Editing

Editing

Rough Cut

I have now started using Adobe Premiere Elements to edit my video clips together in order to create a rough cut of my music video. The rough cut will consist of getting each shot cut down to the correct size and putting each individual clip in order.

Once this is complete I can focus on the more precise stages of editing such as editing the clips to match the music, smoothing out the continuity between each shot and adding any extra effects such as lighting, transitions etc.

• Above are some screenshots from the editing process of my video. I inserted the soundtrack to begin with so that I could get an idea of where certain shots should be at different points in the song.

• Here I just wanted to focus on getting the clips in the correct order.• Due to a small number of shots still left to film, I left gaps in my video

so that I can still edit the shots I have while leaving space for clips to be slotted in later.

Editing Lighting

When looking over my shots, I found that some were slightly too dark and caused a lack of continuity within the video. To improve this, I used the lighting effects tool.

I dragged this onto the clip that I wanted to edit, and adjusted the amount and type of light that I wanted to be placed over the shot.

• This is an example of a shot that was originally too dark. The clip on the bottom is before the lighting effect was added. You can see that the shot is fairly dark and the person in the shot isn’t very clear.

• The clip above is after the lighting has been added. It is now possible to see the person more clearly, and the shot looks brighter in general. I found that by being able to adjust the lighting, I could keep the continuity of the scenes going.

Transitions

In my music video there is a scene where the setting changes from a house to the beach. Due to this being a big change, I wanted there to be a transition from one shot to another.

The camera pans into the sky from the house, then pans back down onto the beach. I thought this would be a good opportunity to use a transition that fades one shot into the other so that the change in scenery happens smoothly and professionally.

On the left is the shot of the sky above the house after the camera has panned upwards. On the right is the shot of the sky above the beach before the camera pans down to reveal the beach setting. These are the two clips that will fade into one another. The transition I decided to use was the cross dissolve, which I dragged onto the section where the first clip cuts to the second. This meant that instead of the clip cutting too abruptly into the next one, the transition between the two clips is smooth, matching the pace of the music while also adding a professional feel to the video.

Alterations

During the editing of my video I had to make some alterations. This was due to having too many different scenes taking place which resulted in the lyrics of the song not matching the clips on screen.

I therefore had to take out some shots to cut the length of the video down. This included the scenes where Toby knocks on the girls bedroom window and they have a small conversation. I had done some over-the-shoulder shots here to create the look of conversation which was disappointing to have to remove, however meant that the rest of my video was in time with the lyrics.

Due to my video being filmed in a chronological order, I could easily remove clips without worrying about the video not making sense. This was one of the reasons I decided to film my video in chronological order; so that if some clips did not work, I could easily remove them without disrupting the continuity of the video.

Final Cut I now have all my clips in place which match the length of the song. I

have added transitions and lighting effects and tried to make the cuts between each shot look as fluent as possible.

I am now going to watch my complete video back and look for anything that can be improved upon so that it looks as professional as possible.

Above is a screenshot of my completed video.