Music Video Evaluation

Final Music Video

Editing Evaluation

Cut Lengths
When it came to the editing i found that my music video required a lot of cuts, as i wanted to match the cuts to the beat. I listened to the beats and counted six to a second, and then figured out that the length of each clip was 4 frames. When i started to cut my clips to four frame each i found that not all of the action could be caught in this four frames. for example there were some panning and tilt shots that revealed a character for a hidden, subject. so to keep this element of surprise to my music video i decided that not every clip had to be four frames, they could be longer as long as the number of frames was a multiply of four i.e. 4, 8, 12, 16; this way they cuts were still on a beat just not every beat.

Limited Viewpoint
when i was out filming i knew the shots that i wanted to include and had figured out how to accomplish them before going on set. these shots included POV shots, high angle shots, and different angle of the same character (this enabling me to cut several times, without having to use the same clips over and over and show the same progression of the same character).

Continuity Error
When i first went out filming i shot the Young Girl character with a teddy bear. Because i thought the shot of the little girl running to be the simplest i left this till the end of the shoot on the first day. however this left me a bit rushed to film this shot as some of the cast were on a time schedule, so when filming the Young Girl i forgot to include the teddy bear on one of the takes. even though i remember it on another take i found the first to be the best one, (without the teddy) and wanted to include this one. Due to the fact that the teddy is of great importance to the story line of the music video i did need to show the girl dropping the teddy to symbolize the loss of innocence. this lead to a major continuity error, where one minute the girl does not have the teddy and the next she does. when i edited the first section together and show my fellow classmates they didn't notice the error until i pointed it out to them. because of this i decide to leave the error in. also i thought that if the error was spotted at the beginning by the time the viewer got to the end of the video the error at the beginning would not be remember.

The sunlight on the second day of  filming was incredible bring. some clips i noticed the sun distorted when on location, others seemed find on location, but when it came to reviewing the clips afterwards they where bleached out by the sun. some of the clips that were ruined by the sun were very good, and i really like the action within them. so i decided to give the whole of my music video a bleached look, to blend in with the clips with a lot of sun. i feel that this added to the look and feel of the music video, and made it look very other worldly.

the end section of my music video has a lot of noise and grain. this is due to the lack of sunlight on the third day of shooting. i could have correct this on the day of shooting by upping the ISO, however when viewed through the camera the footage seemed to be find (as with the footage with too much sunlight). to correct this i added contract and brightness to the clips in premiere and brighten the clip.
this did help the darkness of the clip however the grain was still present, i added a noise and grain effect, but this didn't really help.

overall i am happy with the outcome of my music video. i feel that it has followed the story line i was trying to achieve, through both planning (story boarding) and accident aspects (too much sunlight).

Editing Organisation

Before i could start any editing i needed to make sure all of my footage was organised neatly, as i knew that i had a lot and it all needed t be in a specific order. To organise my work i first of all collected all my footage, images, song downloads and anything else relevant to my music video in one place. I first collected all the footage in a folder labelled MUSIC VIDEO and placed this on my desktop. Within in this folder i created additional folders, labelled - Boards, Footage, and Images. also in this folder was the audio.
I did not label the images as i did not feel it was relevant, the images were to show the characters, in make up, setting up on location, the OH&S, and these were all clear to see without labeling them. i feel that if i were to label them i would be wasting time. if i had a larger time scale i would have labelled all the images.

   

 

Within the folder labelled footage i organised the footage further. i knew that i wanted to break the narrative of my film into different section, so to make it easier when editing i placed all like footage for a scene in the same folder.

Within these folders i labelled all the clips, saying what shot type they were, the action that is seen with in the clip, what day it was shot on and weather the clip when wrong or not. all of this would help when it came to editing. i would be able to quickly select footage and know if it was usable without having to watch through all the footage again.

   

 

By doing this it will hopefully help to make my work more efficient, whilst also letting me know what footage i don't have that i need due to forgetting, running out of time, bad weather or the outcome of the footage was of poor quality.

Ken Burns - Pan and Scan

Ken Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs. Burns often gives "life" to still photographs by slowly zooming in on subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. 








The Ken Burns Effect
The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery. The feature enables a widely used technique of embedding still photographs in motion pictures, displayed with slow zooming and panning effects, and fading transitions between frames.

The technique is principally used in historical documentaries where film or video material is not available. This is ideal for my promotional video and there is little to no video footage of the Coop Hall in its prim from 1938-65, however there is little footage of the demolition of the hall, but this is also scarce, to by using this technique on the photographs provided and taken by the public, i will be able to use this on images to keep the audience intrigued.  

