post production

For my video I knew I would have to spend the majority of the time on my editing rather than spending most of it on the filming. The plan for my video kept changing as I got to the editing stages but I knew I wanted to make the prioritise the visuals in my music video. I learnt a few more effects that I could use after filming all my footage. 

The original plan for my music video story was to have me play a character that goes to a party and has his drink spiked. My character would then collapse after taking a spiked shot of vodka. He would then wake up in a purple world and walk with the camera following him while the character changes the world that he's in. At the end his tricks would end up going out of control destroying everything where he would wake up still at the party on the floor. 

This was the original plan for my music video. I would've had a narrative in my music video but this started to change during my editing. I don't think it would be hard to create this in my music video as it's still similar to the new I concept have for it. The new idea is exactly the same, take away the narrative scenes such as my character at a party and getting spiked as well as waking up. I did this because I didn't film these scenes and I wanted to spend time adding effects instead of prioritising to do re-shoots. This music video still hold well regardless of having no narrative. The original plan was to have no narrative in my music video so it all worked out fine. For my video I would be using the stranger things effect to change the whole atmosphere of the world. I really liked how useful and easy this effect was to use so I applied it to evry clip used in my video. 

New effects 

Snap effect (Adobe After Effects)

I found this effect on a youtube tutorial on YouTube in my recommended. The video explained how to give off this scrap book paper effect It gave off a vintage look that I really liked. I had some random clips of me just messing around and doing random stuff hoping that it would be used in some cool transition or something. I though this effect would fit perfectly in this video of me snapping my fingers, it flows really well and I think it's my favourite clip in the whole video. This scene was not intended before or during filming and fits really well in this video regardless of being one of the last things added in the video. I did change some stuff from the tutorial video such as the paper background effect. I decided not to add that as I don't think it was necessary for the effect to work and also I wanted my stranger things sky effect to stay in shot and work. 

The only thing that I had an issue with when doing this effect was when cutting myself out with the roto brush tool. I didn't have a problem with figuring out what to do it just took a while to do. I had to go frame by frame cutting out and adjusting the cutouts of myself. Definitely worth the time and effort as like I said at the top of this page, I think this is the best scene in the music video. 

The next parts to this effect was finding a vintage background and making it see through as well as applying the noise effect. I would then turn up the level of noise to make my figure look like paper. When using the Vintage background in the shot I would change the position of the background every three frames to give off a vintage look. If you watch the video you'll see the background constantly changing. Lastly I had the original clip duplicated in After effect playing behind my cutout. 

Ordering clips

The first thing I did in the editing stage of my music video was ordering the clips. I started off by watching all the clips and writing down the main clips I wanted in a book in order from when I wanted them. If there was any space left for filler I would use extra footage I gathered on the day. When choosing the clips I took in to account the length of each clip and the length of the song so I wouldn't go over the time for the music. I haven't taken the time to do this in other projects and I'm glad I have taken the time to do so now. Not only do I have prioritised clips and a timeline for my video but I also know all the other clips I have in case I get any cool ideas for effects and transitions.

Using this knowledge I created a demo for what I wanted my music video to look like without the effects. This was the backbone for the start of my final music video. This is another thing I want to do in future projects. Definitely gave me a better understanding of what my music video would look like. Below is the demo for my music video:

Despite only a third of the video planned in this demo it was still a massive time saver. I had a better understanding of what and when I wanted to include certain effect and videos. This demo showed me how well I'd be doing for time as well with the clips I had gather a few day prior to editing this. 

Filming

I'm glad to say after filming everything that I didn't have to re-shoot anything and I didn't have any injuries or equipment malfunctions or anything like that. Though looking back at the footage my biggest regret when filming is taking out a gimble. The gimble would've made the shots in the music video stable. That's my only regret with the filming. 

The original location I planned to film in was on a road outside Westmorland woods Sadly on the first day of filming, this location was almost impossible to film at due to a lot of pedestrians being in shot. When choosing this location I assumed this would be a quiet road. Sadly this assumption was wrong. I had numerous outtakes and I didn't want to invade on the dog walkers spots so I moved the filming location to an empty field not far from the road. This new filming location was used on three separate occasions to record visuals for my project. We didn't see one person on the three occasions that we filmed there. The filming location worked just as well and I'm glad I found it after choosing to abandon the original primary location. The field led directly in to Westmorland woods making it a lot easier for transitions of me going in the forest.

One final thing that I should note was that on the final third day of filming it was raining. In some of the shots it's hard to see but it is raining. This wasn't an obstacle for my music video as it didn't really affect the visuals in such away that it'd be noticeable. I'm pleased with the amount of footage I was able to get for my music video. It was more than enough to help complete my music video and help with the edits I wanted to include.