When editing the commercial, we encountered many problems. Thus, we never had the chance to use Pinnical studios. For this music video, we decided to use our own editing software, thankfully we don't have to rely on IMovie for this project. We are using Final Cut Pro, to edit our music video. So far, it seems to be going smoothly. The only problem I have encountered isn't technical. It is the fact that the program is on a teammate's desktop, so it can not be brought to school. To work around this fact, we have decided to work in class, and that teammate can then change the video as we have talked about. On the first day of editing in class, the weekend after we filmed, a draft version of the footage had been compiled! That day we watch the video over and over to compile as many notes about the draft as we could. 10
Some things we would comment on was the timing of the transitions from shot to shot. We needed to find the perfect balance between keeping it on beat, and having the right section of the shot selected. This proved one of the most difficult things to fix, in my opinion, due to the fact that once you change something at the beginning of the video, things may shift around, becoming unaligned. Another problem I found was with the footage. Some shots turned out shaky or slightly blury, and there wasn't enough retakes to make up for it. This we have had to work with, a solution we came up with was to take different part of already used footage and put a filter on it. This reuse of footage was fine, as we were making a parallel between the shots. Luckily, Final Cut Pro had a solution to the shakiness, it had a stabilizer that kept the footage relativity still while still keeping the quality of the shots. Unfortunately, like all things, the stabilization has problems. In our last class, a method of counteracting the distortion of the stabilization was brought to light. The teammate used this method to fix the stabilization problem. 10
Other problems were also discovered or continued to persist. The persisting problem seemed to be what part of each shot was chosen for the music video. Sometimes the part was too still, making it look drained of life and uninteresting. Other times the action in the shot didn't quite line up with the beat or lyrics. In the last class, the main note was to try as many things as possible for the music video. This includes filters, cropping, and everything in between. We plan on getting together over the weekend and work on the project together. This will be easier than making notes for one person to use. Over all, I'm expecting a better product than the commercial was. Partly because of the new editing software, but also because of our experience. I don't think it will be perfect, as some of our shots are messed up, but it would have been at least a good experience!
