Rough Cut

We have finally finished the rough cut of our video and are now ready to recieve some feedback on it which will help us improve it for the final cut.

Risk Assessment

Rough Cut Feedback

We had a showing of the rough cuts of everyone in the class and gave eachother feedback on what we thought worked well in the videos and suggestions on what each group could do to improve their video for the final cut. The feedback which was given to us by the rest of the class is shown below:

Overall, the main feedback was that the beginning of the shot was too sudden and needed to start a bit slower. To improve this part of the video, we will put a fade-in transition right at the beginning of the video to make the beginning smoother and less sudden.

Our feedback showed that the split-screen worked well and tended to be seen as the best part of the video; the audience said that this effect makes the video look classy and professional.

At the beginning of the video, the there is a shot that looks too much like a still shot because Annabel is standing still for too long, so this needs to be cut.

Split Screen

For one part of the music video where both characters are sitting by the door, we decided that we wanted to include a split screen in the video which we thought would look quite effective and unique. To do this, we found a youtube video which gave us the basic instructions of how to produce this.

Learn How to create a multi screen video in Final Cut Express. For more Final Cut Studio How-To Videos & Articles, visit WonderHowTo.

We followed the instructions and 'overlapped' the two shots. We then had to edit them using the 'motion' tab in the viewer box. This allowed us to crop the images and move them around to create the split screen effect.

We cropped the images using the tools in the 'motion' tab and also used the 'centre' tool to move the images to where we wanted them to appear in the frame.

Here is what the final split screen looked like.

Editing

We uploaded the footage that we had at the moment so that we could start to edit it as much as we could before we got the rest of the footage.

There were also parts when the lighting was really bad and did not work for the film. Originally, we planned to use the light by the front door but when we came to film, it just wouldn't turn on so we had to try and find another way of producing the light for the shot. Looking at this shot, the lighting obviously didn't work effectively so we just had to cut this shot and re-film it another time when we had better lighting.

We made sure that we shot from lots of different camera angles so that we could choose from them which was best for the video.

There were a lot of bits which we needed to delete. A good example of this is when Rich decided that he wanted to propose to Annabel. Clearly we could not use this shot as it is not part of the video so we had to delete it.

At one point in the film, we had to cut a shot so that it was just a couple of seconds long, when we cut it we realised that there was only a very short bit of footage that we could actually used so we had to slow it right down. The problem we had with this was that there was someone walking in the background so when we slowed the clip down, it did not look right at all as it made her walk really slowly.

To solve this problem, we saved the clip as a still image and edited it in Photoshop so that we could erase the woman from the picture and then just use a still image for the shot instead. We used the clone tool in Photoshop to do this so that we could get the background right.

Filming - London

On Saturday 8th January 2011 we all went to London to film the remaining parts of the film. We filmed on Millennium Bridge and Embankment.

Overall, I think this went quite well as we got mainly all of the footage that we needed. However, we did have some problems along the way. The actors found it quite difficult to make one of the shots look realistic and well-acted. We may have to re-film parts of this shot so that it is perfect and that we can definitely use it for the video; this will not be a major problem as it is only a small part of the video and should not take too long to film.

Filming to Embankment went well and the only problem that we really had was that at some times it was really busy but that was to be expected.

Filming

Once again we were not able to film on our scheduled days due to bad weather; this set us back a few more days. It was difficult to get everyone together on the same day so eventually we found a day to start our filming.
We started filming on Tuesday 28th December 2010. Although this was a lot later than we had planned, we managed to get a lot of the filming for our video done. We needed to re-film a lot of the footage as it would not be suitable to use for the video.

We filmed again on Tuesday 4th January 2011. First, Jess, Annabel, Rich and I went back to my house to film the scenes at home. This took about an hour and a half and we got all of the filming for these scenes done quite successfully.
Next, we went to Danson Park to film the park scene with Rich and Annabel. This took quite a few takes, but in the end we did manage to get some good footage that we will hopefully be able to use in the music video.

We have planned to go up to London on Saturday 8th January to film the remaining scenes which will be filmed on the Millenium Bridge and Embankment.