FINAL DRAFT!!

After the initial edit of the 'painted words' footage at the end of the video, we decided it was a bit too long and not fast-paced enough to be in keeping with the conventions of an Alternative Rock music video. So we edited it again and made it much more fast-paced and exciting by adding in very short clips of other shots in between, so that the audience feels slightly disorientated.

We also changed a few things throughout the video. For example, the second time the audience sees the split screen of the feet walking past, they were reversed, but we were told this is not effective as it makes it seem as though our editing skills were not capable of anything better than simply reversing old footage.

Although I really liked the reversed walking shots because I thought it represented the deterioration of the couple's relationship we changed it so that the two parts of the screen were swapped over instead of simply reversing it.

I am so proud to finally put our finished promotional music video on my blog because I am very happy with how it turned out. So here is our very last, final, completely finished version of She by The Mags. Enjoy!

Audience Feedback Video

Here is a clip of just some of the responses Abby, Dominique and Oyinda had after watching our latest draft of the music video.

We took all of these comments on board when deciding how to fill the ten second gap at the end of the video.

Video Ending...

So after watching the latest edit of our music video, we realised that it was essential for us to fill in the last ten second gap with something quite bold and dramatic in order to create a climax of all the built up tension from earlier clips.

We got lots of people to watch our video and tell us what they thought the ending should be and what their interpretation of the couple's relationship was.

This is the edit we showed everyone (without an ending);



Everyone seemed to have different readings of the relationship between the two characters in our video; some thought they had simply been in a relationship that went wrong, others thought she was an obsessive ex girlfriend and one person thought they had been in a relationship but the girl could not handle being pushed away by the boy's music career.

Someone suggested filming some shots of her and him stood in a spotlight and flicking between the two, until it is just her in the spotlight at the end and the spotlight flickers off. I liked this idea but it still was not dramatic enough for our ending.

We started to watch some existing music videos that we liked and eventually came across an idea that we really liked that did not involve too much narrative concept that would turn our music video into more of a film. We came across this video for Marina and the Diamonds 'I am not a robot';



Someone had already suggested painting some of the lyrics onto the girl in our video and this Marina and the Diamonds video helped us to decide how to carry out this idea. We painted "Always looking at me" onto Charlotte's shoulders and filmed each word appearing and then filmed her frantically rubbing the words off.

Here is the first draft of the new ending with the words painted onto Charlotte. This is simplt our first attempt at editing these shots together and we will probably end up changing it slightly.

Draft 6 - Lots Of Split Screen...

Here is the latest draft of our music video for 'She' by The Mags. We've added in lots of short clips to see how they work within the whole video and we may change some of them but the bulk of the video is done now! Here is draft number six; We have added in some split screen parts of the band members playing their instruments as well and we have also decided to edit the split screen opening again, this time in Final Cut Express as it is much better quality and easier to get each part of the screen equal.

Ice Technique...

Ages ago we were all watching some different music videos on YouTube together and came across a very interesting technique that we could very easily recreate for our own music video. The start of the video we were watching (Traktor - Wretch 32) showed a water forming into 32 on a black surface and we thought it looked very effective so we decided to film heart shaped blocks of ice as they melted and then reverse and speed up the footage to make it look as though the hearts were forming out of nothing.

This Prezi shows the process of creating the heart shaped ice holders;

Ice & Paper Mache on Prezi

After this we made the ice hearts, set them up on Charlotte's roof on a sunny day and (with the aid of a hair dryer) filmed the ice hearts melting. However, when we tried to speed it up on iMovie it was still 7 minutes long at the fastest possible speed, so we dragged the footage across to Final Cut Express and we were then able to speed up the footage to the right speed. Here is a video of us editing the ice hearts melting!;

here is our final product!;

I think this will look really effective in our music video if we edit it correctly to the right part of the music.

Draft 5 - Horizontal Split Screen...

After messing around on Final Cut Express looking for better ways to create a split screen effect than on iMovie, we discovered how to create a horizontally split screen quite easily, by using the motion tabs, etc. Once we knew how to do this we were able to create the effect we had wanted initially which was inspired by this Blink 182 video for their song Always; Here is our fifth draft of our music video with the extra split screens added into it. I really love the way it looks and I think the slow pace of this particular part of our music video helps to build up tension in our audience with the narrative side of the video;

Voyeurism...

As part of our music video we wanted to make sure that we fulfilled all the criteria and conformed to the conventions of the Alternative Rock genre. One way that we wanted to do this was to have an element of voyeurism within the video where the musician looks at themselves in the video. We learnt about this technique on one of our trips to RichMix in a talk by Pete Fraser about promotional music videos. A classic example of this type of voyeurism can be seen in Nat King Cole's video for Frim Fram Sauce, where he looks at himself performing on a screen; Here is how we attempted the idea of voyeurism in our own music video;

Credits...

When watching our music video for 'She' by The Mags we realised that we had not yet added the credits that a normal music video would have if you were to watch it on a music channel on TV. Here is the latest draft of our music video including the new credits at the start (with the conventional band/track name, record label name, etc.) and also with added close up clips of Tom's mouth lip-syncing to the track;

Split Screen...

For a long time we have been trying to figure out how to create a split screen effect on iMovie and Final Cut Express and have not had much luck with it, but after researching into techniques on YouTube, we found some tutorial videos that we were able to watch, understand and then copy. Here are examples of what we were able to achieve after learning how to create a split screen on iMovie; We also did a split screen opening that we have wanted to do ever since we began the post production process and this is what it looks like within the video itself;