Music Video: Construction

Construction - Music Video

Me and Sam took opportunities to convey our advanced technical editing skills. We both have experience video editing from our personal lives, and decided to focus on editing for the video.

In order to get the video to a higher standard, and complete it quicker, I focused on the first minute of the video, and sam did the rest. This allowed us to collaborate well, and develop both of our visions for the video- giving us a better, more fleshed out project.

My section of the video does not contain much lip-syncing, which is fortunate- Sam is better at that aspect of the video editing. However, I effectively edited the video with cutting-to-the-beat; Many different shots are utilised in order to sync the video to the song. While some of them were able to be edited with ease, by viewing the waveform of the song- Other parts were harder to pinpoint. Softer sounds, such as synthesisers and vocals, took several attempts to find.

Sam's evidence of his editing:

He got photos and a fast forwarded screen recording of him Video Editing, which originally lasted up to 1 hour and 20 minutes. However this was sped up to show a time lapse of the journey towards.


The video consist of him editing 2/3 of the music video and is worth around 8 hours of editing. It took 8 hours and 2 minutes to render even with it being fast forwarded and cut.

Cutting To Beat: 

The photo below is showing his technical ability of cutting to the beat, he opened up the sound file below the video and attached my video to the right part of the soundtrack. This was very difficult because of the song being fast in terms of the beat, it goes really quick so he selected short clips and matched them to the beat but then got a fairly longer clip to live the video out when the fast instant beat stops.

 

This section of the video is near the beggining and demonstrates the cutting to the beat part of the video. 

Lip syncing:

The lip syncing within this video was extremely hard to match up to the song because of the way our actor was lip syncing, he tended to sing slightly too fast. However we over came this. We matched the audio to the lip sync by playing the song in the actual video which can then guide me into the position where I am able to fully demonstrate his lip movement and connection with the song.

Cutting: 

When cutting the music video together, we came across multiple challenges. One was the fast Chorus had to be very precise with the video pieces, for example theres a fast bit in the song which meant that I must create a fast but short montage of lots of clips together to make sure it matches the beat. This correlates to our storyboard. What motivated me and Sam to focus on the video editing were the music theorists Keazor and Wubenna. In their book 'Rewind, Play, Fast Forward : The Past, Present and Future of Music Video (2010)' They stated that music video conventions consist of ;

High frequency of cuts
Synchronisation of the beat
Visual effects
Graphic Elements 

Particular  music videos which have a low budget like mine and Sam's can be creatively and powerfully made without lots of money. There are lots of effects when it comes to our music video as the word 'Euphoria' translates the quirky and happiness within society today, therefore motivated us to introduce drug -like video effects and different colours to symbolise this aspect of our music video.

K&W focus on the internet category of the music video as in modern age anyone is able to create their own music video using technology provided across the world wide web which is then published on websites such as YouTube and Vevo where thousands of artists have moulded from, for example Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran or Sam's personal favourite, Alan Walker.


Special Effects:

The special effects which are used in the video could be considered as advanced; the way it may come across can also introduce a Euphoric meaning to the audience watching. We wanted to convey something weird/ quirky, therefore we had a range of editing effects to use to produce that in a technological way.

Drug like Effect:

Below is a screen shot of the effect I used to create a drug symptom of being dizzy and blurry, I simply went to fast blur on video effects, set it to 11 so it looks like it's been done on purpose and that its not the camera blurring out.
 




Reverse Shots

We purposely put the reverse shots in with the video because me and Sam believed that it was synchronised with the beat therefore would be aesthetically pleasing to see smoke go up and then back down again into its original state. As this matched the beat it was a simple video effect to produce, just simply right clips on thee clip, went on "Speed and Duration" and ticked the box at the bottom where it says reverse speed. This editing technique was used widely across the whole video it self.
The distortion of time present in the reversed shots is intended to be representative of illegal drug use, with many people experiencing the same distortions in the passage of time.




Overlay Editing

Overlaying a video with another video is one of the easiest editing techniques to use in premiere pro, but we experimented with it, for example we wanted to make two of our character with a euphoric light shining upon them and this is what it look like. Almost like a cyclops. 

I used solarise so when it came to the vide it looked like it correlates to the meaning of 'Euphoria' 



The overlay was set at 100% so you are able to a split version of our actor Max and creates an effect of double vision. In our eyes it looks weird but cool therefore we used it to show our editorial techniques.


Again there are many overlay clips throughout the video which displays the range of editing techniques we had used through out, for instance; 

Below is an image similar to the one shown above but this has a darned light attached to it to create a dark and urban atmosphere.



In the editing process, I added several more overlays- primarily, the band's name and song logo.

We filmed at the very beginning of March to ensure we have enough time to video edit and finish up on our CD digipack/ MMA pages. We took some videos and photos of the day which was very cold and snowy so it was a struggle for us to film as there was a lot of waiting around, particularly for our actor, Max.

Here are some photos of Sam directing Max during photoshoots and video shoot:

When me and Sam had both completed our sections of the video, Sam exported his video and sent it over to me. I then edited the videos together, adding a few final effects and adding the finishing touches on the music video.