Audience Feedback

Today we received audience feedback on the final draft of our music video. We wanted feedback on what we could improve, such as lip-synching, however, it appeared that the class enjoyed the music video and they didn't offer any recommendations for improvement. As a group we are still noticing small details with the lip-synching that others don't seem to see or hear, this has lead to us spending more time perfecting the lip-synching but it has also become a form of procrastinating uploading our video. Receiving such positive feedback has finally given us the push to add the finishing details, such as the music video title, and then upload the video to YouTube.

Here is our feedback vlog:

Finished Editing

Today we finally finished editing our music video. We are planning on getting some audience feedback before we upload our video as we need objective opinions so that we can see what we may need to improve. We mostly need to see whether the lip-synching of our video is correct. Once we have received feedback and made small changes we will need to add the music video title and artist name at the start.

Here is our vlog from today:

Editing Update

We have now edited about two minutes of our music video, this means that we are on schedule and should hopefully finish editing by next Wednesday. Our focus today was to increase the pace of our shots as we felt that some were too long and began to grow dull. It is important that we keep the audience interested in our music video in order to make it more appealing, the best way to do this is to have a variety of shots that appear in quick succession. As we don't have a strong narrative, we need to rely on good editing to help, not only in creating meaning, but to keep the music video interesting.

Final Shot Inspiration

After abandoning our original idea of having the final shot of our music video be the performer exiting the maze in sophisticated clothing, we started to look at other options. We have decided to have a final shot that is the same as, or very similar to, one of the first shots of the music video. We wanted to create a video that is cyclical in nature, the idea of a 'cycle' alluding to our video's theme of being trapped and trying to escape.

The images below show one of our first shots (left) and our final shot (right). We felt that these help to make the narrative clearer, the first shot shows the performer entering through a doorway, the final shot shows her leaving or 'escaping'. We felt that this was a fitting shot as it is a clear end to the video - the performer walks out of the shot, leaving little room for confusion for our audience.

   

Another music video that has used this technique is Bear's Den's 'Above the Clouds of Pompeii':



   

The image of the hand is very important in this music video as it symbolises a connection, the video shows a dance between an elderly couple, this is a very intimate moment. The image of an empty hand is also very significant as the woman is shown to be in the man's imagination, the emptiness mirrors his loneliness. This music video showed me how a powerful starting and closing image can have a very strong effect on audiences as this makes the video more memorable. It also helps to solidify key themes, this was important to do in our music video as our narrative is quite vague.

Editing Update

Since completing our filming it has become a lot easier to edit our music video as we had previously left gaps where we needed our new shots to go. After adding our new footage from the Capel Manor Maze, our narrative has become slightly clearer, although it is still more implied instead of a clear storyline. We have finished editing the first minute of the song which leaves about 2 minutes left, this seems very manageable in the time that we have left until our deadline. We have placed the majority of the shots roughly where we want them the appear in the music video, however, we will need to go back and refine the lip synching and make sure that shots cut on beat. We also are yet to add special effects, such as our kaleidoscope shots or changing the opacity, we felt that these could be added at a later date whilst we focus on getting the shots and locations to 'flow'.

We also decided to change the ending of our music video. We initially planned to have a shot of the performer exiting the maze in professional-looking clothing, contrasting her previous grungy style and deteriorating mental state. However, when we added this shot at the end of the music video, instead of adding to the narrative and themes of reckless vs sophisticated behaviour, it made it more confusing. The shot lacks a connection to the rest of the music video, meaning that it seems to appear out of nowhere. We decided not to use this shot but are yet to find a replacement.

Kaleidoscope Practice

Inspired by Zayn Malik's 'Pillowtalk', we wanted to include a kaleidoscope effect in our music video. We felt that the interested patterns had a hypnotic quality that links to the lyrics of our song 'hypnotic' as well as the spiral shapes linking to our staircase location.

We used Final Cut Pro to create a compilation of different kaleidoscope shots. We imported different shots from different locations as this provided us with a variety of patterns and colours. We found that moving shots create more dynamic kaleidoscopes over still shots as these lack the pulsing, spiralling effect that we felt is better suited to a music video. We exported the Final Cut file and then imported this footage to our iMovie project so that we can add these effects to our music video.

