Fast cutting in our music video

My team and I have decided to incorporate the fast cutting editing technique into our music video. The 'Fast cutting' technique consists of various brief shots that are played in consecutive sequence. The duration of the clips in this sequence often lasts for a few seconds.This editing technique is primarily used in films for conveying a large amount of information within a small amount of time.

We chose to use use this editing technique in Post-production stage of our product.

This technique will be used in the second chorus of our video which takes place before the protagonist decides to commit suicide in the video's climax.

We gained inspiration for this editing technique from the 2004 horror film 'Saw'. This film is about a group of people who are abducted by a serial killer and then  forced to participate in a series of life threatening traps in order to prevent their deaths.

(Duration: 4:24-4:37)

I had previously watched this film and had noticed that the Fast cutting editting technique is evident duing  the climax of this film.

 In this scene, the film's protagonist has  discovered the true identity of the film's antagonist.

The protagonist then tries to shoot the antagonist but the antagonist retaliates by electricuting him. It is at this moment when the fast editing technique becomes evident in this scene.

The following clips are a sequence of fast shots which highlight all of the main events which occured previously in the film's narrative.

The speed of the clip's length gradually increase throughout the course of this sequence which creates an energetic mood for this scene. In addition the combination of this editing technique with the incidental background music is used very well  in order to make this scene very dramtic as well as intense.

This editing technique begins at 4:24 seconds and concludes at 4:37 seconds.This means it lasts for a total of thirteen seconds.

We will develop this film convention by incorporating this editing technique into the second chorus of our music video. This will be done to build up the video's climax in a dramatic and energetic manner.

In our music video's second chorus we will use this technique to show a collation of breif shots that highlight the previous events which took place in our video's narrative.

This form of editing will reflect how the protagonist is looking back on his past and is being reminded of all the depression he experienced in his life. Once this character has been reminded of all of the negativity in his life , he then decides to commit suicide in order to end his suffering.

Our music video's storyboards

The storyboards of our music video

Our music video will begin with a wide angle shot of a man running towards a building.
The next shot features the protagonist of the music video.
This character will be shown to standing on the roof of a tall building .The protagonist then throws his phone to the floor. Following this frame will be a a close up shot of the phone as it lands on the ground.  The text 'Missed Call' will be shown on the phone's screen which implies that someone is trying to contact this character. The protagonist ignores the phone and looks out to the ground below.

The protagonist then turns his head to make sure that no one is behind him.
He then looks  down on the ground and sees cars and people on the ground from a very high distance.
The protagonist then closes his eyes and the video flashs back to previous events in this character's life.

From this point, the rest of the video is shown in flash back. The purpose of this is to show the protagonist's depressing life and the events which led to the protagonist wanting to commit suicide. 

The flash back will begin with a wide angle shot of the protagonist as he wakes up  in bed.
The next shot will be a low angle shot of the protagonist as he sits on the bottom of his bed.
The protagonist will have his head lowered as he rubs his hands through his hair and then on his face.
This camera angle will then transition to a mid shot of the protagonist in his bathroom.
This shot will feature the protagonits washiong his face in his bathroom sink.
The camera will then show a close up of a tub of pills on the bathroom sink.
The protagonist then picks up the tub and stares at them for a short while.

The protagonist will then violently throw the tub to the floor.
The next shot will show the protagonist as he is getting dressed in the bathroom. The camera will show the protagonists reflection in a mirror as he buttons up a short sleeved shirt.
The protagonist will then be shown from a high angle shot as he kneels down a picks up a pair of battered shoes.
The protagonist then leaves the bathroom. As he exits, his eyes widen and suddenly realises something.
He then goes to a small table in his living room and tries to find a pen and paper.



 The protagonist then begins to write something on paper but then throws the paper on the floor.
He then walks out of his home and onto the road. He sees a man in smartly dressed clothes walk past him. The next shot shows the protagonist walking though a cemetry.

This part of the song will begin with a sequence that shows a close up of different lips. This would show a selection of people lip synching to he song. After this sequence, the camera transistions back to the protagonist as he walks past people on the street.
The protagonist then enters a building where people are witing for him inside.

A group of people approach the protagonist and try to communicate with him but he ignores all of them as he is clearly unwilling to interact with any of them.

The protagonist then sits down on a sofa chair while other people socialise behind him. Another character sits down next to the protagonist and attempts to start a conversation with him. The two characters briefly exchange dialouge and the protagonist explains that he is distressed.

The protagonist then sees two people who are very happy with their lives. This contrasts with the protagonists life and he appears envious of the couple and then leaves the building.
The man wh briefly spoke to the protagonist sees him leave and chases after him.

The video then transistions back to were the music video began with the protagonist on the roof. The protagonist is about to jump off the roof but the second man who spoke to the protagonist has also arrived on the roof.

The second man then convinces the protagonist not to kill himself which then causes the protagonist to walk away from the roof's edge.

The screen then fades to black which concludes the music video.

Real Media Texts which inspired our video

'Beautiful' A 2009 music video by Eminem



Not Afraid. A 2010 music video by Eminem

Silver linings Playbook. A 2012 romantic comedy film directed by David O Russel

This is a scene from the 2002 film: The Two Towers. 

The album cover for Eminem's sixth studio album 'Relapse'

The Dark Knight poster. A 2008 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan

Bullet proof. A 2009 music video by the british pop duo La Roux.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. A 2002 fantasy film directed by Peter Jackson.

 

Limitless: A 2011 thriller film directed by Neil Burger

Bitter Sweet Symphoney by the Verve.

A 2005 film directed by Judd Apatow

The cover for the  album 'Playing in the shadows'. This album was released in 2011 by the british rapper Example.

