Advanced Editing Workshop

Advanced Editing Workshop

In this post I will be writing about what we learnt on how to edit a music video.

We had an advanced editing workshop on tips on how to edit our music video when the time comes. We learnt many new tricks to make the process easier and faster. 

Rushes

When we begin out projects we will want to set it up so it is as clear and neat as possible. Within the project window we have folders and one of the main ones is called rushes, inside this folder contains the song of the music video and a different folder which is named depending on what camera you are using which in this case is the 'Black Magic Camera', this folder contains all footage of the video. The first and most important rule is to always keep your rushes as they are and not to edit them at all, this is because later on when we are editing and we need to find one specific shot that was filmed at a certain time it will be impossible to find if it has been renamed or deleted as it can't be undone. Whereas if we leave it how it is it will take a much quicker time as it is all in chronological order. 

Sync Footage 

What is vital to know about is syncing footage and keeping it neat. We do this by dragging a video we have taken to the top left hand side corner and after this using the clapper board or sound to make sure that the lip syncing goes in perfectly with the song. An easy way to achieve this is to either have each of the screens showing the same number on the clapper board or always keeping your left hand on the space key and arrow keys to hear where the beat starts/ends which will help you make it precise. Once you have dragged the perfect clipped video to the timeline you THEN rename the object seen first and then the size of the shot, this way when looking through we can easily see which shot it is in a speedy manner. What is important to keep in mind is to make sure when we rename the shots that we do is as clear as can be, because this will help us a lot when we actually begin to edit it. 

Another important rule is keeping organised in the timeline at all times by grouping all of the similar shots together. This is because everyone is your group will be editing, therefore when another person is editing they can easily see where everything is without having to waste a load of time trying to find each of the clips. 

On the other hand if I am editing for example and I know I will be making big changes to the timeline I will make a duplicate so that if I did something wrong to it me and my group will always be able to go back to the previous cut. 

Three Major Rules 

There are three major rules to cutting a music video and if we follow these rules you won't ever go wrong and will end up with a perfect edit. 

The first rule is listening to the song, illustrating what you hear and cutting to the beat. Something that is always expected in a music video is that the first line of the song you need a closeup of the singer, if this isn't done the record label will usually send the video back and say that they won't use it. 

The second rule is grouping shots together, which revolves around making sure the cuts sync in and make sense altogether, because the audience don’t know anything about what they are watching so it is our job to make it clear and stop it from looking random. It is a clear pattern by hearing something, showing what it is and group shots together with it and make it go well with the music. 

The final rule is to follow movement. This smoothens the cuts out and makes it look like it’s done on purpose for the audience to feel the rhythm of the music.



Here is an example of a music video done before that uses movement:

A smart technique when editing is to focus on one shot at a time and making it amazing, rather than focusing on all footage at once because this will end in poor work. The best way is to edit 10 seconds of the music video each time and make it the best is can possibly be. After this is done over a certain amount of time it will be the perfect music video. 

You always begin editing the performance cuts and once it is finished you then create a duplicate and add in all the extra elements you have between the performance where it gets boring. 

One of the most important rules is to never create a rough cut. A rough cut is where you roughly edit everything together and neaten it up later on. This is a problem because if we have in our heads that this is a rough cut we won’t put in all our energy into it and it would mean that we would edit the music video twice which takes up too much time which will give us less time to make it perfect. This is why when editing we should always edit as if it were the final music video that is going to be published. 

The colour correction is there to make sure all shots have the same colours and don’t look different. This will be the very last thing we will do in our music video because if we do it whilst editing it will take up a whole lot of time that isn’t necessary. 

Another rule is to never show any other group your work or ask for their opinions. This is common sense because everyone will always have something bad to say about it which will make your initial ideas change which would have actually been good. Therefore, we should only show our work to the teachers or the other people in our group. Once the music video is fully finished then you can show others.

After Effects 

I questioned how it would work if we wanted to add in any graphic effects to our music video. The feedback I got was that we should always finish the performance cut and other elements right until the point we have our final cut. After this, we can then add on the extra effects because if we did it before and we took a long amount of time making a graphic and it gets cut out all of that time is wasted.