Editing part 2

The reason we needed to continue with the editing on the school mac computers was because we needed to use livetype and the imovie on Parmiss' laptop lacked a few features that the imovie on the school mac computers had. Once the video was transferred Shamaila continued editing with the livetype and added it into our final video. She found it difficult to get the hang of so we both tried to figure out how to transfer the clip onto livetype. Once we had that covered, she carried on and competed the livetype.

After dicussion with our teachers we decided to use slow motion on the ending of the video for when our main protagonist does the last strum on the guitar. This is because at the end, the song ends with music slowing down for a few seconds therefore the slow motion edit would fit in perfectly.

To use or not use final cut pro.

At first we wanted to use final cut pro to dissolve our black and white faces together as it wasn't working on imovie. However, after this was done we realised the dissolve was too quick and wouldn't go in time with the music, therefore we decided to not use it as it was becoming over complicated and we really want to keep our music video simple to keep a link with the simple album cover.

We found final cut pro rather difficult to understand so had help in learning how to use it. This shows that even though we are digital natives that doesn't mean we know how to use everything and that we still needed to learn how to use complex editing soptware to make our music video look more professional. However, this became too time consuming for us as we needed a large amount of help and thought that we wouldn't have enough time to finish editing.

Letterboxing

We decided to letterbox our music video to add a certain rustic effect and suits the purpose of the song very well. Furthermore, with this effect it suggests a different aspect of music videos as most videos do not letterbox, therefore by not sticking to the general conventions of a music video we are hoping this different effect will work.

Livetye problems.

An issue we came across with livetype was when we compressed the clip we wanted to edit, the exposure was darker than the other clips. Therefore, we decided to alter the exposure when we put the clip back onto imovie and asked other students to watch our video without telling them the difference in the clips. At first they didn't realise the exposure change until we told them afterwards, therefore we knew that this wasn't a major problem as techincal difficulties can not be fixed.

Editing part 1

We decided to do our editing on Parmiss' laptop as she would have more free time to do it at home and whenever we could we would go to her house and help. Parmiss found it easier in doing most of the editing on her own as she knew exactly what she needed to do and could do it quickly so we left most of it to her. She edited the whole thing together and then transferred it onto the school mac computers, however a problem arose. The problem was that it was difficult to transfer the file from her laptop onto the school mac computers and when she tried the quality decreased. Luckily she found out where she went wrong when exporting the file, as there were different choices in levels of quality to chose from, therefore we were able to transfer it onto the computer and continue the rest of our editing.

When Parmiss first began editing she found it quite difficult in chosing which shots she wanted to include as there were so many similar ones yet they needed to be perfect. After accomplishing the first 20 seconds of the video she realised how time consuming this was becoming and had to manage her time efficiently with her other subjects. Therefore, she decided in doing large amounts of editing at a time every week. After the first 40 seconds of the video Parmiss was beginning to find editing quite fun and interesting which helped her speed up the proccess. When the first minute of the video was done she was able to complete the next minute in the next week. After spending her longest time editing, which was for a day on the weekend she was finally done and transferred the video the day after. From this Parmiss learnt how to use imovie efficiently on her laptop as the imovie was different to the ones on the school mac computers. She learnt from watching a few video tutorials on youtube and thoroughly paid attention. This made it easier for her to undertand the concept of how the imovie on her laptop works and got straight to work.

Parmiss decided on changing the colour scheme to link in with the genre of the song. This is because it's quite emotional, therefore by lowering the exposure and increasing the contrast, the background would look washed out and the actors and actressess' features would stand out.

Close ups

Music videos usually contain large amounts of close up shots focusing on the singer. In ours we made sure we filmed many shots in this way, as we wanted to follow the music video conventions. By filming in this style we were able to sell our artist through our music video. We needed a large amount of these, however some actresses did not like the camera that close and struggled to keep focused. We found that doing a couple of practise shots before recording kept our actresses in focus. This made it a lot easier to film them for the real thing.

Typical day on location

We began by booking out all equipment needed for that days shoot. We then checked that our actor and actresses were in correct costume and had natural makeup. We wanted them to look as natural as possible as our music video has a very natural raw feel to it as we wanted that to be shown through our actor and actresses. Once we were happy with the actor and actresses atire and weather conditions. We would block the scene according to the storyboards.
Once everything was in place we would do a practise run with everything in postion. We did this to check that the actor and actresses were in the right postion and knew the words, to check the setting was correct, check the lighting and shadows and the camera postion. After everything was checked and all three of us were happy with it we would record two or three times so we had a backup if one was not up to our standards.