Saw. A 2004 horror film directed by James Wan.

Post Production: My group's Digipack prototype

Eminem's Relapse Album cover

My group's Album cover

This is the first prototype of our music video's completed Album cover.

We developed the conventions of Eminem's Relapse cover by:

Hair is cut in the manner as Eminem's hair cut.

One side of his face is collaged with pre prescription pills.

Jump Cuts

We decided to incorporate jump cuts into our music video editing.
Time effective
More interesting

This is the music video for the Pop song 'Bulletproof' which was released in 2009 and performed by the british singer pop duo La Roux.
Bulletproof is a concept based music video which focuses on the visuals rather than a narrative. The video shows the lead singer of La Roux, Elly Jackson as she walks in  various different futuristic settings.There is a segment in this music video when the camera pans around Elly Jackson as she gets up from the chair. The camera cuts to different shots of Jackson as she rises up from the chair without showing the complete transistions of Jackson while she is physically moving.
This technique was used effectively in this song since it matches the song's fast paced beat. In addition jump cutting can be used to reduce the duration of the music video.
The main purose of a jump cut is to cut to a different shot of the same subject but from a different angle. This form of editing is commonly used to represent a transition occuring without showing the transition itself

My group's Digital Technology

Filming equipment:

One Camera : A Vivitar dvr 1080p Camcorder

 We also used a Tripod to hold the camera in place as we filmed our footage for our music video.



This image shows one of my team members using the camera with the Tripod to film one of my group's actors.



Editing Software:

We used the iMovie editing software on an Apple Mac computor to edit our footage.



Software we used to develop our Digi pack:

When my team completed our editing we begun to develop our album's Digipack. We took pictures of our music video's protagonist and then edited the images by using online photo editing site: Pixlr.

Using our technology

Here i am using the iMovie programme to edit the video

Editing our Music video

Editing location- Apple Mac Room in our school's sixth form

Dates-

Completion our filming-14/03/2013

Day one of Editing-  21/03/2013

Day two of Editing- 25/03/2013

Day three of Editing- 26/03/2013

Day four of Editing- 27/03/2013
Day five of Editing-19/04/2013
Day six of Editing- 21/04/2013

Editors-Myself(Shayne),Michael,Leyon and Tyrell

Day one:
One this day my team members and I had begun to edit our film footage. Initaily we planned to filming earlier immediately after the completion of our filming. This was delayed as we had trouble uploading our footage onto the Apple Mac computor.
Luckily , we were able to upload our footage to the Apple Mac by using my school account and then imported our footage onto iMovie.

Before we started editing, we thought that it would be wise to watch over the clips that we filmed to check to see if they were suitable to include in our product. In addition we also checked the length of the total amount of clips to see if we had too much or not enough footage. We did this by clicking on each clip to see how how many seconds were in each clip. We then added all of the seconds together and found that we had filmed a total of 508.326 seconds of footage. I then divided this value by 60 which equaled 8.4 meaning that length of our footage was 8.4 minutes long.

This meant that we would have to crop down a large majority of our footage since the length of our sound is four minutes long which is less than half of what we filmed already.
We then begun to crop out any clips that we felt were uncessary. By the end of this session we had approximately six minutes of footage.

Day two:
Applied music onto iMovie so that we could get a first impression of how the scenes would appear with the music.

We were able to uses the shots we filmed to create an exceptionally well introduction scene.
On this day we began to incorporate editing techniques such as Jump cuts. We were able to use Jump cuts effectively in our videos since they made our video appear more interesting as well reduced the length of our video.

The majority of our video features Leyon's character walking in different locations.
An example of the segment of the video which shows Leyon walking down a narrow pathway in a cemetry.
In our filming we had filmed Leyon walking for almost forty five seconds. In order to shorten the length of this section we divided this segment into small sections which show Leyon as he is at different distances on the pathway. Once we added Jump cuts to this section, this video sequence was about twelve seconds.This editing technique enabled us to convey the image of Leyon walking down a long walkway while also making this section time effective to fit in with music video.

Day three:
Me and my team members had initally planned for our music video to follow a consistant narrative which shows the protagonist as he travels to different locations in a linear manner.However we discovered that our clips were too long which  therefore overlapped the original music video's length.
This would have been a major disadvantage for our product since the scenes wouldn't match with the lyrics of the song.

According to the media theorist Andrew Goodwin, there must always be a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics.

Our music video primary uses the song's lyrics along with Signs and Signifiers to convey its Mis-En-Scene. If  the lyrics did not match the clips so then our representation will not be evident.

As a solution to this we problem we chose to crop down a few scenes as well as take out a few scenes that we planned to include in our music video.
As with our first day of filming we looked carefully through our clips so that we would only have footage that we needed.

To reduce the length of our video, we mainly croped down the length of our clips as we found that most of them were a bit too long. We also applied the song to our clips and timed each clip with the syllable's of the song's lyrics so that the timing of each scene  .

Day five:
Today we applied Lip-Synching to our music video. On this day we uploaded the scenes of our music video which will be played with the lyrics "Ha, Marshall your so funny man,you should be a comedian,Goddamn! Unfortunatly I am, I just hide behind the tears of a clown".
We filmed Leyon's character mouthing the lyrics of the song in these clips.
We applied the song to iMovie so that we could match the lyrics of the song with Leyon's lip synching. This helped us to keep the music in synching with Leyon's mouthing and make it appear more legitimate.

In the orginal video, this lyrics were said when Eminem briefly stops rapping and talks normally. However he apparantly speaks from two different perspectives as if he is two people communicating with each other.

We used this in our video to highlight this character's bipolar mental illness

Day six   :

Begun to edit the second chorus in the song.
Close up of lips
Incorporated close up of lipsynching