Editing Process

After completing all of the filming and the picture taking, we moved into the editing process. We have been editing for a few weeks now, due to the still images editing is very time consuming so we’ve spent extra hours at college to edit our raw footage. First we uploaded all of our pictures and clips from the camera to the Macs, we then added them to ‘Final Cut Express’, an advanced software which is a massive step up from the editing programme we used as our AS level being ‘iMovie’. Final cut allowed our music video to be edited successfully so it looked professional.

After we had uploaded all our footage onto Final Cut Express, we began to time line our music video together as a group on the software. We had various shots which we trailed and tested in order to find the best order for the letters journey combined with the shots of the girl’s journey. We then began to starting experimenting with various filters and different effects to make the locations of the letter flow steadily. We wanted to create an effect that would still allow the transitions to run smoothly and keep the realism.

After watching the music video ‘We Found Love’ by ‘Rihanna’ and seeing the romantic memories of the character at the beginning of the music video, we realised how powerful the opening was due to the voiceover. We decided that this would be good a technique to involve in our own music video. The voice over was then recorded on the Macs which we then overlapped on top of the flashback montage. After much consideration, we decided to change the montage to black and white to show a difference in time and clearly establish to the audience that the happy relationship is in the past. This linked back to our AS piece where we also used flashbacks to show past events, we also de-saturated and muted the colour to show time difference which added a greater effect to our video. For the background music to the voiceover and during the flashback sequence, we used a piano rendition of ‘Jar of Hearts’ to add emphasis to the voiceover. We also thought that it fitted nicely with the flashback, rather than just leaving it plain.

Once we had filmed the girl’s journey we integrated the shots onto the timeline and then we could apply the final touches of editing. We added simple things that had a big impact on our music video. For example, the scrunching of the paper we echoed to demonstrate the boy’s frustration and anger. We used a lot of slow motion in our moving shots such as when the girl walks through a puddle, the slow motion enabled us to show the water rippling which added effect. Now we have completed the music video, ensuring that it is finished to the best of our abilities, we will upload our video onto YouTube to gain feedback from our viewers.