Editing the Music Video

• To edit the video I used Adobe Premiere Pro, a program I had a little experience of using in my own time, so I knew what to expect when I started the program. I imported all of the videos I’d filmed, before filing them into folders depending on what scenes I intended on using them for. I also imported the song I was making the music video to and immediately placed it onto the lead sound track, so I had an idea of how my videos would fit to the music as soon as I added them. I then added the first environmental shot to the start of the video, to play during the long intro.

• After this I copied in the 2 short videos of the model pretending to be unconscious in the forest, to fit in with the beat of the music. I decided to repeat the same two shots but zoom them in with every successive repetition in order to make the viewers focus on the girl, something that is required as the video continues.

• After playing this through quickly, I realized that I didn’t have enough video to cover the long introduction to the song, so I had to add the other 3 environmental shots I recorded, and moved the repeated images of the model on the ground to flash on the screen with the repetitive beat in the song. Once this covered the entire length of the intro, I began to edit these clips to the final standard I wanted. My first job was to introduce the artist and the name of the song at the start of the song, in a way that has been used in famous example of music videos. I downloaded a font especially for this project (Nervous font) which I wanted to run throughout the project, so I made two separate images with the artists and song names, before inserting them to flash up with a certain beat of music.

• I then decided to put a filter on the environmental shots, to make them more confusing and to immediately give an idea of the surrealist mood of the entire video. I chose the ‘Dreams’ filter on Premiere Pro because it perfectly suited my needs, and I felt that the ice-blue colour it gave my shots completely reversed the traditional ideas of what it means to be out in the environment. This helps to get across the strangeness of the main characters situation, and it also helps to show the viewer that the contents of the video may not be genuine.

• My final adjustments to the introductory section of the video were to the repeated clips of the model laying on the ground. I used the ‘Black and White’ filter before also adjusting the brightness and contrast of the clips to make them look darker and more imposing. This is to contrast with the brightly coloured environmental shots, in order to make the video more unsettling.

• Wanting to edit in chronological order I then moved on to the first verse of the song. My idea for this section was similar to the first section, where I had one long clip interrupted by several short clips, to signify the mental fractures within the character in the video. To make this more obvious I only slightly adjusted the brightness and contrast of the longer clip to make it look better, before heavily editing the shorted clips using techniques such as using different filters, changing the speed of clips and reversing some clips to make them seem other-worldly.

• Once this was done, I then moved onto the first part of the chorus. Within the song the first chorus is repeated, but the repeated version is slightly more intense than the first. To show this, I used simple edits for this section, including using different filters and reversing choice clips. This keeps the section fitting in with the rest of the video, but leaving space for the following footage to become more intense.

• To follow conventions of electronic music videos, I decided to use a lot of visual effects within the video to signify intense scenes. As I felt that the repeated version of the first chorus was more intense than the actual first chorus, I decided to use a lot more varied and surreal effects during this section. These include using the ‘Offset’ tool to create the bottom left image, the ‘Swirl’ effect to create the top right image, and the ‘Mirror’ effect to create the top left image. I chose these effects because they take all the realism from the clips, which helps to signify that this is all some sort of vision.

• The second verse is a moment of calm within the song, so I decided to reflect that within the video. With the exception of one shot of the model’s eyes close up, this entire section is just one long clip. I used subtle editing techniques such as raising the brightness and mirroring the clips to heighten the sense of peace and tranquillity at this point, which gives the viewer a break before the intensity of the video raises again. I feel this works well, as it fits the change in the music perfectly, although I feel it would have worked even better if it had been filmed as one long clip instead of two, because the transition isn’t quite as smooth as I’d hoped for.

• When the chorus comes back in again, I used more intense editing techniques once more to go back to the earlier feeling within the video. The big point about the song is the repetitive and circular nature of it, as it just seems to keep using the same elements again and again. To follow the feedback from my audience research which suggested that I should link my video to the style of the song, I decided to repeat the clips within this section. I started by editing the clips to fit the beat of the music for the first part of the chorus, and then when that was done I copied them onto the next part of the chorus, creating a loop within the video. I feel this works very well because it fits the music perfectly, and helps to link the rest of the video to the conclusion.

• As the chorus begins to climax and resolve, I changed the imagery to push the plot forwards and to begin the resolution of the video. For the section where one side of the character faces the other, I decided to make one clip monochrome and the other have heightened brightness and contrast. This is to show the difference between the two sides of the character, and also to reveal to those who hadn’t already realized that these two characters are in fact the same.

• As the song calms down and fades out, I decided to represent this with having the surviving part of the character walking away in slow motion, with a slow fade into the final shot of the character with face paint smeared all over them. This is to show the viewers that the person with the face paint on them that flashes up several times within the video is in fact the same character yet again. It represents the character once she had chosen the career over her partner, and the smeared nature of the paint on her face represents the madness and regret that has begun to take over her due to the decision. I decided to make this the final shot to make the overall storyline of the video more confusing, and to ensure repeated views of the video so that people can work out for themselves what the different images within the clip all mean, which guarantees a high view-count for the video.