cameras and looked at each shot on the story board and started to drag each shot, we didn't follow the story board entirely as we had some shots that looked best in other places and we had new ideas each time it came to editing. We had many great shots that we wanted to use but I put them on to I movie one by one and started to edit each scene. Everything was running smoothly within the first two weeks and Mr Roberts was happy with what we had achieved, however when we lost all of our work, we had to start from the beginning again and this meant that we were short for time. We then had 2 weeks until our deadline to edit and we found it difficult to make our music video the exact same as before.

We did our best at editing to perfection and added plenty of good transitions where appropriate such as fade to white, fade to black, cross dissolves and we also used the effects on the Mac's to change the colour, contract, exposure, lighting and brightness of each scene. Using these transitions and effects for our music video really made our end result look professional as we knew exactly where to put them and how to make them link to each soon. Furthermore, the effects on the video clips that we used made our music video look a lot more interesting and eye catchy, it also made our main character look more appealing and believable that she is a real artist. The transitions we used made our shots look more interesting and it helps each clip run smoothly when switching from one to another without any jumpy shots.

We found that lip syncing was very difficult but once we got the hang of it, we completed this task very well. I also found that by slowing down or speeding up a clip helps to lip sync and it sometimes makes the clips look more believable other than just leaving the scene as it originally was.

We had a slight problem when listening to the music Raindrops on our music video because each day I would go back on the Mac to edit, the song would not play so I had to delete the music and keep uploading the song again. It is working now so we were able to complete our editing as we listen to the music and edit at the same time so that we can edit to the beat.

Today we showed our final project to Mr Roberts and he gave us suggestions of ways to improve our music video. A few of the clips were out of sync and were quite noticeable, one of the scenes were particularly out of sync as the clip was too fast for the music. Therefore, I tried to slow the clip down and alter the duration of the clip but it still did not look in sync. I ended up deleting the entire clip and dragging in another clip of me (the actress) but singing the same lines. I then made the timing perfect by deleting the unwanted footage from the beginning and end of the clip.

Mr Roberts also told us that two of our shots were positioned in the wrong place because when the singer begins the next verse, we originally had a clip of our character standing against a large window and looking outside, then the clip changed to a close up of me singing the next half of the verse. Mr Roberts explained to us that the clip of me singing should begin as soon as the next verse does as this will give a bigger impact on our audience and make them feel a lot more engaged with the character. To correct this problem I had to drag in another clip of the close up of me singing the beginning of the second verse and I swapped it with the long shot clip of me looking out the window. I then had to listen carefully for the beat and cut off the unwanted footage at the beginning and end of the clip. It was very challenging to do as I had to ensure the lip syncing was correct and i also had to make sure the duration of the clip I added was exactly the same as the clip I had removed otherwise the rest of our music video would all be out of sync and I would have to go back and adjust every single clip.

When I finally made these improvements our music video was looking so much better and Mr Roberts was very impressed with the changes I made. I then went back and forth, watching the music video again finding other ways to improve and again, there were a few minor details where the clips were out of sync. For the last chorus we originally had a long scene of me singing to the camera (sitting on the floor with the hairdryer blowing my hair), in the middle of this scene there was a very obvious part where I didn't quite sing the lyrics 'and the lights go on'. To correct this problem I decided it would be best to split the clip and delete the section where I didn't sing, I then added another clip where I wasn't singing (walking in the corridor scene) and I filled in the space. This change made the whole scene look very professional as all the parts where it was suppose to be in sync were now in sync and it also made a long scene more interesting as there was a cut away in between. I carried on tweaking a few scenes because they were also out of sync or not going along with the beat. I am very happy with our final reuslt and we will be saving it on to a quick time file tomorrow so that Mr Roberts can access it for it to be marked.

Mariam Nikpour

Video analysis - 2NE1 - It hurts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUiMaz4BNKw
I chose this music video 'it hurts' to analyse because I noticed it had a very similar mise en scene to our music video, it also had some very nice shots that I thought we could benefit from using. The mise en scene for this video is very spooky and they also used a large, enchanted house to film in. The shots I felt we could use from the 'it hurts' video was when one of the female lead singers are sitting on the window seal looking out from high up with her legs across the side of the window. I thought this would work well in our music video because the camera framing is very accurate, showing the whole of the artist’s body and this shot is also allowing the camera to track in, making the shot more interesting other than just filming from a distance.

Furthermore, I was intrigued by some of the shots that 'it hurts' had such as, the close up of the female with the red hair singing into the camera. I was inspired by this scene as it is very passionate and it immediately catches the audience’s attention, this made me think it would be a good idea to use this shot for our own music video as I wanted our artist to interact with the audience on a personal level and keep them wanting to watch more of our video. I decided that we would film plenty of these close up shots and when it comes to editing I could make use of this footage throughout but only use it for certain parts of the music video where I want the audience to be really engaged and focused on our artist and the lyrics of which she would be singing.

In the music video 'it hurts' I particularly liked the idea of the fog machines and spooky effects that had been placed, for my own music video I felt that I could get ideas from this by using cob webs when appropriate and bringing that sense of spooky horror to our music video as well. I was also inspired by 'it hurts' because they occasionally use transitions such as 'cross dissolves’; this is when two scenes overlap one another slightly. I thought this really worked well and made their music video a lot more interesting than it would have been if they had not used this transition. When editing I will test out the 'cross dissolve' transition to see whether it works well with our music video too.

Mariam Nikpour