Video Editing

Video editing for beginners

Video editing is a core part of producing a video mandatory for anyone wanting to go into media to at least get a sense for editing even if you do not want to specialize in it so it will be easier to work with colleagues by understanding terms and jargon. Video editing is about changing the footage that people have filmed, fitting it together, making it presentable as a final video, for example a documentary will have 30+ hours of footage and the job of an editor is to cut that down into 1-2 hours of footage, fitted together with transitions and color corrections, effects, etc. to make it open to the public. All modern editing work is done digitally with editing software so before you try editing, find the software you want to use, and get a feel for it and try techniques on test videos by doing cuts and such, molding footage together to make a video, the video editing software i use is adobe premiere and i have developed my techniques through test videos such as the one i will leave below called Lemon Steps

In that video it shows cuts and was a montage, with music put in the background through audio editing.

In editing you have to be organized due to the large amount of footage you sift through so you rename clips you will use appropriately by naming the shot, location, and take so you know how to find it at a later date when you need it for things such as putting the final production together an example of an appropriate name would be 031_performance_1. see the screenshot below for an example of how it should look.

You should also sort the order of the files after you named them, keeping it tidy will help with organisation and keeping track of your work so its quicker to access, you should sort them by the number of the scene like the screenshots below

When you have sorted all of this out you can load the scenes into your editing software, for this video we are making, it made sense to put the scenes into two different categories, performance and narrative. You can sort them into the two categories once they are imported into the editing program file you are using and should look something like this.

this could cut down your editing time tremendously since you know where to look for what you need and since you named and organized them before you can pick out precise scenes but just quickly looking through the lists in case you need to re-edit a scene.

Now that you have everything structured you can get onto the practical stuff such as getting the right aspect ratio for your video, Aspect ratio is the proportional size and width of the image displayed on screen, in the beginning, the first films were displayed in the aspect ration 4:3, these numbers represent the width and height of the screen respectively. you can shift the aspect ratio halfway through a movie for effect, like the way The grand Budapest Hotel does, it goes from modern aspect ratios 1:85, to an older ratio, 1:37. In our film The Lemon Trilogy it uses the aspect ratio of 2.35:1. See screenshots below for us working on our latest project, a music video.

If your footage is not looking the colour you want it you can use a tool called colour correction to change the colour to what you want it to be through manipulation using the software tools, for our music video we added a tinted layer to ours, and gave it an yellow tint at about 20%, to give a warmer affect for the music video during the outside shots.

Once we have finished our post production editing through assigning aspect ratios and colour correction etc. you will want to render your file to see what the final product will look like, and whether or not you want to change it again if it does not look good enough to you, if you are using adobe premier, you must select all used footage, go to the sequence tab and select "Render entire work area" and let it do its function.

After you have rendered everything you want, you will need to export it as a single file to make the film final. once you are ready you need to go to File > Export > media , pick your film, and the place you want it to be exported to and start exporting.make sure to pick an appropriate named exporting location such as "music video" or "media Project".

Lyrics Annotation

Preproduction Storyboard

Music Video assignment 1 feedback

A chronological approach allows you to describe the development of the purpose of music videos from The Beatles through the 1970’s and the development of music television such as MTV.  There is reference to a range of illustrative examples some of which are detailed. You describe the context and content of music videos and discuss connotations.

There is is some discussion of contemporary music videos but further exploration of their use and purpose would allow you to show further understanding.

Clarity is sometimes affected by clumsy expression.  Re-drafting would resolve this issue. 

Punctuation could be improved with apostrophes and capital letters being employed.

Moves from 60’s discussion of The Beatles using a film to promote themselves which explains the early purpose of music video. The style of videos on Top of the Pops is described where the first section is most important as this is the part that is broadcast. When discussing MTV you could explain why the Buggles track was the first one.

Uses case studies of controversial or iconic videos and their purpose. 

Moves into M1 as the changing purpose is explained such as promoting the director and using them to make social comment or as a form of protest (MIA). Controversy raising the profile of the star.

Further discussion of contemporary videos will allow you to explain how styles and conventions have changed.  Use David Bowie.

History of the Music video and reasons behind the music video

The first Music video was hard days night by the beetles in the intro of their film in 1964.  Music videos were known as the advertisements for bands and were a good way of getting reputation early if you can just make one good music video, if its interesting it did not matter whether or not the music was good. It would make it to shows such as top of the pops or on MTV, and be made more famous.