Action is given to still photographs by slowly zooming in on subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. The effect can be used as a transition between clips as well. For example, to segue from one person in the story to another, a clip might open with a close-up of one person in a photo, then zoom out so that another person in the photo becomes visible. The zooming and panning across photographs gives the feeling of motion, and keeps the viewer visually engaged.

Here is an example of where i used pan and scan and zoom in my own promotional video:-

                       

Methods Of Montage

Metric

Where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience. 

Example from Eisenstein's October.

Rhythmic 

Includes cutting based on time, but using the visual composition of the shots, along with a change in the speed of the metric cuts, to induce more complex meanings than what is possible with metric montage. Once sound was introduced, rhythmic montage also included audial elements (music, dialogue, sounds). 

Example from The Battleship Potemkin

Tonal 

A tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots - not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics - to elicit a reaction from the audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation. 

Example from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. 

Overtonal/Associational 

The overtonal montage is the accumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect. 

Example from Eisenstein's Strike

Intellectual 

Uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning. Intellectual montage examples from Eisenstein's October and Strike. In Strike, a shot of striking workers being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered creates a film metaphor suggesting that the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning does not exist in the individual shots; it only arises when they are juxtaposed.

Example from Eisenstein's Strike

Parallel editing

Parallel editing is a technique that allows two or more simultaneous sets of action to happen within a single film sequence. Its main uses are to; create tension, show more vantage points and can create dramatic irony. 

Crosscutting

Crosscutting is a technique that pieces together sequence that at occur at the same time, but in different places in order to create narrative tension. Crosscutting’s most famous practitioner was W.D.Griffiths, his collaboration of films contain textbook examples of crosscutting. Some of his pieces of work that include this editing type are; A Corner in Wheat and The Lonedale Operator.

Motivated Editing

In its most basic form, a motivated edit is one that alludes to something not in the frame and then cuts to that item or event. If you accept that any edit breaks the illusion of continuity, then we put forth that the motivated edit is one of the least jarring forms of transition. For this reason, it is used often in Hollywood-style narrative filmmaking. In its most basic form, a motivated edit is one that alludes to something not in the frame and then cuts to that item or event. You see it all the time in horror films: a woman is standing in a spooky place all alone and then hears a startling sound. She spins her head around and sees nothing. The sound then comes from another area, and the soon-to-be victim jerks her head in that direction. Eventually, the viewing audience gets to see the object of terror, usually along with a loud, startling sound. 

Shot- Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot (or shot/countershot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.

Example from The Hunger Games

New Wave Edited Piece

This is my Final New Wave edited piece. 

What I was Trying to Accomplish

When reviewing the footage i had collected over the weeks, i noticed two main characters, Sammi and Will, so i decided to focus on them. The new wave films that i had analysed before starting did not have very happy tales to have, to i wanted to follow suit.

i decided to make my narrative a love tragic love story, almost like romeo and juliet. when i decided to do this i needed to decide on a song to run throughout. (the reason  a i decide to use a song instead of the dialogue from the footage was because no particular script or narrative was followed when filming, as we were capturing techniques). i chose to use the song Angels on the Moon by Thriving Ivory, because this song mirrored the mood i wanted to portray throughout my film.

Analysis/reflection 

Editing

Text

I got the idea of adding text and dictionary definitions from the film if.... (1968) that I studied for my Contextual Study (Unit 1). At the beginning of if…. there is a saying shown first, setting up one of the many issues that are raised.  

When I decided to add text into my short film I put one at the beginning and the end. I did this because it helps set up the film, but also helps to show a definitive ending to the film, and the theme of life and death. I feel that it helps to add emphasis on the narrative that everything comes to the end, and by having them fade in and out I wanted to demonstrate that you become more defined as you grow, fading into life and standing out more and as you get older and eventually die you fade out of life.

The first time you are introduced to the characters they are seen in a dream like way, with the background spinning past. This shot was produced in an innovative way, using a round-a-bout to move the camera. This helps to fit my film into new wave as in new wave innovate camera movements are used, not only does it create interesting shots but also is a cheap way to move the camera and capture shots, using apparatus that are readily available. 

This movement helps with the narrative that I was trying to create by showing how in the characters minds the world revolves only around them.  I emphasized the dream like sense by slowing the clips down, this showing also how time revolves around them and when they are together time slow down for them. This will later contrast with how time speed ups nearer the end, -seen through jump cuts. This point that people think they have all the time in the world together, when really their time together can be cut short, as it is in my short film, catalyzes the narrative.

The second time the couple are seen they are in a darker environment and I tried to make the scene more nightmarish compared to the dream like encounter before. I have done this to move the narrative along trying to foreshadow the darkness that is to come. I have also done this with Kuleshov editing, showing the female looking at the male, who then becomes a skeleton, -this foreshadows the males death that is to come. Also I have edited the female and the doll together –using the same female shot used when she was looking at the male and skeleton- and done this to show how after he dies she will become inanimate and emotionless without him.

