Post Production: Editing

 In this blogpost I (Jocy) will show my progress and experience as I edit the scenes for our music video

yt playlist of all the drafts: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLREIman2VXEPRd5Ej-aZjROtCQAFGiQgl&si=ZvgdRDMobORSuHI9

This is a playlist of each time I exported the music video in different milestones and major progresses made, I used this incase I needed to keep track of what the previous edits looked like as I go along. I used a notes app on my laptop (refer to image below) when I rewatch the previous drafts to see any changes I could make and take note of where it is in the video, this helps remind me of any important changes that I need to make as I am a rather forgetful person.

My editing software (Microsoft Clipchamp) wasn't exactly the best software to use, and it was constantly lagging, so the drafts also made it easy to check on how the end results of each change I made looked like, as the lag in the software could make it difficult to actually rewatch the video itself at times.

The original intro was originally 30 seconds long, it was Hannah (Sharon) grabbing a box of old items that was given to her from her ex boyfriend (Brandon) and looking through the belongings. We were adviced to keep the intro short (15 seconds), so we had a reshoot and got a good intro that was around 20 seconds, which I had asked my teacher again and he confirmed the time was alright since forcing it into 15 seconds didn't look as good. The start of the video I wanted to establish that she was missing this person and isn't exactly moved on yet. I used an over the shoulder camera angle so that the audience could get a good view of what Hannah was looking at.

In this scene I wanted to show the audience that Hannah felt sad as she hasn't moved on from her ex boyfriend. Here we see a text conversation between Hannah (green bubble) and her friend (gray bubble) where she mentioned that she hated the ex and was still upset over him. The editing process for the text graphics took a really long time, especially since I had messed up the first time I screen recorded the messages. I used a green background to apply the green screen effect, however I had forgotten that the text bubbles were also green, so when I applied the effect it removed the the texts along with the background (refer to image below)

When I finally got to rerecord the text meessages, I used a red background instead and applied the green screen effect on the clip except on the color red. It worked wonders and despite it looking kind of roughly edited I was really proud to have been able to got over the green screen problem as I thought it was vital for the messages to be included in this scene. 

For the camera angle and positioning of the subject, that being Hannah, I had purposely sat her in the corner of the screen and curled up in a chair, I wanted to show her almost look like she was shelled up and alone.

This hallway scene took so long to film. We had to reshoot twice, first time I had used just myself and a camera, but the shaky random movements didn't really make the scene look good. Second time we got to shoot this, my gimbal device had finally arrived and I was able to use it to walk down the hallway and film Hannah without the camera shot being too shaky and messy.

This scene I wanted to show that she was REALLY alone. Having to walk through couples and even getting her path blocked by them, and then running into a lively big group of friends that she had to squeeze by. The scene following to this she was in the bathroom alone and was frustrated over how lonely and almost depressed she felt over a break up.

These scenes I wanted to show her doing work with a friend, which then resulted in gossiping about her ex and Hannah happily claiming she was "over her ex". When it cut to Hannah in the dark, with her phone as the only source of light, the singing in the song goes "I wasn't..." to kind of match that she wasn't exactly moved on. I had the same problems for the text graphics here, however since this was later on in the video, I had already fixed the problem before so all I had to do was quickly rerecord myself scrolling through the initial break up text from Brandon. The scene was basically just Hannah alone in the dark, having just lied to her friend about being over the break up, when really she was still reminiscing over her ex and still not over him.

This is a match cut edit I made, the first scene shows Hannah listening to her friend, before noticing Brandon in the distance and shifting her attention. The pov shot in the next scene showed what she was shifting her attention to, and the following scene after (image below) shows her upset after having seen her ex.

I wanted to keep the end of the music video simple, Hannah tries on the jacket she got from Brandon one last time, before angrily packing it up back in the box along with the plushie. It cuts to her in the beach with said box, with the music video ending as she walks down the pier towards the ocean. From here, the audience gets an open ended conclusion where they can assume that Hannah was finally over Brandon and decides to throw the belongings into the ocean (amongst other assumptions! The ending is up to the audience to interpret).

Reflection: Honestly, I always thought the post production editing process was always a hassle to make (evident in the previous documentary project where I didn't really write out the editiing blogpost well). To this day I personally don't see it as anything that could be useful post-production wise as I'd prefer to just work on the edit and then get it done. However I do see myself doing more these in future filming projects to keep track of how I made certain scenes or how certain scenes came to be, this was definitely a good way to learn and practice how post production works. Overall, I enjoyed the editing process!