PRODUCTION - Finished!

...............

Final Music Video "The City"

Here is the final version of our music video. The password is 'student':

The Eight-Point Garbage Matte Innovation-Editing

For a specific part of our music video, the chorus, we need to used the video filter Eight-point Garbage Matte. We tried to add some effect to the background but leaving the artist intact, to make the chorus more engaging picture to watch, so we found that with this video filter we could do this. The effect had to be very simple so we decide to use the compound blur.

This images are from the final stage of the use of this filter 

Left Side original footage, right side edited footage. To get the blue tone we used colour corrector.

To get this final product I had to follow Some steps:

1. Copy the shoot to had the same background and located under the footage we want to edit

2.Select the effect we want for the background

3.Use Eight-Point Garbage Matt on the footage.

4.Move the point where you wanted to be and smooth up the effect to make it not so visible.

 During this process I realise that as our artist move the points were not follow him so the effect was not working very well, to fix this problem we had to put some markers for the points trough the filter and now the points move with the artist as the the video shows.

The colour corrector-Editing

Our music video do not require many effects for transitions but it need a colorisation to get that sense of cold city that we wanted to show. To acquire this effect in our pictures we decide to use colour corrector and take up the whites the mids and to play with the different blues that we could use.

This colour corrector is a video filter that helps to modify the image to get the wanted mood for the picture. The colour blue was chosen because it gives to the image a sense of cold and loneliness which is as we believe the mood that the song express also some of the images were darks so we take up the whites and the mids to make it brighter. There are here some examples (left side original footage, right side footage after editing):

In this example we use colour corrector to take up the saturation to almost to its maximum capacity and to add the blue tone. 

In this example the colour corrector helped us to through saturation to put some colour in the artist and make him look better and also the bright the picture up and add a light blue. 

In this specific example as you can see the picture is ver darks so trough colour corrector we make it bright by taking the whites up and also add alight blue.

Overall the colour corrector  was a tool that helped us  a lot through the editing process to get a better picture with the mood that we wanted.

PRODUCTION - Editing

In this short slideshow I will be talking about the new editing skills I've learnt to create the music video.

Production - Editing from my perspective

Production: editing - How green screen can be used

What is green screen technology?

Green screen technology is extremely well used in every type of media from holly wood films to music videos.its is very effective and quite simple to use. you record the singer in front of a single color back drop such as green which is most commonly used hence the name green screen. after recording software's like final cut pro allows you to make the color transparent, which then you are able to replace the back drop with a another video clip, image or some sort of graphic of the editors choice. with this you can make yourself presented in any environment or scenery which is very useful if the setting you want is not available to you.

Here is an video where green screen is used repeatedly like at 41 seconds in green screen is used to present Chinese writing in the background

Production: editing - how cuts can be used

Here is an animation i made talking about three well used cuts which are jump cuts,match cuts and cross cuts

Editing cuts by neemz123 on GoAnimate

Production - 3rd filming day from my perspective

Our third production day was a reshoot of moving shots using the steadicam. I believe this was a productive day. We reshot all the shots we needed to reshoot and we have shot everything we thought it was missing. Gustavo did a much better job with the steadicam and I ensured he paid more attention to the framing of the shots this time. I have also ensured that Nimar focused on his performance. I might have been a bit picky and I know I put my group under some pressure lately but this is all because I wanted the music video to look good, and in the end I am pleased with what we produced this day. I pay special credit to Nimar and Tavo because they worked very hard. Nimar was not embarrassed about singing in a public place and not even shy to sing amongst a crowd! Which was brilliant, and he did put some good emotions into the singing, which will look good with the emotional connotations of the song.

Tavo has also produced some good shots for our music video and I like that he experiments with camera and camera movement. It was a bit of a stressful day but it made me feel a bit more confident with the production of our music video in the end. I did film a couple of shots as well, but not a lot. I trusted in Tavo's experience as a camera man as well as he knows better how to use the steadicam and how to produce camera movement. Camera movement is also quite a hard job, but he managed it well and I am pleased with Tavo's job as our camera man. My only complaint is that I still feel that we should've shot more and different types of shots.

Production: Editing - How transitions can be used

When doing  music video editing a transition is what is inserted in  between two shots or clips. The joining together of the two clips is the transition from one to the other. Transitions can be an instant scene or image change. fade to black,dissolve, light flash transition and many more.

Fade to black

Fade to black is quite a good way to show an change in time,subject or location in the music video 

Dissolve

Dissolve transition is one of the most common transitions used in video editing. This transition creates a seamless transition from one shot of footage to another by layering to clips together.

