My first impressions of final cut

I had a 15 minute session with John Cockshaw, he showed me the basics of final cut. I had experienced it for last years 2 minute opening, as John cropped down a shot for us but this is the first time we have used it ourselves.

Initially it looks so much better than last years software, it enables you to do a lot more with your shots and add many different effects. This will help me so much next year with our music video, it allows you to get a wider range of effects and shots (for example having 4 different shots on screen at the same time)

Britney Spears Re-make

As part of a school project we have to re-make the Britney video, this will give us practice for future projects. The location is within school so it goes with the original theme of the Britney video. The problems we might face are that people might forget their correct costume, the location doesn't match the original video (we are trying to get it as close to the video as possible), that some forgets the blonde wig which is crucial for the video and we also need to make it look realistic (verisimilitude). A big part for our scene is the dance routines, and if no-one has even looked at the video or practice then this could create problems, it will make the day run less smoothly and you might get one or two people dancing out of sync etc. The biggest problem we could face is definately lip syncing, it only takes one person to get one word out of sync and it looking unrealistic and very fake.


Me and my group were focusing on the gym scene towards the end of the video. We had to think about props, how many people were needed for each shot, setting, location, costume etc. The role I took on was starring in the all the dance numbers and generally helping our project manager (Harriot Harding), this included showing the other group who had been doing the short classroom scene what the dance moves were. 

During the duration of the task, time management lacked. We didn't have enough time to film everything within the time scheldule, this therefore mean't we needed to film after lunch, putting us behind on starting on the editing and vodcast. 

When I come to do something like this again I will definitely ensure that everything is organised and the lyrics are all planned out. To make sure that the lip syncing is up to what I want, I will re-take the song in multiple scenes, going through the whole song to make sure I wasn't short on footage. I will also make sure that the cast that I choose will be wearing relevant clothing and know exactly what they need to bring. Another thing I will make sure is that the cast know the dance routine before we start filming, I would give them the song to practice with a couple of nights before, this will ensure people know what there doing on the day. Obviously creating the Britney video was to a tight schedule (all in one morning) and I wouldn't have such a short time limit when doing another music video, but I think setting short deadlines helps speed up the filming because people know they have to get on rather than mess around for a bit. 

This is Britney's original video



Mini - Vid Exercise

In my group (Gina, Jem, Ben and Conor) we have decided to use the song I feel free by Cream because, it's an easy rhythm and pace to make a video with, there aren't many lyrics during the song and we had many ideas for this song.

Our main idea is to have a barber shop cortet effect at the begining (so the men will just click and hum along to the beat) and then the main singer will come forward through the crowd  and begin to sing. He will then go through grass and look at blue skies (because it's a very free image).


This task got us to grips with using the HD cameras, this was a big step up from AS because the technology was a lot better and gave us a better quality result. Once we had practiced with them, there were therefore easier to use and prepared us for next years music video task. This was a good task because it showed us how fast pace a music video should be and how tightly cut the editing should be. It was our first time using Final Cut to create something like this which again helped us to get familiar with the software and play around with different effects.


This is the original video for the song




This is our re-make