Editing Diary

- GCProductions
The editing of our video was carried out by Freddie as he has previous experience of video editing and had access to more advanced editing software such as Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After effects. This previous experience really benefitted our video as we were able to make the look very professional, our main objective. The editing took place over the course of two nights, and then a third night correcting mistakes and faults we received from out teacher feedback to create our final cut. When I sat down on the first night, the first thing I done was look through all of the footage to see what had went well, what didnt go so well and what completely failed. The use of the GoPro and its fish eye lens made a lot of the footage work really well with the song; this is exactly what I had aimed for when first deciding to use the GoPro Camera. After clearing the useless footage from the camera, I set about the editing. Before editing each clip, I used a combination of colour correctors and colour curves to create the Blue tone colour correction on every clip, the settings were saved so I could then use them as a preset on each further clip. First of all I imported our song of choice (Dizzee Rascal Bonkers), and marked out the main beats in the song as this is what all of the transitions and cross cuts will be based around. For the introduction of the song, I already had a set idea of what I wanted; a cross cut sequence between the first character and the footage of the night at the club. These cross cuts were timed with the main beats in the introduction of the song. After this, the next shot that needed to be edited in was the shot of Sam (First character in the video) miming the first verse of the song. Due to the way we filmed the shot, playing the song in the background, Sams miming was almost perfectly in time with the song. There a couple of tiny moments where the lips came out of sync with the song and I quickly corrected this by altering each frames timing until it matched perfectly. After this the second character was revealed (Freddie) and I needed to edit in the transition shot; a short establishing shot of the new location. I used a simple fade in transition timed with the music as well as a film burn overlay to make this transition from location to location look seamless. This then cut into Freddie miming the chorus to the song, again, due to the way we filmed all of our miming shots, Freddies miming was perfectly in time with the song and I didnt actually have to edit the timing of this clip at all.

After the chorus scene was completed, there is then a transition period in the song leading up to the first drop in the song. To fill this space I used simple cross cutting to the beat of the song with a series of filler shots and club footage. On each beat of the song I also used an effect called Defocus which puts a bounce around the edge of the screen, simultaneously pulsing with the beat of the song. This cross cutting sequence also starts to introduce the next character (George) and the next location. This sequence then leads to the next scene showing how Sam and Freddie got from where they are, to the next location where George is. This next shot uses a combination of the defocus effect and slow/fast motion working simultaneously to create a very effective shot of Sam and Freddie getting into Freddies car. After these filler shots, it then leads into the next seen where we see George miming the next verse of the song. To transition into this shot I used a Television bad sync effect, this is very effective as the song also features the sound to match this effect. Yet again, I didnt have to edit the timing of Georges lip syncing as he mimed along to the song when filming. Not much editing was needed on this clip as the shot worked well with the theme of the video, it was filmed on our home made steady cam and gave an up close and personal effect which worked really well. This is where I finished my first day of editing, I was at 1:32 in the song almost exactly half way. Also, most of the intricate editing was in this first half of the film, this set me up nicely for a stress free second day!

Day 2
After day 1 I had the more complicated half of editing completed, but I had to make sure that the second half of the song was completed to as high of a standard as the first. The next scene that I had to edit was another series of filler shots and the cross cut effect. Again I used the defocus effect to add that extra oomph into each cut. However, this collection of filler shots show the group of boys moving on from the previous location where they found George, onto the next (Chelmsford). This includes some shots of the boys inside the car singing along to the chorus of the song, this did require some editing as I had to time each cut with the song, but I also had to cut the clip at the right point so it matched up with the lyrics of the song. It took me a while to get the lip syncing perfectly match up with this part of the song as I kept having to crop and alter each cut.

After this sequence of cross cutting, it then lead into the middle 8 in the song in which I used an establishing shot of the new location in Chelmsford, which then lead into the introduction of Alex and then the start of the next verse which Alex mimed. Again, Alexs lip syncing was almost perfect, however, in this clip we had an intercut clip in which the other boys walk up the stairs to find alex. This mean that again I had to time the cuts and the lyrics with the timing of the original clip of Alex lyp syncing. This was an important piece of editing in the song as if I did not make sure that Alexs lip syncing wasperfect, it could ruin all of the hard work I had put so far. I spent a lot of time making sure that this part was perfect as in my opinion it is one of the best parts of the video. Thenext 10 seconds in the video were the most complicated 10 seconds I had to complete during this second day of editing. During this sequence I used a lot of repetitive cuts to mimic the song. I used the bad tv sync effect once again as it matched the sound effect in the song, this then lead to the shot of me in the shower in a hotdog suit. This was another repetitive cut scene, this entailed of the repetitive cut along with a change in colour correction and brightness to create a slight flash effect. The idea behind this random scene was inspired by Dizzee Rascals official video, it features a similar scene. The next scene was a slow motion shot of the complete groupof boys walking through a door in the car park that Alex was found in. Although it was quite a long shot with not much going on, this scene was very effective as the defocus pulsed the screen in time with the beat of the drop of the song. The rest of the song consisted a variety of shots of the boys making their way back to the club in which the night before started out. This completes the narrative of the story, and some keen eyes may realise that we took a lot of inspiration for the narrative of the story from the series of films The Hangover. It features the boys waking up after a night out and slowly piecing together and finding members from the night before. The end of the boys features the boys ending up back at the club and the video fades to white in time with the end of the song which also features a sound effect which implies that the video and song was part of a dream. This completed the rough cut of the video. I rendered this cut of the video in full HD settings taking around 3 hours. This was then taken into school to receive feedback from my media teacher.

Day 3
After taking our rough cut to our media teacher, his feedback was very positive and in his words He wouldnt change anything. All he couldpick out wer e two minor points in the miming that were slightly out of time, so after coming home and correcting this, I took it back to my teacher and he could only find positive points. I am extremely happy with how our final video has come out. We have worked extremely hard on making sure that everything fits with the codes and conventions of an electronic house music video, and more importantly, that our video mtaches how Dizzee Rascal would make one of his own videos. We think we performed this to the best of our ability and hoping that the hard work has paid off.