Also in the nightmare scene the male looks directly at the camera with the doll waving. Two things are done here; one, I have included this clip as it breaks the forth wall and directly addresses the camera, this adding to new wave, and two; the doll waving helps to once again show how the female is waving goodbye to everything she knows now and the happy life she has with the male.

Continuity

When we seen the female walking down the road my lack of continuity can be seen very clearly; once when she passes the same shop twice (the blue run down store) and how she is not passing a man with a dog in one shot then when it cuts to the next shot she is. These continuity errors are left in deliberately, as new wave does not concentrate that much on continuity but rather the issues and social context within the film that fuel the narrative.

The audiences viewing habits are challenged by them not really knowing how the female got from one place to the other, one minute she’s in the park with the male the next she is walking down the road, then they are eating dinner in a surreal environment (created by the low key lighting, the mise en scene, like the doll, and the editing), then the female is stood alone and then at a grave. I have also tried to challenge the audience by not giving then a time period that these events have happened across. I have showed time moving along by clocks being seen, long tracking shots, jump cuts and as said before slow motion shots. I also feel that the low angle shot of the leaves helps to move time along, from the way the camera is panning. The sudden scene changes help to show how life suddenly changes and the next step is unpredictable.

Tracking Shot

Long tracking shots are typical of the new wave genre. A good example of this in the french new wave film Les quatre cents coups. I included a long tracking shot into my short film, this is where trees and bushes are seen towards the end. i did this shot through an open car window. 

Development of Editing

Analogue vs. Digital Editing

Analogue editing was used before editing in a computer. the film negative when completed was cut down and pasted into an order. it then went through a machine - Moviola or K.E.M

Digital Editing is editing with a computer, offering a much faster and more efficient film process. Many different programmes are availiable to use when it comes to digital editing, including Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier and iMovie. In these programs footage is out onto a time line and is then cut and pasted into an order and then the effects are added. 

Editing is one of the most important steps in making a film, it is essential for creating the desried mood, atmosphere and theme wanted by the director. From the late 1970's to early 80's many video equipments were intorduced, i.ie Time Base Correstors (TBC), digital video effects unit. they operated by using standard analog, then it composed the video and then within digitalized it. this made it easier to correct or enhance the video signal.

Linear vs. Non-Linear
Linear or tape-to-tape editing was the only was to edit video tapes in the early days of electronic video production. This way of editing was changed in the 1990's, when non-linear editing computers became availiable and opened a whole new world of editing power and flexibility.  Non-linear editing was not recieved well at first, however, the advangtage of non-linear video soon out weighed those disadvantages and criticisms.

Tapeless Editing
This is the use of digital recording instead of tape via the use of a camcorder, for example. The footage is then stored into a data storage devices, such as a hard drive or solid slate flash memory card.

Techniques of editing include transitions such as cuts, jump cuts, fades and washout. All these have an important role within editing as the cuts allow the film to move at a quick pace in order for the film to stay interesting to the audience.

The 180 Degree Rule 
The rule states that the camera(s) should remain the same side of an imaginary line. the 180 degree rule enforces continuing of the film. Breaking the rule will confuse the audience, especially in scenes of chase, conversation or sport. The only way to cross the line without disorientating the audience is to show the camera movement, cutting across the line will disorientate the audience.

Violation of the 180 degree rule                                  Good example to the 180 Degree rule
     

Editing

Editing
Film editing is the invisible art of motion picture, when it is well-practised, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work. The film editor works with the raw footage, selecting shots and combining them into sequences to create a finished motion picture. The job of an editor isn't simply to mechanically put pieces of a film together, cut off film slates, or edit dialogue scenes. A film editor must creatively work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors' performances to effectively "re-imagine" and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole. Editors usually play a dynamic role in the making of a film.

Continuity

Continuity is a film term that suggests that a series of shots should be physically continuous, as if the camera simply changed angles in the course of a single event. For instance, if in one shot a beer glass is empty, it should not be full in the next shot. Technically, continuity is the responsibility of the script supervisor and film director, who are together responsible for preserving continuity and preventing errors from take to take and shot to shot. The script supervisor, who sits next to the director during shooting, keeps the physical continuity of the edit in mind as shots are set up. He is the editor's watchman. If shots are taken out of sequence, as is often the case, he will be alert to make sure that that beer glass is in the appropriate state. The editor utilizes the script supervisor's notes during post-production to log and keep track of the vast amounts of footage and takes that a director might shoot.

Montage

Montage was the essence of the cinema. Today montage has a completely different connotation than it used to.  There are at least three senses of the term: French film, Soviet filmmaking and classic Hollywood cinema. 