Here is our kaleidoscope video:

Zayn Malik - Pillowtalk

Zayn Malik's 'Pillowtalk' conforms to Goodwin's music video theory. There is a clear link between visuals and the lyrics, for example, the chorus contains the words 'paradise' and 'warzone', both of these words are seen written on body parts during the video. The binary oppositions are shown throughout the music video with various imagery. The idea of a 'warzone' is shown through aggressive looking special effects that appear to 'shoot' out of the performers, as well as aggressive behaviours being shown, such as screaming and fighting. The idea of 'paradise' is reflected through calmer shots that contain less special effects, focusing on the performers. Floral imagery also supports this idea.

'Warzone':

'Shooting out' effect

'Shooting out' effect

Screaming

Fighting

'Paradise':

Calmer shots

 

Floral imagery

As a group, we found the movement of shots and the kaleidoscope effect (shown below) featured in the music video to be the most inspirational, and relevant to our own video. 'Pillowtalk' contains constant movement throughout the video, this adds an element of fluidity between shots and creates more seamless transitions. This is an editing style that I think could work well within our own video, the idea of movement being particularly relevant due to our theme of 'escapism'. The movement also becomes more exaggerated due to the spinning, spiral-esque shots that serve to disorientate the viewer. The kaleidoscope effect is the most interesting of these moving shots due to the geometric patterns that it creates. These patterns have a 'hypnotic' quality and would work well within our video and our lyric 'hypnotic taking over me', a kaleidoscope would solidify the link between lyrics and visuals.

Editing Progress Vlog

Here is our vlog from today where we talk about the progress we have made with our editing:

Editing Practice

Today we practiced editing to the beat at the start of our music video. We wanted quite fast paced shots to match the pace of the song. We decided to use shots of the stairs as this helps to introduce the theme of escapism straight away, reinforcing our narrative. I like that the shots cut on the beat as this compliments the music and vice versa. As we haven't edited the rest of the music video, it is difficult to see whether we like the placements of these shots as we can't see them in context, at the moment it seems quite random and the jump from the close-up in Camden to the stair shots to the mid-shot in Brick Lane appears to be quite jarring. We are aiming to show this practice to some of our peers in order to gain feedback, this will help us understand what we could improve.

Here is our practice:

The War on Drugs - Under the Pressure

I found the lighting and editing techniques in this music video to be very interesting. The video is extremely simple, it is entirely performance based and includes minimal locations, typical of the indie genre. What it lacks in an interesting narrative, it makes up for with various interesting editing effects.

I like the layering effect of the shots pictured below as this helps to create a more fluid transition between shots, this is an idea that could work well within our video as we have many locations that need to be linked together. I also like the bright, unrealistic colour palette. As this deviates from the usual conventions of the indie genre, specifically, having a black and white colour palette, the music video is made to be more exciting and unique, making it more appealing to the audience.

The transluscent layered shots combined with a complimentary colour palette help to create the calm atmosphere that the song evokes. This shows how editing techniques can enhance a particular atmosphere. As we are now beginning to edit our music video, we will need to think about what effects could be used to enhance our themes of disorientation and hypnotism.

 

I particularly liked this shot as I like the lighting effects that have been used. The layered shots of different effects, such as small moving 'dots' of light and long horizontal rays of light that swipe across the frame, compliment each other as well as the calm, slow-paced song. The repetitive nature of the light's movements also reflects the repetitive aspect of the song, this creates a strong link between the music and the visual, linking back to Goodwin's theory.

Editing Update

Whilst we were editing today, we realised that our music video is very performance based, this contradicts our initial plan of a narrative video with a few performance elements. Whilst there isn't a clear, single storyline, our video explores various themes, such as escapism and mental instability. I think that, moving forward, we should focus less on creating a strict narrative as it can be more beneficial to have a vague story as this allows room for interpretation by the audience, this would make our music video more relatable and, hopefully, more popular and successful. We are yet to film at our maze location which is a key part of our narrative as it makes the idea of feeling trapped more explicit. Hopefully once we have filmed at this location our narrative will become slightly clearer.

We also noticed that the drastic change in lighting between our locations could be quite jarring for the audience. For example, shots of Camden at night cut to Brick Lane during the day and then back again. This makes the video lose a sense of continuity as it doesn't follow a linear time-line. However, many music videos contain similar location changes without it appearing out-of-place. I think that the key to making the transition between day and night more seamless is to have good editing. I don't think that this will be a problem for our group as we can use match-cuts to create a visual link between different locations - this link being the performer.

