Final Cut- Weekends

Production Overview

After researching our elements and creating a strong/ perfect pre-production pack for our music video to incorporate them in our production, I believe that our production was very positive and successful.
It was successful due to our organisation, such as the things we need for our music video were made to be sure that it was ready before the shooting day. For example making sure the camera battery is fully charged for the day/ making sure the equipments were ready on the side/confirming that everyone will be at the locations a bit earlier by couple of mintues to get everyone in position and set up the equipments on time. From my experience, it made our production more effecient. This means it has surely saved us time from pressure/stress.

During the process of filming, we remembered from our last years AS preproduction research of different angle set ups and their meaning, we decided to incorporate and tweaking our shot by shooting from lower angles of our actors to make them look more empowered and important.

We decided to have extreme close ups to make it very clear to our audience for our intentions of Andrew Goodwins theory, which was to match visuals to sound. For example, we filmed extreme close-ups, focusing on the handmade instruments of our actors performing and perfectly syncing with the music. Furthermore, extreme close-ups give a perfect good depth of field, which fits the style of music, also makes our music video effective and appealing to our audiences. 

During filming of both of our location, we made sure that we incorporated establishing shots, this helps to convey and identify the two different settings of our band (performance location in Nordern Farm) and our main artist (bedroom location) to our audience. Though it was challenging and difficult to capture a perfect wide/ establishing shot without having it to be a flat shot. We tried to get a depth of field in shot but it was difficualt as the camer lense was focusing on the whole shot it self.
We tried to challange this difficulty to help us to create depth throughout our music video, so we we decided to alter our bands positions by having our lead singer infront of the band and followed by the two guitarist in a line behind the lead singer and then finally followed by the drummer behind the two guitarist. It made the shot slight more efficient, though, however it was still quite flat from a wide shot.

Post-production: Overview

In my experience we did not have much difficulties with creating our final footage. We had basic and more complex experience and knowledge of editing from our previous production in AS A levels. We used and incorporate theses skills/ knowledge in our music video. For example, selecting a specific cut of a footage and arranging it over the music track/ cropping part of the footage that is unncessary/ over layering/ and adjusting the music levels in certain parts of the music video to make lower, etc.

Final Cut Pro is very professional software to use for editing, it is used by professional industry institution that creates videos either for filming a movie or music videos. This helps us to create a magnificent and perfect quality as a professional music video. The advantage of using this software allows us to create sequence for our music video. For example, the sequence would allow us to edit our 1st draft then save an extra copy to edit for the 2nd draft (during editing we don't delete any footage we overlay the final footage) and final save another copy and edit the last 3rd draft to create our final music video. This process allows us to improve our music video and develope it to more better and professional quality standard.

Post-production: Colour Grading

Our final stage of editing after completing rearranging and ordering our sequence, then letterbox each footage and adding the logo, it was finally for colour grading to match the footage colouring with the rest of the similar footage. So that the footage does not look out of it place nor look odd. This will make the match on action more efficient and effective. 

Our aim and intention was to make that the colour or lighting where the exact same/ similar colour level for all of our shots. Most of our shots where either over exposed or under exposed or too much redness (especially in the bedroom location). This mean we had to reduces or increase the brighting of the shot to adjust the colour similar to the following shot so it matches. This will make our music video more fluid due to match on action of lighting. For the redness shots we had to alter and add slightly more blue and green colour grading, so it becomes less warm and not too red. This allows us to balance the perfect lighting. 

Most of our performance footage where more difficult to colour grade. This is because of the stage colour lighting that we used in our music video, which makes it hard for us to identify the lighting that need colour grading. For example, during the performance the stage lighting constantly changes very fast from one colour to another which makes it hard to recognize the odd colour grading within the footage, such as the redness or yellowness or blueness... So we just decided to lower or increase the brightness if necessary. 

Post-production: Letter Boxing & Logo

No matter how something/video is filmed, the best way to present a movie/music video/trailer on video as it was originally created is to letterbox it. This format presents the full, wide picture on the middle of the screen, with black bars above and below it. Letter box preserve the original cinematography of the video, letterbox, or widescreen, videos have become more and more popular in recent years. This technique is especially used in most of professional music videos.

To maintain our final piece of music video we letter box each frame to its original theatrical aspect ratio, 2:35:1, so that you see everything we as a director intended our audiences to see.



Logo-

After completing the editing, colour grading and letterbox it, we decided to research well known TV or Youtube logo for music videos, we thought of choosing Tv logo as we would have more options of different channels and some thing rather more into Rock genre. This will allow us to directly target our target audience. We came up with MTV Rock logo as it it suits our style genre which is 'Indie Rock'. We thought of adding the logo onto the top right hand corner like an actual Tv channel, and becuase it looked more decent. When we copied the logo from google image we had to remove the white background as we didn't have the proper logo copy, this will make it look more professional and realistic without the noisy white background.

Post-production: Matching Visuals to Sound

Once we completed uploading our footage computer and making seperate folders to edit it to the software on Final Cut Pro. We embedded the sound track of the song 'Weekends' to start editing. We had to listen to the sound track couple of times to get a brief idea of the tempo to start adding our footage on top.
Our music 'Indie Rock' style genre, though it has has quite a fast a steady tempo. From our research we found out that the faster the tempo the more cuts there should be, therefore during the fast track of the music we had to make sure we as an audience see it visually fast by adding fast cuts of the band syncing with the music.

Whereas, the steady tempo during the chores we had to make sure that it was less cuts, especially when our lead singer is lip syncing. This make it easier for us to creat a perfect lip sync with the music.
Lastly, during the beginning of the music track it starts quite slow pace and at a more lower volume level, this make it easier for us to start with a narrative and convey the narrative very clear to our audience, to whats happening in our music video. This was helpful to us so that we didn't have to have fast cuts during the opening of the music video, so then we can build up our visuals towards the fast temp.