Lip-syncing and Final Tweeks

Because we had applied a new track to the video, it didn't exactly sync up with the track we had before. Me and the rest of the group had to therefore go through and sync up the clips again. This was tedious but didn't take too long. Our video was now finally completed with a good quality music track, and looked brilliant. I was very pleased with the final outcome as I felt it looked very professional and had many qualities that would appeal to many people my age.

Problems with the track

Throughout the editing process there have been a few problems with our music track. Because me and my group aquired it off of the school digital music library, it is highly compressed and not of a good quality. I therefore took it upon myself to go home and download the professional track off of itunes. I took the new track off of La Roux's debute album, which is in stereo and of a much better quality.

Final Editing

In this last proper editing session me, Siobhan and Alex worked on putting lots of effects on all the clips on the video. Nearly every clip has some sort of effect on it, as our chosen genre is one which requires this. Synthpop is futuristic and innavative, so can normally be found with many elaborate effects. In this one session our video suddenly came together. Up to this point it looked good, but still fairly amatury. Adding the effect brought it together and added a professional quality to it. We also spent some time just tidying the end of the video up, so it flows as well as the rest of the video. It now fits well into the overall project.

Half Term Editing

During the Half Term holiday, me and my group were able to come into school to work on our project - to spend a good 6 hours working on the project and getting all new footage edited in and cut in time with the music. We managed to get the whole project done apart from the ending, which needed a lot of looking at in the first place, as originally it had been created out of only two seperate clips, where as the rest of the video had up to 6 layers of footage.

Re-editing

Now our reshooting is complete, we have a much larger archive of footage to work with. Looking through the footage while uploading The overall quality is much better then before. We have taken more time when filming to make sure lighting, costume and hair styling is just the way we want it. Our project has been moved from the Media surver onto an individual computer to increase processing time and to make the whole editing process quicker.We therefore had to spend some time reconnecting all our media in our project, as all our footage had moved location too. With our project set up and all footage uploaded we could begin importing our new footage and syncing it up with the track, to then cut away and import into the project.

More Animation

As we felt the animation in our video was limited, we all decided more was needed to make it more significant. We set up a blue screen behind the lego to colour key it out later on the computer, to combine it with live action footage. We used characters we had created before to link all the lego parts of the story together. I had an idea to build on the 'Egyptian/ Wizard' part of lego we had filmed before (which fratures after the first chorus). I thought we could build a story out of it in which the wizard creates the Egypitan, then he attemps to get rid of him as he is michievious and not what he expected. This little storyline does not fir with the lyrics, but links the lego parts together. When watching the video, the audience will be able to engage with the lego parts more if there is a small storyline going on, and the slightly humourous nature of it would be amusing to watch.

'Film Studio' Filming Session

Me, Siobhan, and Alex aranged an after school filming session in PDH to film our studio work. We book PDH a week in advance to make sure it would be free. We had a very productive session, filming many different things with Lorna, including a having her just standing in one position whilst the fig rig moves around her. We also had an idea to use a white scree, with Lorna dancing in front. This created an interesting innovative idea that would be great to watch. Behind the screen Siobhan and Alex began dancing, casting shadows on the screen. This type of music would be music typically heared in a club, so dancing is something most associated with it. In an hour we managed to get all the studio work done.

The Idea of a 'Film Studio'

Through the Synthpop genre there is a clear pattern in setting. Because the songs are so commertial, a good portion of videos are filmed in studios. This is most clear in Little Boot's video 'Remidy'. She is performing in a dark room with studio lights and keyboards. I felt it was important to include this in the video, so we decided to use the big drama performing space to create this same effect.

Reshooting (The Ally and The Road)

As some shots were a bit dark the first time we shot in the ally, we felt it would be good to refilm this bit, which would also give us more to work with editingwise, as Lorna had got extentions in her hair, making her look very different.

We refilmed relitivly quickly, so made an on the spot decision to go to a nearby road and film another take of the sone, this time with Lorna walking down the road. We had two members of the group on 'Car Duty' , watching out for cars whilst the rest of the group used the fig rig to film Lorna walking in a midshot.