Rough Cut 1

This is a link to my first rough cut for my music video. This video only includes the instrumental of the song, the only thing missing on the song is the vocals. The video still works and can be edited the same as if the vocals where in there. Because the lyrics don't really have link to the video they are not necessary for the rough cuts. There are many changes which i wish to change about this rough cut which will be corrected for the next cut, this first cut has helped because it has helped me realise what works well and in which order i think things work best and also it has helped me find and choose my favourite and best clips which i will use. Has helped me discard the bad clips which i will not use. 

The first thing which i did for this cut was add the titles. I used a similar font to my digipak font for this rough cut,for my final cut the font used will be the same. I like this font because it fits with the theme of my video and also fits with the genre. The font would look out of place and not work if it was a bold fancy font. I put the text in white and over a black background. The text features the name of the artist and below the name of the song 'Hiding' separated with a thin white line. 

Instead of the song starting straight away i decided to start it after the text has been on the screen, so when the text goes off this is when the music start. Instead of starting the music at full volume i faded the sound in gradually for a few seconds. This makes the music not as stunning and out of no where when it comes on, i feel like this effect fits the style of the video better because it is more calm rather than urgent. I linked the first clip to the music, the way i did this was while the music was being faded in,i also put a video transition effect on the first clip 'Dip to Black' so that the first clip faded in at the same time as the music making them link and it starts the connected relationship between the music and footage stand out from the very start. Because the lyrics of the song don't directly match the footage in this video, i thought of another way to link the music and video. This is through linking the video with the instrumental. In my rough cuts i have made the music match the video in parts such as when there is a change in sound the clip changes at the same time. This makes the whole video feel more connected and like there is a relationship between the video and music rather than it just being two separate things.

The next section is the first verse which ends at 1min. I got shots of Josh playing the guitar in two different locations. My plan for these two locations was for one to be in the first verse and the other to be in the second, this will make the verses feel more different and not like the video is repeating itself when the viewer gets to watching the second half. So for the first verse i used the shots of Josh playing in the woods. These shots were quite difficult to match up with the music because you can see Josh strumming the guitar which needed to match, i think i was quite successful with matching the guitar and it works quite well, it defiantly doesn't look like the is playing the wrong thing so it wouldn't be noticed that it may not be perfect 100% match unless someone was trying to catch a little part of it out. Linking to the shots of Josh playing in the woods i surrounded these shots with other clips which i got when i was at the woods, i think these work well together. However i couldn't seem to fully fill the first verse with just images of the woods, so to fill the gaps i inserted footage from Iceland which was all water based footage so there was still some continuity. This resulted in the first verse including water themed shots mixed with woods footage, i would prefer it if i could fill this section with only woods footage so the video looks better put together and not messy with filler shots, this is something i will focus on fixing in my second rough cut.  

Then the first verse changes very suddenly, i matched this with the clips changing to very different to what they were. I made sure that the clip change was directly on the instrumental change, this also makes the music feel more connected and linked to the video. The theme of the clips used for the chorus are all linked to water, which slightly links to the first verse which is something i am hoping to change in the second cut, to make the footage from the first verse and chorus completely different. This will show a clear separation of the sections. Although making the clips change to the instrumental was important throughout the whole video i made sure that the shot changes were spot on in the chorus section because this is when you would notice if they didn't work the most.

The next part of the video is the second verse, this is where i used the second set of shots of Josh with his guitar. I prefer these shots which is why i put them later on in the video, this means the video builds up towards the better shots throughout the video. In the second verse i would have preferred it to be completely the shots of the sunset or linked to the reservoir/water. Unfortunately i had to use shots which don't link and look a bit out of place, thesis something which i will change for my next rough cut. With these shots of Josh playing the guitar he is facing away from the camera towards the water, this means that you can't see Josh playing the guitar properly which means i didn't have to sync up the strumming with the music because you can't see his hands playing.

Example of one of the filler/out of placed shots.

For the second chorus and ending of the song all the clips link together well. The first shot features a focus pull straight away which i think works well as being the opening shot for second chorus. The end of the video ends the same way as i started the video, with the shot fading out at the same time and speed as the music fading out. I think this is the best way to end the video rather than it ending with a straight cut, that wouldn't fit the calm feel of the video.

There are quite a lot of things which i will be changing in my second rough cut. For the secodn rough cut I'm going to re do it from scratch but take the best things that i got from this cut and use them for the second and then add to it making it feel like a more full video with no mistakes. The reason that in this cut i have had to use some filler shots which don't link tot he surrounding shots around them is because i edited all the clips so they were too short and made them change more often than they should. This resulted in me having a shortage valuable clips because i used them in another part of the video too quickly. I also think that the whole video is edited too quickly, the shots are on the screen too short, they should be longer. Instead of every clip changing with a straight cut and matching the instrumental, this is something i will change in the second cut and use different types of transitions e.g. crossfade this will make sure the video doesn't get boring because it not all the same thing throughout. So in my second cut i aim to mix up the transitions more, but not too much where it looks silly and not necessary, only when i think it will work best having a different type of transition. I added a cinematic border to the video, this was done because i think that clips look better with that aspect ratio.