Editing the video

Charlotte Springate

Throughout our video, we used a wide range of different editing skills, including the use of green screen, cuts, fades, enhancing colour, cropping shots, slowing down &/or speeding up short shots, picture-in-picture, image overlay and fitting the lip-syncing shots in with the music.

This image shows the iMovie program we used to edit our video on a Mac. In the bottom half of the page you can see the storyboard for our video, with the beginning 25 seconds of storyboard visible. Below that you can see the audio for our video. In the top right you can see the very beginning of our actual video. On the top left you can see the various videos we had to create throughout editing for various reasons, with our actual video being selected.

This image is a close-up shot of the beginning of our storyboard that I have included so that you can see the smaller details that we had to consider, such as timings of the filler shots and the lengths of the lip-syncing shots.

For many of the shorter, filler shots we used of different locations, we edited them to slow them down or speed them up to coincide with the speed of the beat of the song. As you can see from these two images, the clips with the rabbit image have been sped up, while the clip with the tortoise image has been slowed down to flow with a slower part of the song.

As seen in this image, we put the rewind effect over this shot of our artist as it made her hand movements look more unusual, making the video look a bit more off-the-wall than conventional music videos.

We included a short picture montage around 1m54 into the video, as we felt that would break up the video and avoid making the clips repetitive. Each picture was shown for just under a second, and we edited the length of each to fit the beat of the song.

When out filming, we filmed lots of different shots so that when it came to editing we would have a wider choice. As you can see in this image, the clip selected there is clip #309. The orange line at the bottom of the clip indicates which part of that clip we cut from it and used in our video.

In the beginning of the video, we open with filler shots of different locations, and our artist is deliberately only revealed when the vocal part of the song begins and the artist begins lip-syncing. We chose to do this because we wanted to build anticipation. Again, each clip of the locations are short to give a brief reveal of the different locations we filmed and included in the video.

Once we had filmed with the green screen, we then needed to edit the backgrounds into white on each clip. There was nine in total and this process was fairly time-consuming as we needed to import the clips, edit the backgrounds of each video individually- as seen in the image on the right- save that clip, import it again, upload onto the original clip of Kelsey, make sure everyone was singing the same parts of the chorus at the same time, and sometimes edit the colour quality of each clip so that they fit in together. We decided also to alter the colour of Kelsey’s shot so that she was in black & white as we felt that, against the white background and with the extras in colour, that would add an interesting contrast to the chorus.

Adding extras into the original chorus clip was simple, but time consuming, as we just had to place that clip above the original on the storyboard (as seen in the two images below, where two different extras are added to the storyboard), then select the picture-in-picture option and then move the clip around to place it. After each of these were done, we needed to import each video again, and so we ended up with a lot of saved clips of nearly the same shots.

During this time, we also tired different placements of the extras, as we wanted to see which were more effective. In the end, we decided that it looks more uniform to have two rows of two extras on either side of Kelsey’s head, and then one extra on either side of her arms.

When placing the extras in the video, we contemplated putting some next to one another, as seen in the picture above. To do this, we needed to place one clip on top of the other in the storyboard, then select the ‘side-by-side’ option on the adjustments selection. After some consideration, we decided against this as it was easier for us to just have the extras individual on the clip, so we rejected this.

These two images are pictures of the way that both the final storyboard and the chorus itself looked after editing. We looked at each extra as well as Kelsey when editing to make sure that all are lip-syncing the same part of the song at the same time.

When filming, I decided to film some fairy-lights, as seen in the image above, because I wanted to try to overlay these onto shots of Kelsey lip-syncing. When I edited this, I found that it looked really effective and so we decided to put it into the music video.

We edited this shot of Kelsey with the fairy-light overlay to make it black and white as we wanted to see if that would look effective, however decided against adding it to our video in reflection as I felt that it looked too similar to the black and white of the chorus, and I didn’t want them to link.

I felt that this shot of Kelsey with these coloured fairy-lights put over the top was really effective as the colour of the lights matched the colours in Kelsey’s shirt. I corrected the colour in the lights and blurred them slightly to make sure Kelsey was clearly in focus.

I added a fairy-light overlay to the final shot in the video, as I felt that the colours in the lights contrasted the black background and the chorus shot before.

I added a fairy-light overlay to an outside shot of Kelsey as it looked unusual, which linked to our artist’s image. I also edited this clip with a ‘Hard Light’ video effect to make the colours of the shot of Kelsey herself look more vibrant, which contrasted with the hues of the lights.

I attempted to overlay a still image of Kelsey onto a clip of her lip-syncing, however rejected that as I felt it didn’t look as effective as I had hoped.

I did add this overlay of a video over another video because I felt they linked in well together. In the music video it went from the shot of Kelsey in the colourful shirt to her in the black. This broke up the otherwise long shot (7 seconds) and kept it interesting.

I added a ‘Hard Light’ video effect to three or four shots because I thought that it improved the colour quality of some of the shots I had filmed in front of the green screen & in other different locations. After doing this, I also adjusted the colours using the easel icon under the adjust button on iMovie. I decided to use these effects not only to alter the colours of some otherwise poor quality, but to add another unusual element to the video to highlight our artist’s individuality.