The Edit

Editing

Once we had completed capturing all of our required footage, we took to our edit suite in order to review the videos as a whole and select the individual takes necessary to complete our project, and discard those which did not make the cut.

After labeling and renaming all of the takes we wanted to use in the edit, Josh cleverly laid out all of the studio shots onto the timeline and syncronised them all with actual track. This proved to be a real time savig move, as now, when selecting between shots, we no longer hasd to carefully syncronise it when adding it to the timeline.

This shows all of the shots in sync with the music

However, although this was initially beneficial, as some of the takes did not include the whole song, or skipped parts, we had to pick out each shot, using the razor to individually crop out the faults in each.

Once we had cropped down each shot to the part of the song we needed for it, we were able to construct a basic video timeline- as shown in the screenshot below. Although this did not yet contain any of the narrative footage, it gave us an ideas as to what the video shall look like, and we saw that all of the narrative shots would make continual progress as planned.

The initial studio timeline

Alternative tracks used for editing

The screenshot above shows how we used the alternating channel/track editing style in order to avoid muddling shots and making it easier to move them around on the timeline. We also created multiple sequences during the different stages of production, all on the same file, in this sense we could switch back to our old sequence to see how to edit each shot.

The various sequences in the premiere pro file

Another problem which we solved through editing was the timing of some of the shots with the beat. We had planned to use blinking shots of the two artists to match up with the beat, but when imported, they didnt match up, or were disrupted by movement on set. In order to combat this, we slowed down specific parts of the shot to make sure that the blink snapped in time with the beat:

We slowed down certain shots to ensure that they snapped to the beat

We also retained the style of a music video defined by Carol Vernallis- firstly, we had already ensured that the video reflected the lyrics of the song in the shoots, but by editing the clips down, we were able to emphasis this relationship. Furthermore, our editing meant that the video now snapped to the beat, and contained a variety of angled shots in succession, another of Vernallis's conventions. By switching between black and white shots throughout, we also challenged audience expectations, as it is not obvious when the black will switch to white, making the visual aspect constantly unpredictable and entertaining for the viewer. Below is a video showing our use of Vernallis's ideas:

 

We also challenged audience expectations in the video- both defying the 30 degree rule, using non-continuous editing, and an alternating editing pace in order to engage the audience. This is shown in the gifs below:

Grading

An ungraded studio shot

We started off grading once we had completed the video sequence, starting off by reviewing the video and making a note of which shots were obviously different in terms of colour and lighting. we focused on fixing these shots first, using the procamp and 3 way colour corrector feautures to improve the image colour and sharpness.

We used the 3 way colour corrector to firstly edit the colouring of shots to balance them out with the rest. Using the shot of vivian below as an example, we first noticed that the lighting here was extremely low and dull, therefore it needed to be clarified and intensified by adding colour to her face and body. By adjusting the hue balance and angle colouring, we were able to recreate the intense High definition hyperreal representation of the artists we had achieved throughout.

Left: Ungraded, right: graded

Using the 3 way colour corrector on the studio shots

A split screen showing the ungraded and graded shots

We then used the procamp tool improve the whole sequence slightly, indivdually applying it shot by shot to bring up the professinal look of the video, and ensure that the representation of the artists was as clear as possible.

By using the procamp tool, we could pick out specific elements of each shot such as their brightness, contrast, hue and saturation in order to either brighten or intensify the shot. The screenshot below shows an example of a mid shot of Josh, which was initially quite dark, we altered the contrast and saturation, with the resulting shot much clearer and more professional:

Using procamp to improve clarity

Fully graded final shot

We also used the more complex editing software Adobe after effects on certain VHS shots in order to to improve their  clarity and help us make the lighting appear similar and realistic throughout the narrative sequence, so that it is clear that the same camera is being used.


Overall, I feel that the edit this year has been a lot more successful than my year 12 and Prelim edits, as I have been able to apply my developed editing skills, along with the rest of my group, making the final product seem a lot more professional- the standard is definitely higher. However, I also found it a lot harder, as there were so many variations of shots to syncronise and edit, yet as I have learned over the past month how to use after effects to individually edit a shot, I still feel  have gained a lot from the process.