Journal - Music Video Post Production

The shots filmed in the arcades make up the vast majority of our music video so our music video has really started to come together since filming at the arcades. To keep up with the fast pace of our song, we have purposefully kept our shots very short and used several quick cuts, often resemble photos being taken and/or to match up with the beats in our song.

We cut these photos quickly to reflect our beats

However, after watching our shots together with the music, we realized that the pace or length of time on screen sometimes does not fit with the speed of the music. To resolve this, we not only used quick cuts but also adjusted the speed of our some clips to 200% rather than the default 100%. This has helped ensure that our music video flows and will engage an audience, rather than bore them.

The main focus in the arcade is Isla and her friends on the bumper cars. This footage actually turned out better than we expected and we had more footage than we needed -- to the point where it was difficult to narrow down the clips as we wanted to use all of them. To link in with Goodwin's analysis, we picked the shots that were focused the most on Isla however have included a few shots of her friends to communicate the fun, care-free atmosphere that reflects our track. Again, we kept these shots short and snappy.

We framed this shot so that Isla is the main focus, yet her friends feature

We incorporated jump cuts into our music video, particular in the arcade, to ensure that it remains engaging throughout.

We experimented with the contrast of our clips, but the lighting of the arcade looks very good on screen -- particularly in comparison to the bright, white background of our previous shots in Isla's room -- so we eventually decided to leave the contrast as default. 

We have also taken care that we have a good amount of shots that detail Isla singing the song so that our music video feels authentic. We did this by not only including the shots of Isla singing in the arcade but also by cutting back to previous shots in her bedroom.

However, there are still some gaps in our music video. We still have to film the last 40 seconds of the song (which we plan to do next weekend) but there are also short gaps that last a few seconds that we need to fill. In order to resolve this, we have decided to add in another location to our music video. Originally we had Isla in her bedroom, then in the arcade and then around London but we plan to film our artist singing the entire song with a white background behind her -- we can use this shot to fill any gaps we have to avoid the arcade sequence becoming tedious. This shot will be a close-up to sell our artist as a commodity.

Overall, editing has so far been successful. We feel like we are matching the pace of our song with suitable cuts and action and our filming has genuinely been very accurate to our storyboards, however we have played around with the ordering of our shots.