Light Flash 

This transition dissolves the screen from the footage to white within a quick second to resemble a camera flash

Production:Editing Thinking about effects

What is video editing : Video editing is an Technical process and a very artistic process where an collection of video footage are brought together and altered from its original form to create a new fully edited version.The artistic approach when doing video editing is to make decisions of what elements of footage/media to keep,delete or merge together to form an overall organised and pleasing footage. The technical process of video editing to copy the final produced element onto a storage element such as CD for final viewing of the finished product.

Slow motion editing:  Slow motion is a great effect to use when you want to highlight an certain moment in the footage.

How is it done? 

Record the footage of the person singing faster the  normal speed of the song.Then when you slow down the video the singer will appear to be singing at normal speed.

An example of slow motion can be seen in this video at 1:56. It emphasises the fighting scene.

Fast Motion Editing: usually used to show time pasting by

How is it done?

It is done by recording a footage and speeding it up


An example of this effect can be seen in the below video at 3:21 with fast moving traffic

Rough Cut Feedback

Skills Development

Rough Cut Evaluation (part 2)

Rough Cut Evaluation (part 1) - Audience Expectations

Before evaluating our rough cut directly with my perspective, I would like to look back at the research I have carried out about our audience expectations.

Have we attended our audience expectations?

I believe that our rough cut did attend our audience expectations. All the people that I had asked had so many similar ideas and expectations, and I believe that in our music video we have included most of them. We have used London streets as our setting, a suggestion by most of the girls, and I believe we did it effectively to create the atmosphere of the city in the lyrics.

We have used the iconic images of Big Ben and London Eye to establish London, and we have chosen streets with a lot of people and traffic in the background to shoot Ray Jones walking. This helped to create the atmosphere of a big city like London, which is an expectation of everyone who hears the lyrics.

We have used the guitar, which is not only attending to the audience expectations as well as it attends to the genre expectations. Having this prop was very important to portray this image of 'music to touch' rather than 'music to impress' that many people in our audience would expect. Having Ray Jones playing the guitar promotes him for his talent as a musician.

Most people mentioned the expectation to see city lights. We have used it only twice, in two traffic shots and a shot of Ray Jones feet with the lights in the background. We had intended to use more, but the reason why we weren't able to use it that much is because the night shots were very dark and it was quite difficult to deal with day and night shots in our music video without getting it too confusing.

Overall, I believe we have attended very well the expectations of a minimalist production that would sell our artist as ordinary and relatable to our audience, emphasising his emotions and making the audience pay more attention to his touchy song rather than to a massive music video production.

Production - Editing: jump cuts

According to the research carried our before the production of the music video, we know that the use of jump cuts is very often a convention of the indie genre. Therefore, we will incorporate it to our music video, trying to match with the dramatic piano. Jump cuts are often used in a much faster way, but because we are using it in a slow part of the song we decided to slow the shot to 80% and do the jump cuts in a slightly more subtle way than it is usually found in music videos.

The way we used the jump cuts help to dramatise the artist's movement and emphasise that he is walking alone in the city, which is representative of the message of loneliness conveyed in the lyrics, since it creates a sense of ellipsis - as if he is walking a long time just by himself. Using this technique at this stage of the song, which is the most dramatic part, it helps to build up the climax of the music video and it adds to the emotional atmosphere.

Production - Editing: flipping the shots

We have filmed various different tracking shots of Nimar walking in the streets. In our post-production we have been warned by Rebecca and Dan about the different directions in which Nimar is walking. As for example, if we start the music video with Nimar walking to the right and then change it to a shot of him walking to the left, it might look confusing. To solve that we simply will use the filter 'Flop' to switch the shots, so that they all look like he is walking to the same direction.

We have a preference for Nimar walking to the right because we think it feels better when we watch it. One of our friends watching Nimar walking to the left said that it feels like he is walking 'backwards' whereas is better if it feels like he is walking 'forwards'. However, the only problem with that is that some of the shots when flipped to the right, there are words written in the signs of the shops in the background, which will look reversed. This has a big impact in our decision of in which direction we think Nimar should be walking, and we have decided to make him walk to the left.

Production - The Blue effect

The choice of colour correcting most of our base tracks to blue tones was to create a cold atmosphere to our music video since it conveys loneliness and sadness. This effect suits very well the mood of the song, as well as it is conventional of the original's artist music videos. Ed Sheeran's songs are most of the time sad or emotional, and his music videos convey this very well through their simplicity. You can see in the samples below, a lot of Ed Sheeran's music video use dull colours and blue tones to create a cold atmosphere and emphasise the emotional feelings of his touchy songs.