French Film 

        In French film practice, "montage" has its literal French meaning (assembly, installation) and simply identifies editing.  

        The New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of the literary period pieces being made in France and written by novelists, their spirit of youthful iconoclasm, the desire to shoot more current social issues on location, and their intention of experimenting with the film form.  

        Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end.French New Wave cinema became very aware of editing and makes this known among the audience as well. One way that awareness is created is by jump cuts which is the type of edit that causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way.

Sequence from Breathless that shows Jump Cuts       A sequence I put together to show Jump Cuts

Soviet Filmmaking

Soviet Filmmaking of the 1920s, "montage" was a method of juxtaposing shots to derive new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. Soviet editing techniques show that it is not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination.  An example of this is the Kuleshov effect, which I will discuss later on. 

Classic Hollywood Cinema
In Hollywood cinema, a montage sequence is a short segment in a film which narrative information is presented in a condensed fashion.

The Kuleshov Effect
Lev Kuleshov is a Russian filmmaker who edited together a short film in which a shot of an expressionless face was alternated with various other shots; a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin and a woman on a divan. Audiences believed that each time the faces expression had changed and they praised the subtle acting. The reality, of course, is that the same clip of the actor's face was re-used, and the effect is created entirely by its superimposition with other images. 
            Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form.

  


Eisenstein Theory
Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage. His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through related images. Eisenstein felt the collision of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film.

A Baby in a Carriage Falling Down the "Odessa Steps"

D.W. Griffith
D.W. Griffith was an American director who, more than anyone of the silent era, saw film's potential as an expressive medium, and exploited that potential. Griffith played a number of roles as an actor before agreeing to move behind the camera as a director. As a director Griffith took the raw elements of movie making as they had evolved up to that time and wrought a medium of extraordinary power and degree - elements such as lighting, continuity, editing and acting. 
       D.W. Griffith developed classical cutting -where a sequence of shots are determined by the scene's dramatic and emotional emphasis rather than physical action, Griffith for example would edit love scenes in long lyrical takes- as well as developing a variety of editing principles he believed made cutting invisible, such techniques as eye-line match. also Griffith was the first to use close-ups for psychological reasons instead of physical reasons. his cross cutting style was hallmarked in Early short films such as A CORNER IN WHEAT (1909), FIGHTING BLOOD (1911), and UNDER BURNING SKIES (1912), using these cross-cut edits to build tension, acute observation of details to heighten reality, and the use of the camera as a vehicle for expounding his views on society. 

             Cross Cutting in Fighting Blood                                  Example of Eye-Line Match

The History of Editing

The Theory of Editing 
The Theory of editing begins with the idea that a audience naturally relates one shot that is followed by another, and the events occurring within time and/or space. In the first years of film editing wasn't used as it is today.

When film first came about it was mostly used to make actualities. However, it wasn't long before the Lumiere Brothers and the Edison company, produced film containing a plot. These filmmakers would set up a camer, and literally have a short narrative play out in front of the lens. the camera was not moved at all, and shots from different angles were not taken. The idea of editing was not contemplated.

The Lumiere Brothers

Thomas Edison 

                       

 The first film by the Lumiere Brothers entitled La Sortie de I'Usine Lumiere

  

       
Things changed in 1903, when Edwin S. Porter exhibited his unprecedented ability to construct a film and tell a story from multiple shots, rather than just one where the whole story takes place in front of a stationary camera. Porter was the first to use editing as a means of progressing a film's story.

Edwin S. Porter - The Life if an American Fireman

Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903) follows a band of Western outlaws robbing a train and itterurpts the chronology of the action with a cutaway showing the rescue of the telegraph perator whom the outlaws ealier had tied up. an early exampl of parallel editing, showing two lines of narrative action happening at the same time, is evidence in The Great Train Robbery. 

D.W Griffiths

In 1908 D.W Griffiths film "For Love Of Gold" featured the first ever continuity cut when a scene was cut. From this Griffiths realised that emotions could also be portrayed through different camera angles and pace of editing and it wasn't all down to actors. Cutting from long shots to a close up accentuated the drama, and matching the action on a cut as a character walks from an exterior into a doorway and, in the next shot, enters an interior set enabled Griffith to join filming locations that were physically separated but adjacent in terms of the time and place of the story.

Sergei Eisenstein 
Sergei Eisenstein as a filmmaker and a theoretician of cinema who made films and wrote voluminously about their structure and the nature of cinema. Eisenstein believed that editing was the foundation of film art. The meaning in cinema lay not in the individual shot but only in the relationship among shots established by editing, for Eisenstein.

His metric and rhythmic montages were supplemented with what Eisenstein call tonal and intellectual montage, due to his interest in guiding the viewer's emotions and thought processes. the aim was for subtle emotional effects and to convey more abstract ideas.