Editing Practice

Today we decided to edit our footage on iMovie using various effects. We experimented with changing the contrast and saturation of the shots in order to make the coloured lighting bolder, however, we felt that this looked too artificial, we preferred our original footage as the lighting is more flattering and natural which is better suited to our song. We also sped up one of our shots where the light source changes position, thus changing the shadows on my face, I really like this effect as the fast pace matches our song and brings an element of energy and excitement to the shot, making it more interesting for the viewer. Another effect that we liked was overlapping two shots and changing the opacity, allowing two figures to be seen at once, I think that this links with our song well, especially the lyric 'you make me feel like someone else', as we can show two different sides of the character's personality at once. I think that it creates a disorientating atmosphere that is in keeping with our music video's theme of someone feeling lost and trying to escape.

First Day of Filming

We had originally planned to film in Brick Lane today, unfortunately, due to an issue with the dispatcher, our costume that we ordered has not arrived yet. In order to stay on schedule and not waste the day, we decided to film our studio shots as this is an easily accessible location. Inspired by the video for Calvin Harris' 'How Deep is Your Love', we wanted close up shots of our protagonist with flashing, strobe-like coloured lighting against a black background.

In preparation for the shot, we had to set up a black screen and adjusting its height by balancing it on some chairs in order for it to be tall enough to fill the frame. We turned off the lights in the room to make the background as dark as possible, however, this meant that it was too dark for me to be visible on camera. To overcome this we attached a light to the camera and adjusted the brightness until we were happy with the results. We used multiple coloured filters on a separate handheld, battery powered light to achieve the desired effect. Whilst filming, we played our song,' Hypnotic', out loud so that I could lip synch in time as well as for us to change the colour of the light with the beat of the music.

We were successful in obtaining the required shots so we decided to upload the footage and practise editing it on iMovie. This gave us an idea of what effects we could do on iMovie and also helped us to understand the difficulty of synching the song precisely.



Costume - Choosing makeup

Marking position

Setting up the camera

Framing the shot



Filming

Uploaded footage

Editing on iMovie

Editing on iMovie

Here is our behind the scenes vlog from the shoot:

Lip Synching Practise

Editing our lip synching video proved to be more difficult than we thought, it was quite hard to synch the audio with the video in a realistic way. Making even the slightest change to part of the video shifted everything else, meaning that we had to continuosly re-edit sections. I think that when it comes to editing our final music video, we should edit the clips beginning at the start of the song and work our way through, by doing this, we will be able to perfect the lip synching of each shot without having an effect on the clips ahead.

The Japanese House - Clean

The group has been inspired by the music video for 'Clean' by The Japanese House:



We like the effect of layering different shots. I think that it creates a dream-like and disorientating atmosphere, this is the feel that we want our music video to have. I think that the layering will help to show the emotions of our confused character.

 

I also like the washed out colour palette of the video as it helps to emphasise the dream-like atmosphere. I think that this could work well in our music video as we want our character to appear lost and dazed, this could be symbolised through the use of soft, hazy colours.

Disclosure - Jaded

We were inspired by the editing of Disclosure's 'Jaded'. There is a particular section (shown below)where there is extremely fast paced editing of the same shot of a person sat in a chair, but the identity of the person changes with each 'flash'. I like the flickering of the lights within this shot as it helps to create a disorientating atmosphere, I think that this effect would link in with our narrative of a confused protagonist in a hypnotised state.



This music video also portrays ideas of hypnotism, with the explicit, instantly identifiable sign of a swinging chain. In our music video, however, we want to imply the hypnosis of our character more subtly, through fast paced editing and flashing lights, we hope that this will create an overwhelming atmosphere that will reflect the protagonist's emotions.

Prelim Outtakes

Here are our groups' outtakes! I hope that this video provides an insight to the hard work that we put into producing our prelim. We thought that making this video was beneficial as it provided us the opportunity to practice our editing skills using the new version of iMovie.

Prelim Vlog

We finally finished our prelim today! We had to refine the editing slightly so that the lip synching was correct and that everything looked as smooth and seamless as possible. Here is our vlog where we reflect on the prelim production process: