After months of deliberation and about twenty hours spent in front of a computer screen, I have finally finished editing my pop video. The editing package we were entitled to was Final Cut Pro with Adobe After Effects, although in the end I didn’t need to use Adobe After Effects because of the calibre of the footage we shot on our shoot day. As I edited my pop video, I found more and more that I was taking the pop video in a better direction than our storyboards depicted, thus I built on my own ideas as opposed to the ones I had previously laid out. This isn’t to say that we changed the idea; some of the elements we had pre-planned were included. For example the introduction wherein the DJ is clapping or the scene with the man walking away from the car.
As far as a rough cut is concerned, my pop video was already at its final stages; I never actually had a designated rough cut. I went straight to my fine cut. I had various alterations to make to the structure after the film in itself was ‘finished’ and I still needed to make sure the film stuck to its continuity style of editing. An example of one error I made in terms of continuity is where the gang scene breaking the fridge are doing their ritual of blood brothers, I cut in a shot that portrayed someone different performing the act, this didn’t work as the focus was taken away from the grim nature of the act, and left the audience confused. I changed this by putting in an establishing shot of the gang. 
In terms of selling the song, I tried to subvert the stereotypes laid out by Keith Negus by editing the video to obscure the DJ’s identity and not make him into one of the leather-clad lotharios that plague the world of the popular entertainment industry today. I wanted to establish the identity of the artist similarly to how Daft Punk and, the original artists of the song, The Bloody Beetroots.
I chose to use continuity editing because discontinuity editing would have, in my opinion, taken away from the main narrative. Continuity Editing is when you edit a video to make sense visually, for example a man wearing a red hat continues to wear the same red hat throughout the video. Discontinuity is where you edit a video to create a sense of unrest in the viewer, usually building to some kind of climax. 
The above is an example of The Rule of Thirds. The eye is immediately drawn to the gang member's cigarette, and then to his young looking face, which connotes feelings of a kind of sympathy because this 'boy' is effectively throwing his life away on the destructive course that he is on.
This is another example where I have used the rule of thirds, the eye is drawn to the obscured face of the DJ, wherein the point of this shot is to subvery stereotypical star promotion, most pop videos would have a the lead star spangled and front and foremost in their pop video, here we have chosen to obscure the DJ's face because it is not about who he is or where he was come from, but about his music and the narrative.
On the day itself we shot in the studio from 9:00 to about 13:00. We ran through the song a large number of times, we did run the song over a couple of times so the DJ could practice his performance and get a feel for the song. We shot the DJ performing from a number of different angles and incorporating a large number of movements. In this element of the music video Leo Faulks and I manned the camera and Tamara Middleton and Millie Freeman were in charge of playback and making sure that everything on set was perfect, this included the lighting, and making sure the performer was doing what he was meant to be doing and that he was on set when we needed him.
On the camera, myself and Leo had to make sure the levels were all okay and that we got all the shots we needed, this consisted various movement shots, including panning and tracking shots. We tried to shoot the DJ from a slightly lower angle, a hero shot, to promote his status and to give him a heroic lift from the rest of the video, which depicts gang initiations and violence.
The only real problems we had were in pre-production, where we were denied to access to our first and second locations unless we could have the “necessary” health precautions, which in the council’s eyes was an ambulance and a fire truck, which would have cost money that we didn’t have. A slight problem that we really had on the day was from the weather, we were due to shoot exterior shots after 13:00, but we waited for a short while for the rain to slow a bit. Luckily it slowed down at about 13:30, and we were able to manage until it completely stopped with only a few umbrellas.
We did make a few mistakes on the day when we failed to white balance correctly and choose an appropriate shutter speed on location. This rendered about twenty of the two hundred shots redundant. But we corrected this problem once we had realised that this was occurring and the remainder of the shots we had were artistic and well thought out. In the studio we did have a minor issue with playback as the CD with our track on it didn’t work in the CD player, but this problem was quickly solved when I fetched my laptop, which we connected to the sound system through the auxiliary/phono input.
One of the shots the really worked was of the DJ, it was during the middle of the song, and the DJ was on the hot point (using the rule of thirds) in the top right hand corner, the DJ decks occupied the bottom two hot points and the upper left hot point led the eye away fro the DJ, because the flashing lights caused an effect of the white background which synced perfectly with the melody of the song. We used this shot in our final cut at the exact point in which we shot it because it works just so perfectly.
Another shot that really worked was shot on location, it was shot from a slightly canted angle, with the camera being handheld, giving the shot an edgy realistic feel. The shot depicted the ultimate climactic battle between the two gangs, with one gang threatening with the use of flares. The shot worked so well because the camera’s movement is similar to that of a heartbeat. The main focus of the shot is a lit handheld flare, which occupies the uppermost right hand hot point. The best part of the shot in my opinion is the debris and smoke, which partially obscures the other characters, and adds a mysterious element to the shot. Other than the botched white balance shots mentioned earlier, there weren’t many bad shots. There was one however that didn’t work, were a gang member was meant to appear prolific and intimidating, but instead they had a grin that really fit with the mise-en-scene.
Overall the day went really well, we stuck to out plans very well, and although the final product didn’t follow our storyboards closely. I felt that the final product was of an excellent quality. We did follow the basic structure but we also filmed many shots that weren’t originally scripted, and I felt the inherent spur of the moment shots we incorporated worked very well indeed. It was these shots that made our pop video what it was in the end, and it was these shots that made our pop an exceptional final product.
.As a collective, we must understand that the pop video is only one strand of an often multimedia campaign. Multimedia campaigns often include Television, Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, Internet and Shopping Malls. The pop video naturally fits into the Television aspect of this campaign, and along with this there is often a “Making the Video” special aired to go with pop videos. In radio, the DJ’s are sometimes bribed to play an excess of a certain record. In newspapers there are often square advertisements that depict an artist’s new record or a tour supporting the record, this would be the same in magazines, also there might be a featurette with a “Meet the Band” style article, attempting to bring the band down to earth. The Internet is a limitless resource, and through this there are websites such as MySpace (
Music Videos serve more than one purpose; they serve as a method of promotion for an artist, promoting an artist and usually their album; they create, adapt, and feed star images; it entertains as a product in its own right; and last but not least it reinforces, adapts or undermines the meanings of a song. Music videos often include four basic elements; performance; narrative; thematic; and symbolic. My video should serve to do all of these things, the content of the video focuses more so on the performance and narrative than the thematic and the symbolic. It many respects the music video is becoming defunct and irrelevant. This is largely down to peer2peer sharing on the Internet through websites like Limewire (http://www.limewire.com) and BearShare (http://www.bearshare.com), and how music television (MTV, VH1, VIVA etc.) (
This shot challenges conventions of real media, because unlike the majority of slasher films, the film doesn't open with teenagers having sex, or another teenager babysitting. We are slightly dependant on gore and latex make up, but, unlike most horror flicks, we never actually show a victim being tortured, we merely build the tension to make the audience believe that this is going to happen.
One of the largest factors behind our thriller, unlike films in it's genre, is that we try to lead the audience to false assumptions. For instance in the above shot, we lead the audience to believe that our thriller is going to centre around what is outside the window. We use my soundtrack and some sound FX from soundtrack pro to create this illusion. (The noise idea was from The Blair Witch Project). 
We challenge the conventions of real media by building tension that isn't heavily relient on a central antagonist. In this shot, we used an exploding lightbulb (the lightbulb doesn't really explode, we created this effect by inserting sound FX and editing the white balance and exposure on shot) to create the tension. Most slasher films revolve around a central antagonist (i.e. Jigsaw from Saw, Freddy Kruger from The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Jason Voorhees from the Friday the Thirteenth franchise and Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise.)
We used this shot, because the room isn't lit, the only light source is from an old torch and this forces the audience to focus on the victims face, and this makes the audience feel sympathy for the victim, because we see a look of anxiety and confusion on his face. We conform to other media products that are already successful in this scene by borrowing from The Blair Witch Project and Kill Bill Vol. 2 which use darkness and sound to create tension.
Here we conform with current media conventions witht he over use of gore. This shot merely sets the scene for a room full dead bodies. Many films are overly reliant on this feature (i.e. Saw). We challenge current media by not being overly reliant on this. But we do mix in a bit of gore to create this tension.
This title challenges most media conventions because it isn't overlayed on top of real-time shots. It is merely overlayed on blackness. The title, like the first titles convey a sense of mystery, and seeing as this is the final shot of the opening sequence, it begs the question to the audience as to what happens after the titles.