What response does that create? Our music video is set in the streets of London. The lyrics of the song talk about how he feels a stranger in London. In addition, London has a reputation for its gloomy weather. Changing the colours of our music video to blues and cyan tones, we establish the coldness of London and its gloomy weather as well as it reflects the feelings of the song and it connects with the emotional performance of the artist. Our artist promotes himself for being simply who he truly is as a person and not by trying to impress with massive productions and crazy songs. I believe that the blue effect also helps to introduce this concept of our artist Ray Jones. It implies that he wants to sell his music because it is simple and it has a touchy mood and relatable lyrics that express emotions, instead of trying to sell a made up image of something bizarre and shocking to try and get a lot of attention. This simplicity is also a convention of our genre indie pop, and I believe it makes the artist more appealing to wider audiences. It may also be challenging the stereotype of men in music videos, which often portrays men who have lots of money and get all the sexualised women. Ray Jones is rather portrayed as ordinary and sentimental, which might be very appealing to our young female audience.

PRODUCTION - Rough Cut

What do I think about the Rough Cut? ..

Rough Cut

Its good

Production- wordle

Music video wordle i created

Production - Editing: slow motion and lip syncing

Production - Editing: Slow & fast motion

We like the camera movement in the first shot because it tracks Nimar with a twist at the end. However one problem that we found is that Nimar only sings one line of the song, and in our sequence the following shot of Nimar singing in the street, he doesn't sing the next line of the song as well as the focus comes out of him. So to try and cover these mistakes, we used a fast motion shot of people walking and traffic. We have also decided to use slow motion in the push so that it looks more dramatic.

We split the clip in three parts, the middle part is the one we added slow motion, exactly in the push. The slow motion also makes the camera twist more noticeable to the viewer, which is effective and engaging.

The push also has connections to the lyrics and emotions of the song, as it portrays London as an unfriendly and unwelcoming place. It emphasises the concept of our music video which is to contrast the business of a big city with the loneliness of the artist as an individual who just arrived there. Using different types of camera movement is quite effective to create the flow of the music video, which is consisting of many shots of our artist hanging around alone in the streets and walking around London, as if he is getting to know the place. As a big city, the camera movement also creates movement and pace to the busy atmosphere of London. The fast motion of traffic and people walking adds to this atmosphere.

Production - Editing: blurring the background

Being concerned about the changes in the background between the mid shot and the median close up of Nimar walking, we think that after finishing our rough cut we might do something to minimise that. Marisa has taught us how we could possibly blur the background or use some effect that would distract the viewer from these changes.

We would have to duplicate the clip that we want to blur the background and put one clip beneath the other so that when we move the points, the background doesn't disappear. Then we add the filter 'Eight-Point Garbage Matte' and go to the 'Filters' tab to unlock each of the 8 points. We move the eight points around Nimar to leave him without any blur or effect, and then we blur the background or add some kind of effect to it. We are considering trying it out after the rough cut to see if it will work.

Showing the same sequence to Rebbeca, she didn't really notice the background changes, so it might be okay if after all this effect doesn't work very well. But if it does work we believe it might help to solve this little problem.

Production - 2nd filming day from my perspective

In the second day of filming we were a bit more prepared and it flowed more naturally. I have brought a big torch to provide some light at night shots. We didn't have any problems during the production, but later when watching our footage I was not so happy. One of our base tracks is walking in the street and because the shots were hand held and very close to the artist it looked very shaky and it didn't look like he was walking. I also think that this day we haven't filmed everything we were meant to film, like for example shots of people walking or shots of London icons (Big Ben, London Eye) or even our main chorus shot. I was also not so happy with the framing, and Nimar's performance at some of the base tracks wasn't particularly touchy, he looked very serious. We definitely had to reshoot, but we can still use some of the shots that worked well. As for example, in some of the shots of Nimar walking with the guitar there are parts in which the shot looks quite steady and we can use just a few seconds from that.

Production - 1st filming day from my perspective

Our first day of filming occurred in Tottenham Court Road, Morwell Street. The experience went well although we had a couple of minor problems. The first problem was because Nimar had only memorised the lyrics for the first half of the song due to a misunderstanding that we would only produce half of the song. But this was very easily solved by giving him a couple of minutes to memorise the rest of the song. The following problem was, Mahbuba's battery died and she was the only one who had the song in the phone. Although I try to make sure our group is fully prepared and organised, this event could be blamed in a slight lack of preparation as we didn't realise we would need to play the song for a very long time several times. This was also easily solved by charging her phone in a cafe and she sent the song to Tavo's phone and my phone.