The beatles

The beatles were a very popular British band in the 60’s and their movie hard days night helped expand their influence over to America due to the fact that its both a movie and that it uses songs composed by the band in the movie, so it shows the two main types of entertainment in one package, boosting their popularity by showing that they are normal nice guys and showing off their music at the same time.

Top of the pops

Top of the pops was a famous TV show that aired on the BBC and started in the 1960’s. It was to show the weeks top music and music videos of the week and it runned consecutively up till 2005. It was one of the best ways to gain popularity in Britain at the time because no other show ranked and shown a variety of music videos up until MTV. They would only show the first minute or so of the song so that is why music videos mainly focused on filling the 1^st minute with interesting stuff and the rest just being repeated or filler stuff.

MTV

MTV was a new music oriented channel which showed up in the 80’s and showed music videos all day, showing the top charts and the other music. Their first shown music video was video killed the radio star by the buggles, which ended up making the buggles famous, proving that MTV was a good way of advertising yourself.

Madonna

Madonna rose to fame through some of her controversial music videos at the time such as like a prayer, it had many things that were controversial at the time and not normally showed on public TV in the video. It promoted interracial relationships showing Madonna together with a African American man, in America racism was still a big thing in the 80’s so she risked herself making this video as this could have had dangerous reactions from more extreme people. The video also portrayed Jesus as a African American, which was another risk from the possible outcry of white Christians who have Jesus portrayed as a white man. It also showed burning crosses, which is mainly known for being done by the Ku Klux Klan, in combination with it being set in the south is an obvious poke at the group. The most impressive things to critics was to how Madonna made a song that talked about sacredness and profanity at the same time, and manage to make it catchy.

Michael Jackson
Micheal Jackson is known as the king of pop and his music is renowned worldwide which led him to his massive popularity and celebrity status before passing. He made many music videos to go with his songs such as beat it and man in the mirror, but the most well known one was the music video for thriller,when it came out, it was the most expensive music video in history with a budget of 1 million dollars, and it changed the way music videos were made and presented, it had a storyline, good costumes, extras, and choreography, they were all mixed together to make a spooky music video which was even shown before movies came on in the cinemas. music videos were not this well done beforehand, and it only served to boost his reputation even more, it definitely aided in the evolution of the music video.

Style and conventions of music videos have changed

In the modern day music industry, music videos are more common due to the industry growing and they have big budgets. They are still used to promote the artist, but now they can also be used to promote the director depending on how well they did. Music videos are also not just made for the music, they can also be made to make their own point, expressing the artists ideals or the directors views through a set narrative in the music video and through the music’s vocals in case the music was made for the video exclusively.  Nowadays music videos are also much more free as to what they are allowed to show the public, due to the lack of censorship that modern society has compared to the 70s/80s, there is a much wider variety of things that they can include in their songs and music videos.

One music video that was more focused on making a point was the controversial video M.I.A-Born free. In this video they show police brutality, sex, segregation and killing civilians including children, it was made to purposely catch the eyes and attention of viewers everywhere and send it viral.

While the controversy of M.I.A's music videos are one side of how music videos have changed in terms of freedom and how they are presented, Another artist called miley cyrus tooke another aproaach at the controversial type, however instead of showing violence and death, it was her showing nudity on the music video Wrecking ball where it shows herself riding a wrecking ball naked, this would definitely not be allowed  on public television 30 years ago, which shows how the public and music industry has changed and the way music videos have been adapted, the core intent of this music video however, is one that has been in the music industry forever, it was to establish her new identity, to make sure the public sees her as a different person in contrast to her younger years when she was a Disney star. Music stars such as madonna are famous for using her music videos to represent herself.

October feedback

You have worked effectively as part of a team and made sound progress in a quiet and methodical way. you seem to enjoy the course, particularly the practical elements and your skills are developing as the course progresses.

The web-log is a point of concern as the accuracy is lacking in research and the detail is not evident in the posts.  the web-log evidences your development and is assessed.  At the moment it is very thin.

There are deadlines on Friday 16^th October to get two assignments completed, neither of which are pass standard as yet.

It is essential that you carry on working outside of the lesson in extended learning activities.

Discuss your own work further in light of the principles of video editing.

SMART targets

Ensure that writing is punctuated with capital letters and grammatical sentence structures.

Add your bibliography

Spend time adding detail to the web-log. 

Timeline of cinema

Thomas edison

Lumierre brothers

george melies

Sergei eisenstein