To start off editing our music video we tried to drop our favourite shots in and pick out the best bits of the shot, this way we would have a very rough cut of the video with all our favourite clips. As well as that we also tried to roughly follow the storyboard, however we only managed to do that for the first half of our video before going off on our own tangent. This is how we arrived at our rough cut.
Our final cut came as we started to fine tune the video, after consulting with Luke who recommended we changed our video slightly, we decided to re-edit the slow parts of the song in the video. This is due to the fact that it would look more creative that way and also give the video more of an appearance of having more elements to it. By changing the slower bits of the song to slow motion shots and keeping the regular, faster timed shots to a fast cut-to-the-beat sequence it not only gave the video a new element but it also gave the video a unique modern twist. Slow motion is very modern and by incorporating both lip-synced and slow motion into the video, we subverted one of the regular conventions of pop videos, as many videos have all the lyrics lip-synced. Hopefully in doing this we also managed to sell our song more effectively as our band itself is unique and modern and now so is our music video.
I would say when editing our video we decided to use discontinuity editing, we chose this approach as it created a modern effect for the video. Due to the fact our video did not have a narrative meant that we could play around with discontinuity. Considering we wanted to put across our bands more modern feel this is why we chose discontinuity editing. It also gave a more abnormal feel to the video again giving it a unique quality. We also used Negus’ conventions of a pop video to help us edit our video, we edited to the beat which helps the viewer stay connected to the video and as well as that we kept most of our shots short and quick. However at the beginning of our video I believe we may have subverted this convention as our opening shot is about ten seconds long. For a shot in a pop video this is a very long time, especially as it is our opening shot, but not only that the shot is slow motion as well. However I believe that it works to set up the smooth, bohemian style of our band and their modern sound. Again by trying something new we are keeping the band modern.
I believe in our editing and our filming we used the composition rules to our advantage in selling our bands image, as well as that we also used tracking, slow motion and several close-up to make the viewer feel more connected and personal with our singer and help them understand the song. As you can see in this first shot we used fades to keep the video smooth and relaxed, similar to the feel of the song at thistime. By doing this the viewer can get a feel for the music but as well as that they can really see the soft side to our singer and see her connection with the music.
As you can see in the next shot the fact that we put our singer inside a cage helps convey to the viewer that she feels trapped and that perhaps she is hiding a dark secret and that is why she is in the cage, the lyrics at this point do help. She is trying to break out of this perfect world with pretty flowers and a fake façade almost to tell the truth of a bad deed she has done. You may also notice that we used the rule of thirds in this shot to keep the viewers in a comfortable zone on the hot spots.
This shot is a still of the tracking we used within the video, we used this at the more upbeat point in the song. By using tracking it gave the video another dimension and made it slightly more diverse and edgy.
The next shot shows the slow motion of the feathers we used in the video, this shot with the slow feathers shows a the singer as very feminine, gentle, slightly edgy and it has a certain niceness to it. It definitely helps sell the image of the band and the song.
