Tony Likes To have Grass On His Blog Page

I uploaded the footage I captured from the camera onto one of the college Macintosh’s so I could begin editing. As the camera was a new piece of equipment I asked the college technician if using Final Cut Pro was alright but he directed me to Final Cut Express which is a smaller program but following his guidance I used the express version. I later found out that it would have been a better choice to use Final Cut Pro and he had made a mistake directing me to the express version. I didn’t come across any problems  using the equipment but I was slightly less familiar with how it works causing me to work slower. 

Before I could begin piecing together the footage I had I needed to get a copy of the sound recording of the gig from the band. The Square charges for their recording services. Luckily the band wanted a live recording of themselves so they happily paid for it. I therefore agreed to let them take the disc first so that they could copy the file for their own purposes before taking the disc myself to copy the file. Reece Jones the singer of the group agreed to hand over the disc within the next few days. However problems kept occurring and Reece kept finding excuse why he couldn’t give me the disc yet. My patience was coming to an end and I finally got the disc in early March.

I ripped the audio file off of the disc and cut it down to the one track I wanted to use. Once the track was down on the timeline I filtered through my footage to find any footage of the song itself so I could drop it on the timeline and sync it up with the audio. I was really pleased I captured the band performing the middle 8 to the song as they particularly mention that part of the song as an improvement made to it and the audio track and my footage work together brilliantly. After I synced up all the footage I could with the audio track I began cutting the video of the group sitting in the interview room to all necessary moments making sure that I had a healthy balance between the footage of the performance and the footage of the band talking to the camera. I cut out all the audio the camera caught in the performance footage and kept only the parts where they are talking to the camera.

I chronologically structured the questions when I put them into the final video so that they made sense to the viewer when they watch the video. I chose to film my interview in a style that you never hear the interviewer speak you only ever hear the band speak to show its all about them, similar way to how MTV shoot theirs This turned out O.K. but at parts of the video its hard to recognise what the band are talking about. This was a planning error and in future I’ll need to consider carefully how I ask the questions or inform the band that they’ll need to include the question somehow within their answer so that the viewer isn’t left behind. To put these shots into the video wasn’t a huge problem. I realised that I had to structure the whole video around the interview itself and sometimes the length of time the band took to answer one question cause me to leave out some performance parts  whereas they were shorter with other answers making me find suitable footage to follow.

 Finding Footage of the performance to fill gaps between moments of talking had its difficult parts. I realised that sometimes I showed far too much in the shots and it was clear to see that the video and audio wasn’t doing the same thing. This problem was due to the camera malfunction at the gig as I was forced to find suitable clips to fit t the music rather than going back to the initial angle which would have definitely fit. I felt that after careful consideration and analysis of my clips I found suitable enough footage to put along side the audio. I checked everything I put in careful to see if it tampered with continuity and the flow to the piece and I was glad to see that the footage look genuine alongside the audio.

 To give my video more interest I sometimes had the audio come in before the visual when the band would start talking again. This gave a lot of footage to the video a kind of ‘Voice over’ effect and provided a documentary feel to it. As well as overlapping video clips I used some video transitions. A lot of the time I used hard cuts between the conversation and the performing but this had a very jumpy feel after a while. I experimented with some transitions to see if I could find a more relaxing way to move from shot to shot. Some of the ‘Wipe’ transitions didn’t look too bad but they were too cheesy as the band wanted to go for a serious look. I therefore decided upon fades as they slowed down the momentum of the video whilst upholding the sense of seriousness. I tried looked at other transitions so I could include a variety within my video but cuts and fades were the only ones that fit well with the video. A couple of times the lighting was dark in the venue and at one part of my video I had the lighting darkened at the end of one clip of the crowd moshing and dancing and in the next clip which is a close up of a drum symbol the lighting came from dark to bright. I decided I would use this and exaggerate it by fading to black between the shots and after watching it over its easy to miss the editing altogether as it runs so smoothly.

 Once I had all my video clips down in the order I wanted I then adjusted the audio levels to the soundtrack so that each time the band talk I can turn down the soundtrack so the listener can hear them more clearly whilst keeping the vague sound of the music in the background. As the music was too quiet to completely make out what they’re playing I could add extra clips of the performance on top of the commentary to break up the larger sections and add interest. I made sure I adjusted the audio levels last because if I did it before hand it would cause problems if I need to rearrange the clips.

All I had left to do on the video was the titles for this I used the program ‘Livetype’ which provided me with a wide selection of fonts, effects and transitions to experiment with. I wanted to keep the main title simple so I chose to have the band name and song name appear on the screen as we hear the band prepare to start behind the black screen. As the footage fades in I chose to let the titles remain for a short while more before fading away. I preferred to let the title linger over the next clip as it looks more attractive and it didn’t look so dependant on the plain black screen.

 If the viewer isn’t familiar with the band members I chose to have small banners at the bottom of the screen each time a members spoke for the first time showing their name and role in the band. This was effective but it highlighted the fact that some members are quieter than others and the drummers name isn’t featured until near the end of the video. I would’ve push the clip further forward in the video but it would have interfered with the continuity of the question asked and it would have just confused the viewer much more so I had to leave it as it was.

 To give the promotional DVD the extra touch of class i used a program where i could follow simple steps in order to create a DVD menu. First i exported my video file through quicktime so i could then import it on the menu program. when i began work ing on the software I found that this was really easy to use. I first chose which format to use and i decided to go for  simple film strip menu on  plain white background. the menu was simple but i thought it looked brilliant. I added titles to the bottom of the page and a small play button which i linked to my video file. I finally added small screens within the filmstrip spaces where i had the beginning of my video playing. This instantly gave my menu a professional and classy feel to it whilst making it more appropriate and personalised to the group. 

when shooting the performance. I decided that I would leave the camera in a fixed place on the balcony seating area for the whole duration of Active mental freedom so that I knew that I would definitely have enough footage to last the song and have a foundation shot to fall back upon if some shots were badly taken, I also chose to do this so that I could later sync up the audio track with the visual to boost the live appearance. I came across a problem when doing this because the camera was making errors in recording and only recorded for a short period of time before stopping. I couldn’t understand what was going wrong. I had made no errors in setting up the camera and recording ran smoothly when filming the interview so I knew there was technical problems occurring with the camera itself. I checked the camera memory to see if it had recorded what I just shot and regardless of what errors it said it had it managed to record the footage perfectly. I had no time to work out the problem and solve it because the band were performing the song I wanted to use and this was my one and only chance to capture it, even if it were in small pieces. So each time the camera would stop I would press the record button once more until the error came up again. I checked once more to see if the camera did capture the footage which it did so I continued with the same method.

Once the band finished their song I decided I would try sorting out the camera. Although the camera didn’t say the battery was running low I changed it anyway then turned the power back on. After a little while the camera started working properly again so I then continued to take close-ups of the performers playing their instruments. I hand held the camera from here on so that I didn’t take up too big of area which could cause conflict with the audience. By hand holding the camera it gave the performance a more live effect which I liked but I tried my best to keep the camera steady as possible so that the video ran smooth. I came across a few collisions with the audience as they danced and enjoyed themselves. They could clearly see I was hold equipment and when I was by the front stage they made sure to try and keep clear of me.

I recorded the performers from a variety of angles and used zooms and extreme close-ups so that the viewer cannot recognise what the performer is playing/singing. If I did this I thought I could possibly get away with using these shots in my video, making out they’re still playing the same song. The lighting in the venue helped with my editing a lot as I could line up the flashing lights in time with the music so that they look a part of the same clip and it sometimes masked what the performer is playing so the viewer is unable to tell if it’s the same song or not.