Throughout the process of making our music video we used a wide variety of technology from Google Earth to Final Cut Pro. This helped us produce the best, most realistic video we could. In the early stages when we were researching a track for our coursework we used YouTube to browse and listen to songs. YouTube is massively popular and has millions of songs instantly available for us to listen to. Obviously this proved very useful as within an hour we had narrowed it down to four of five songs and by the end of the lesson we had chosen our track. YouTube was also great as it allowed us to watch music videos which helped give us ideas on what kind of story and performance we’d like to create. The next step was the planning of our music video. Once we had a rough idea of what our video was going to be like, we used Google Earth to look for filming locations and take screenshots to add to our storyboard. This proved useful as we knew in advance where we were filming and what it would look like.
The filming of our music video is where we made the best use of the technology available. For the narrative elements of our video we used a handheld canon camera, which we found had pros and cons when filming. Because it is a cheaper college issued camera, the quality in some shots looks quite poor and grainy and especially in the chapel scene the shots are very dark and unclear. However in parts we felt this added to the vagueness and mystery of the narrative element. On the plus side, we found the camera’s battery life was longer than necessary which meant we didn’t have to worry about bringing spare batteries or memory cards. Also the size of the camera meant it wasn’t a hassle to transport as we could simply put it in one of our bags.
The performance element of our video also used a lot of technology which greatly benefitted our final piece. In the studio we had three professional standard cameras. This meant the quality of our footage was much better than the narrative side which helped it stand out in our final piece. We were able to move the cameras around to get three different, well framed shots. Then using the zoom and focus buttons we could make the shots more interesting and vary them throughout the song. We were also able to switch between cameras on the beat using the control system which in post-production gives the video a professional feel as it cuts between shots in time with the beat.
During the editing process we used Final Cut Pro. This is expert quality software which meant we could take our footage and make it into something which mirrors professional videos. The dual screens meant we could have one screen to preview where we were up to and the other was used solely for editing. Final Cut Pro allowed us to easily insert the track and lock it so it couldn’t accidently be changed. It also allowed us to layer clips so we could just have the whole performance with the narrative over it then easily cut between the two. One of the most useful features of Final Cut Pro was the “snap” ability, this meant when we added a new shot it automatically snapped onto the end of the least shot meaning there were no blank gaps or spaces in our video. Another useful feature was the marker button. With this we were able to place markers in time to the beat and then fit our shots around that.
By using the wide variety of technology available in our research, planning, filming and editing we were able to create a near-professional music video with a strong narrative and performance.
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