Portfolio for Film & Video
Editing Process
Beat Markers
My first step for the editing process, was to make marker points for each of the significant beats throughout the song. Therefore, when I imported my footage into Premier Pro, I had somewhere to start with cutting and selecting shots. Although it took a while to find all of the beat drops, chorus lead ups and breaks, this was essential for speeding up the editing process. Pyro has many breaks where the guitar and drums stop which would be crucial to either have no footage, e.g. a black screen or a dramatic image. Moreover, having the beat markers would further break down the song into different elements, making it easier to fit the storyline of the video with the song itself.
With the beat markers now in place, I was able to edit my initial shots which I filmed at the bonfire. I found that the ECU shots of the fire looked more effective in slow motion, so I changed the speed to 80% speed duration. This was more effective as due to the shots being so short, it looks more like a still image, making it more striking than the previous fast moving flames.
Layering Effect
For the first prolonged shot of the video, I wanted something striking, setting the tone for the rest of the video. Therefore, I decided to use the group shots of Eve, Aysha, Poppy and myself looking forward, layered over the ECU flame shots. I used an opacity of 90% and hard light on the group shots, as I found too much opacity showed the background of the group shots. I found overlay didn't have as much of a striking effect, and layering the group shot over the op of the flames instead of the other way round worked much better, as the faces were more of a shadow internalised in the fire, rather than the flames just being a background.
Colour Grading
For colour grading, I wanted to emphasise the juxtaposition between the fire elements and water elements, by playing around with shadow tints, highlight tints and overall basic correction (exposure, shadows, whites, saturation) I found that adding a red shadow tint accentuated the red tones of the flames, and also adding a yellow highlight tint added lighter areas, For the first image of the initial sequence (00.09.07), and for the shots preceding it. I did the same thing, but with slight variation as seen on the left. I did find that in the backlighting shot in front of the fire that no highlight tint was needed.
Transitions
Between the first five shots of the video (00.00.00-00.28.00) I used varying transitions as these shots had long durations compared to the later ones. For the first shot, I used a quick blur in ( at 8.8 blurriness) which was effective but also subtle. I also used dip to black between this shot and the next with a duration of 00.17 seconds).
Fast Blur Transition
Dip to Black Transition
Overlays
For some of my shots, including the one below, I decided to overlay shots to add a ghost affect, and make them more psychedelic. To do so, I added another layer over the top, and then changed the opacity on the top layer to around 70% and adding the effect of Lighter colour. This shadowing looks very effective with the pattern of the water ripples as well, almost giving it a blurred effect. I did this on the 4th shot, with eve layered over the fire as well but instead with hard light, as this looked more effective, as there was a lack of exposure in that particular shot.