The filming during the day worked well, I believe our camera man (Gustavo) produced some nice sitting in the pavement base tracks creating an interesting perspective by filming on the floor (directly in the same level as our artist) and framing him adequately. We have also found an interesting wall in which we created an improvised base track. One problem with our location was only that Tavo had to film in the middle of the street and although there wasn't a lot of movement, sometimes cars would interfere in our production.

We thought that the lamps in the street would be enough to provide us light at the night shots, but when it got darker we realised light could be a problem. This was solved by using a lantern from Tavo's phone. The night shots worked quite well but not as well as the day shots. We haven't filmed so much at night, but we got a couple of base tracks, which watching it in the computer do seem a bit dark, but we are dealing with it in the editing.

This day we had to reshoot the same shots a few times because Nimar took a bit of time to get the performance right (mostly it was either the lyrics or he lost the focus). Sometimes I had to remember him to put some emotion into the singing, but I believe that in the end he did quite a good job as a performer in the footage we have. It was also very cold and it was quite difficult for him to bear with the temperature because of his costume, as well as it was difficult for him to play the guitar, but I believe he did the best that he could so I am quite happy with his performance.

Production: the types of shots used when filming

Throughout our video we used various types of shots which are close ups, medium shots, medium close ups, long shots and wide shots.

Close up: Close up is used when the focus in the shot is an person or an object. the shot would be entirely on the object/person and will be zoomed into the face of the person or  into the object cutting out most of the surroundings.

Medium and Medium close up shots: Camera shot midway between close up and wide shot usually including head to the waist. Medium close up is a little bit more zoomed in which will have the head to just below chest.

Long shot: Zoomed out shot with the singer distanced away from the camera, usually used to show a great length of scenery or when the singer is walking towards camera.

Wideshot: Wide shot shows the whole body of the object or singer. it usually shows just   some parts of the scenery around the body or object.

Production - Editing (Marking the beat)

After editing all of our base tracks, adjusting the lip syncing and creating an effective opening, we have to start constructing the rest of the music video and deciding when we are going to use what. To make it easier to take such decisions, we have used markers to indicate when the 'beat' of the song changes, in this case being when we hear the certain guitar 'pattern'.

We might decide to have different cuts apart from those, but this is an easy way of starting to get our editing matched to the rhythm. After marking the whole song, we cut all the base tracks according to the markers. 

We have chosen to start the music video with the base track of Ray Jones sitting on the pavement.

Production - Editing the opening

We now have produced an effective opening to our music video. There is a period of more or less 8 seconds before the artist starts singing. We have decided to start the music video with a close up of Ray Jones to introduce and promote our artist, bringing all the focus to him. This sequence include a shot of the artist walking in the city with his guitar on his back and lots of people passing by. Having the same shot through 8 seconds would be boring, so to make it engaging we decided to break this shot with two other shots. Firstly this shot is interfered by a nice long shot of Big Ben, which clearly establishes London. Then, the sequence consists of switching between the tracking close up of Ray Jones walking between people, and a long shot of him walking towards the camera. This is edited according to the beat of the song. You ca watch our opening in the sample below:

Why we believe it is an effective opening? Firstly, it is exerting the function of music videos which is promote the artist. Our artist is the main focus and we enable the audience to familiarise with his face. Also, it establishes the concept of the music video and the link with the lyrics by showing Ray Jones walking alone around London and showing the iconic image of Big Ben. The streets being the setting and the lots of people passing by also help to establish the atmosphere of 'The City' and it contrasts with the artists' loneliness. The use of the guitar as a prop is a signal of genre. The editing with the beat makes it an active opening and engaging to the audience, creating a sense of a busy London. We have also decided to keep the noises of people talking in the background so it adds even more to the atmosphere of the city.

Our first idea when editing was to break the tracking shot with other images apart from Big Ben, but we realised we didn't have footage for that, so we changed it to another shot of him walking.

Production - Editing the base tracks

We have started our editing last lesson. Firstly, we added all the base tracks to Final Cut Pro. We decided not to import all of our footage to Final Cut in order not to get too messy and confused with the clips. After dragging all the base tracks to the timeline we started the process of marking and syncing the clips with the song.

After matching correctly the lip-syncing, we started to think about how to make our base tracks look nicer. A simple way of doing this was using the colour correction tool. We improved our lighting changing the 'white' levels, as well as we opted to use tones of blue and cyan more, to make the image look colder. This effect fits with the emotions of our song that express some isolation and sadness. The following video was recorded during this process of changing the colour correction and we were discussing our opinions about how it looked.

