Editing The Mini Vid

Sam, Tom, Georgia and I have edited our mini music video using Final Cut; this is the first time that I have used final cut since completing my coursework a couple of months ago. I am still more than able to use the software but I have become less familiar with some of the tools and features. For example, I found it hard to reduce and adjust some of the sound levels at first because I couldn't remember how to. However, shortly after being shown how to do it I could continue happily editing our music video.

I am pleased with our final product and we made the most out of the software Final Cut by using a lot of its video effects such as blur, glow and fish eye. By doing this, Final Cut enabled us to add a slight drug theme to the video to connote to drug use as the band Cream were highly involved with drugs and their music was influenced with drugs and was very psychedelic. We have emphasised and exaggerated this by adding effects which are supposed to look as if the characters in the video were on drugs and as if the video is being shown through their eyes.

Filming The Olympics Day

On Monday, 25th, Tom and I travelled to the school playing fields to film the younger years taking part in the school's custom olympic events such as 3 legged football and and completing a big blow up assault course. Tom and I used the HD cameras which we have only just been introduced to and have only used once previously. I enjoy using the HD cameras, especially compared to the mini DV cameras that we used last year (click here to read a previous blog post on the HD cameras)

So, after walking around and filming the events which took all morning as there were roughly 8 events, located around a large field, Tom and I returned to school to upload the footage to the macs so that the clips could be edited in Final Cut.

I enjoyed using the HD cameras and filming the IGS olympics day and soon I will upload the final edit of the day.

Pitch Idea

This is the music video that I would like to re-make. I chose this video because the song received a lot of negative attention in the press and I believe that it would be widely viewed if we remade it. The video for Rebecca Black's Friday would be easy to make as we have a lot of people that would star in it, we also have the school scene and also people who's cars we could use to create the driving scene. The video would also be comedic and I believe that people would certainly enjoy watching it. The comedy from the video is mostly due to the singer genuinely believing that the song and video were good, whereas the majority of people that watched it to make up the huge 35m views were watching it in response to all of the negative feedback that it received and were watching it for comedy purposes.

If we re-created this then we would embrace the funny parts of the video and they would be easy to locate from other Youtube videos as this song has thousands of other re-makes and video responses that relate to the video and we could focus our re-make on the most popular aspects of the video.

The video also has over 35m on Youtube

Using An HD Camera For The First Time.

Yesterday, to film our ideas for the music video that we're creating to the song I Feel Free by the band Cream, we used HD cameras for the first time instead of a mini-dv camera. I found the HD camera very different to the mini-dv for reasons such as the HD camera being easier to use as it's less complicated, doesn't use a tape which a hassle and it's also more portable. Using a tape is a hassle because firstly, you must buy one and as they're small they are hard to use; secondly, it's easy to record over existing footage and this can result in losing important footage.

After filming what we needed, the next step was to upload the footage that we had created onto the computer. This was very easy and straight forward and although it took a long time to upload to iMovie, most likely because the footage was HD, it was still and easy process and compared to the mini-dv cameras, the HD cameras are much better and i'm glad to be using them this year over the mini-dv cameras that we used last year.

Filming

Today we spent time preparing the filming to the music video for the song I feel free by the band Cream that we are creating. We had the idea to base the video on the lyrics "I feel free" and to symbolise this, have the characters featured in the video running around, jumping singing and dancing, all in a happy manor to connote to freedom. The song I feel free is from the 60s and therefore when editing the music video, we could use Final Cut to add effects such as black and white to make the video look older and to fit the song.

The original music video, shown above was filmed in black and white and slow motion was also used. The characters in the video were also doing similar to those in our video for the song as they are running around, up hills and falling over etc - also connoting the freedom to link with the song, I feel free.

Analysing An Existing Music Video

Alt-J -Matilda

This is the music video to the song Matilda by the band Alt-J. Both the song and the video are 3 minutes and 49 seconds long, meaning that the song is synchronised completely with the video. Like U2's video to their song One, the video consists of only one shot, although there is the difference that the U2 video pans across the single shot whereas this music video is actually a lot of different shots which have been merged together to make one long shot with editing using a software such as Final Cut.

I really like this video and I think it's clever how it's only one shot which doesn't pan or even move, yet there's a lot involved in it and it doesn't get boring in my opinion. With the video involving the four different faces of the band members intertwining and slowly fading over one another to make it look as if they're slowly changing into each other, the video would have required a lot of time and effort by having to keep the camera completely still and making sure that the band members stood in the exact position against the wall in front of the camera so that they fit one another's faces. The setting of the video is unclear and all that is involved is a white brick wall which could connote to an urban setting and feeling and this is the only mise en scene that is revealed.

All that is required to make this music video is a camcorder, preferably an HD one, a tri-pod and some people to feature in the video. You also need an editing software such as Final Cut or Sony Vegas which enables you to overlap the separate shots and merge them to make one; this isn't hard to do once the feature has been practised but could be very time consuming.