The post production phase of my music video proved to be perhaps the most fundamental, challenging and rewarding part of creating this piece. On completing production, i.e. the actual film shoot, I had to check in all of my footage to a backed up hard drive from which I could 'check out' my files each time I wanted to edit the video. Overall we took around three hours of footage and it proved to be a lengthy process marking up all of the relevant and useful shots that could be used in the edit before I could even begin to put them together.
I found that my knowledge of Final Cut Pro had become greatly comprehensive when i came to using the programme to edit "Let You Go" due to the fact that over the course of my time as an A level media student i have been able to gain much experience in the programme from my AS Thriller, my A2 preliminary task which included editing, as well as putting together the storyboard for this years music video as part of pre production and preparation. Creating the animatic storyboard not only refreshed my memory in terms of the procedures and tools used when editing footage, but i also found that it was extremely useful for me to have some idea of how to cut shots to the beat of a song, as opposed to the more free approach to editing when creating my thriller which did not have a beat to cut to.
I found that one great upside of editing this music video for me was the fact that i did not have to worry about continuity of sound as i did with my Thriller because of the fact that the sound for the entire video was provided by the track itself. Because of this, I did have to take on the extra task of listening through each clip of footage to find what point in the song it was from, place it accordingly on the timeline and then delete the sound from that particular clip, however this did not prove difficult.
The most challenging, yet ultimately rewarding aspect of the post production process for me was my use of After Effects to create the illusion that peoples heads were exploding. Overall this process alone took us roughly six hours to complete as a group due to the fact that it involved so many different processes, some of which had to be repeated four times because there were four 'exploding heads'. We had footage of exploding watermelons which was then cut around and placed on top of the 'background layer' and the 'actors layer' in after effects. It took us a long time to position the watermelon layer and mask it to our actors so that the effect looked realistic even with the movement of our actors. Once the layering and masking was complete, we used a blood spatter effect that had to be perfectly timed with the explosion of the heads. Overall the entire process was a success and left us with a realistic and rewarding end to our video.
Once all of the editing and after effects had taken place, we coloured and graded the entire video using 'Color' to create an in depth and continuous flow in the aesthetic appearance of shots from various different locations across our video. The final step before we had a finished version of our music video was to upgrade all of the footage into HD in order to make the production look as visually impressive and professional as possible. We then distributed the video on DVD and on various video sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo alongside all of our promotional materials such as the album artwork, poster and a behind the scenes 'The making of Let You Go' video.
I found that my knowledge of Final Cut Pro had become greatly comprehensive when i came to using the programme to edit "Let You Go" due to the fact that over the course of my time as an A level media student i have been able to gain much experience in the programme from my AS Thriller, my A2 preliminary task which included editing, as well as putting together the storyboard for this years music video as part of pre production and preparation. Creating the animatic storyboard not only refreshed my memory in terms of the procedures and tools used when editing footage, but i also found that it was extremely useful for me to have some idea of how to cut shots to the beat of a song, as opposed to the more free approach to editing when creating my thriller which did not have a beat to cut to.
I found that one great upside of editing this music video for me was the fact that i did not have to worry about continuity of sound as i did with my Thriller because of the fact that the sound for the entire video was provided by the track itself. Because of this, I did have to take on the extra task of listening through each clip of footage to find what point in the song it was from, place it accordingly on the timeline and then delete the sound from that particular clip, however this did not prove difficult.
The most challenging, yet ultimately rewarding aspect of the post production process for me was my use of After Effects to create the illusion that peoples heads were exploding. Overall this process alone took us roughly six hours to complete as a group due to the fact that it involved so many different processes, some of which had to be repeated four times because there were four 'exploding heads'. We had footage of exploding watermelons which was then cut around and placed on top of the 'background layer' and the 'actors layer' in after effects. It took us a long time to position the watermelon layer and mask it to our actors so that the effect looked realistic even with the movement of our actors. Once the layering and masking was complete, we used a blood spatter effect that had to be perfectly timed with the explosion of the heads. Overall the entire process was a success and left us with a realistic and rewarding end to our video.
Once all of the editing and after effects had taken place, we coloured and graded the entire video using 'Color' to create an in depth and continuous flow in the aesthetic appearance of shots from various different locations across our video. The final step before we had a finished version of our music video was to upgrade all of the footage into HD in order to make the production look as visually impressive and professional as possible. We then distributed the video on DVD and on various video sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo alongside all of our promotional materials such as the album artwork, poster and a behind the scenes 'The making of Let You Go' video.