It made a big difference to our base tracks as you can see the contrast in the images below.

What we are planning to do next is to decide what footage we want to use in between the base tracks and where. Because we have so many base tracks and there is a change of costume and a change of period (day and night), we have to think carefully about how we are going to deal with this in our post-production process.

Besides the base tracks, the rest of our footage includes shots of lots of people walking; traffic; Ray Jones (Nimar) walking around the city; Big Ben; fast singing to use as slow motion; extra bits of Ray Jones singing and some camera movement experiments; etc.

Production, Problems with the locations

The location for day 1 was on Tottenham Court Road, Morwell Street.

We filmed on the corner in front of the white wall, so we have some problems with the cars coming and going as the camera had to be on the road. As you can see there is just a street lamp we used a mobile phone to acquire a better lighting.

The location for day 2 was Waterloo and Westminster and South bank. We did not have any major problem with these locations.

My ideas for editing

We have started to import all our footage to Final Cut Pro and I have started a little research about different techniques or styles that the people from the industry use for music videos of our genre.

The first I looked at was the music videos of Ed Sheraan, I found a very interesting one that uses jump cuts very often and is very effective to tell the story. The song is called "The A team".

                                        I particularly like the sequence between 0:30 to 0:55

Then I looked at a band called The Script, I have used the band before as a point of reference but now I am particularly looking at the editing of the music video for the song "The Man Who Can't be Moved". I found that they also used the jump cuts technique at the beginning of the song and is very effective to stablish the location which in our case is very important, but I particularly like the end that has as a base a long base track of the band playing but is cut by some other things like traffic and the sky, it can be say that is a kind of cross-cutting.

                                                  The sequence I like is from 3:17 to 3:45.

Then I looked at a band called The fray and the music video for their song "How To Save a Life". I found that they also used this "cross-cutting" very effectively to tell the story and to engage the audience.

                                             The particular  sequence I like is from 0:14 to 0:40

As a conclusion of this little research I will suggest to my team to some of this "cross-cutting" that I saw in these videos because I think it would work very well with our footage.

Production Day 3 (From cameraman perspective)

As the long base track did not turned up right we decided to re shoot this one with the proper equipment for a handheld shot. I used the steadicam Glidecam 2000 pro which is the one that the college has. This steady cam was very effective to correct the shacking problem and made a huge difference between shots. We also take some more shots to have different options and attempted to film a sequence to use for a slow motion shot later on in editing. I think the re shoot day was a success because we got what we were looking for which was to get a long base track.

No steadicam

Steadicam
You can see the difference between framing.

Production Day 2 (From cameraman perspective)

For this day we planned to do a lot of handheld, looking for a better picture but I did not ask for a steadicam so the shots where not that good. We were expecting from day 2, to end up with a 1 long base track from different angles and cutaways of the city to use them as a support shots. We planned for the long base track to do it as a  handheld shot and the cutaways with tripod. I thought I could do it with out the steady cam, but it was a bad guess because it was very cold  and the base track was very long  so I did shack more than usual. This shaking made the shot almost useless but gave me an idea of how is going to look with the proper equipment. The cutaways turn up very goo we took some traffic and people to catch that sense of city.

You can see that is not the best framing and this is because of the shaking.
This is from the long base track.

Production: Day 3 Experience (reshooting)

Day 3

Today we had to re-film our base tracks we filmed previously becuase the footage was to shaky becuase it was hand held.

Locations: waterloo , westminister, Southbank and london bridge

Props: Blue and grey cardighan and blackberry phone

Equipment: Hand held tripod,tripod and jvc camera

Objecive: Re-film day 2 base tracks ad film third base track. film some extra walking scenes and scenes of iconic places

How did it go?
All filming went well and managed to film all parts we intended. Because of already expericne of filming the second base track it was easier to film and the hand held tripod is much more better to use when moving is involved in filming.

Promblems:

Problem- we travelled all the way to London eye and found that the tripod we brought was broken and we needed it to film a short clip with big ben. to resolve the problem we got celetape from mc donalds and taped the tripod so we can use it which ended up working very well


Filmed the Third base track on a building outside stairway  off waterloo bridge as we was not abled to get a hold of a balcony. It was very dark this balcony so the torch heped us to make the filming a little lighter light. We were told we might be told to leave by security but we wasn’t. After filming 3 to four times the battery finished and we used first battery in the morning however  we manage to film a few full shots of our third planned base track

Extras: Car driving passed and more walking throughcity