12/11/12
On Monday I had a double lesson in which I was in the iMacs to carry on with the editing. The stage that I was at on Monday was where I was starting to add the scenes shot from behind the school hall, which is just over half way of the whole music video. On the camera, the shots of this didn't look too bad but after uploading them to my computer a few weeks ago I realised that I would have to edit them in a way that makes the characters much more visible to the audience. For these scenes we were positioned on the stage of my school hall, but with the large curtain shut as we had previously filmed the curtain scene. The lights had been taken off of the ceiling earlier that day, so the curtain was completely blocking out all light. If I were to go back now and change anything I would have opened the curtain to reveal some light so it would save me the editing of it, although I think the darkness compared to the lightness of the main hall scenes adds the effect of how the ones in darkness are when the characters are nervous, and the lightness symbolises their passion for their sport. However, as the darkness was quite obviously taking the attention away from the character of Tayla, and also Ted in one scene, I added a brightening and contrasting filter to all of those scenes and made it much lighter.
Here are a couple of the dark scenes that I took, uploaded straight from the camera without any editing:
This is the clip that I have brightened up on the video filter I added on Final Cut Express. It makes the characters stand out much more than before and the audience can actually see them amongst the darkness this time too:
Also, on Monday it was my chance to find out how to fade scenes into one another as I got stuck at this point last Friday. After searching the internet and not finding anything, I resulted in asking my media teacher who explained I had to place the clip on another video line on Final Cut Express and then match them together so that as the first clip starts fading out, the next one fades in.
Here is a few pictures of what the editing part of Final Cut Express looks like and how I have had to align the clips up to make them fade together:
The above pictures aren't perfect in showing the fading, but in the first picture you can see the timeline which shows the clips on different lines for them to fade properly. The second picture also shows the clouds of the first scene merging with the trees of the second scene, and even though the picture does it no justice, it works really well altogether.
This was all that I managed to do in Monday's double lesson but I managed to put together quite a bit to set me up for the rest of the week.
13, 14 & 15/11/12
The past 3 days in the middle of this week I haven't been able to spend long editing but I was able to catch around half an hour to 45 minutes of each day to try and get some editing completed. On one of these days, it got to the part of my music video where I had planned for a sound effect of a whistle to be played in short gap in between the lyrics. The scene where I had planned for it to be is just before Chris is about to play basketball, and last week I searched YouTube for some sound effects that I might use.
There was quite a lot of different whistle type sounds for me to choose from, but as I had already planned for it to be included I had a type of whistle in my head that I was looking for. I found it quite difficult finding a whistle sound effect that fitted the scenario that I wanted it for, but I managed to find a few effects that I thought sounded at least half appropriate for my music video.
After listening to all of these, and many more, I decided that I would take both the 1st and 3rd audio track of the three above into school to use for the video.
However, when I got to school and I actually put the tracks with the music video I didn't feel that it went well with the actual music, even though it was played at the part where the lyrics are briefly paused. In my head and during my planning, this idea felt good and I think it might have been better if I had found the whistle sound that I had imagined in my head. If I had the time, I would also have tried to create my own whistle sound effect to use in my music video to show my creativity, though I don't think the music video loses anything without this sound effect.
Also during these few days in the week I was watching the music video from the beginning again to try and notice any faults that I can change straight away, and in doing this I felt that the opening quote I had planned to use wasn't very effective either. This was another idea that seemed good during the planning stages, but then when I removed it and played the music video without it the beginning flowed much better and looked much more professional too.
I think it's good that I am already making changes to my plans as it shows me expanding on ideas and continuing to improve. Some of the layout of the scenes I have changed at the last minute too which is understandable as I did the same last year because sometimes seeing all of the actual footage together gives you even more ideas to make it better than in your plan. I don't think there was anything wrong with my storyboard and animatic and the order of scenes I had planned, but I think my ability to change and improve is a key factor to my success so far.
16/11/12
Today was very important for me to put all of the scenes together and finish the first draft, but I was confident that I could do this. The final scenes of my music video involved lots of fading in and out of scenes as well, the main ones being of the crowds in both the gym and hall. The fading in and out of these scenes actually took me slightly longer than the other fading I had done, but after a while I managed to get them as good as I wanted. This is because the timing of the clips needed to be very accurate otherwise the front clip would start fading out to black before the other clip had faded in, and that was something I wanted to avoid.
Here is some pictures I took on my mobile phone that shows the crowd scenes fading in and out:
Another key fading part is the ending where Ted sings the last line and he fades out so the background is just shown, and then as the music stops it fades to black and ends too. During the filming of this, I had to get Ted to mime his part and then get him to run off quickly and keep the camera in the same position to film the background. I had to do this so the fading would be smoother and be realistic as Ted fading to the background, otherwise the whole concept wouldn't work. It was also important for me to do this for the crowd scenes, which I managed to do as well. However, the only problem I found was that I didn't do the same camera angle of the empty seats for Ted's scenes which means my plan of fading him to empty seats didn't work. To change this, I had to scrap the idea of fading him into empty seats and instead just show Tayla and Chris looking at the empty seats, and then reacting.
Here is another picture that shows the fading at the end of my music video:
Finally, after watching my first draft through after completing the ending I then realised something that I hadn't noticed before watching it through - that the clips I had filmed on my phone didn't have the two black strips on the top and bottom of each shot, so it was obvious I had filmed them on different devices. At this stage it was obviously too late to try and film these again on the camera, as the reason why I had to film on my phone in the first place is because the camera was blown down in the wind and the focus was changed to something I didn't know at the time. Although, I was able to change this by looking at the effects that Final Cut Express offered and one of them was the option to turn the shots into the effect of 'widescreen'. This meant the two black strips appeared, and all I had to do was make them as big as the strips on the camera shots so they matched up. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the strips big enough on the effect as they were on the camera but the difference is only very slightly and watching it all through you cannot notice.
Here is one of the clips of Tayla that I took on my phone, in which I had to put the 'widescreen' effect on:
The only problem that occurred with doing this is that the black strips blocked some of the video so I had to move it around within the lines to the position I wanted it in. This wasn't a major problem though as I was able to do this quite quickly. However, this will be something I will see if the target audience member picks up on when they view it and if them or my media teacher do not, the slight difference is obviously not a problem.
I have managed to put it all together really well and looking back I am proud of what I have done over the week and how much I have achieved in such a short time. Time-wise, I have definitely improved from last year and the amount of effort I have put in for the editing process has increased by far. I can't wait for the opinion of my media teacher and the target audience member next week so I can improve it even more.
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