Task Three - Understand the Techniques of Music Videos

In this task I cut a sequence together from footage that was already installed onto Final Cut Express. The music I chose to edit to was The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. This track had some interesting parts as it had a strong beat. This meant I could link the song to the editing of the footage. Below is the video I created for this task.

As seen in the image below, the intro to the song has a very strong beat which starts and stops. There is a silence and then a beat is heard. I decided to edit the footage to this beat by changing the shot each time a beat is heard. No transitions are used, it is just a straight cut between each clip. As the beat gets faster, the shots change quicker until the song goes into the verse and a long clip is used of an animal rapping to the song.

The images below show how I used a split screen effect within the video. I used this to link the lyrics within the music to what was happening on screen. As the animals appear to be rapping, the lyrics talk about riding in a car. I then split screened to shot to show both of the animals driving along in a car. To do this I had to put each clip on top of each other and then use the wireframe tool to move the clips. 

Another place within the video that I used split screen was when one of the animals is dancing and the music was repetitive. To mimic the music, I repeated a short sequence of footage and then split the screen each time the beat was heard. This resulted in showing a tiger dancing and then repeating itself as multiple shots are shown. I feel as though this technique was easy to do and it looks very effective. To do this I had to layer the clips and then wireframe them to get them in the right place. 

Another technique I used was to use the chroma key tool on the shot of the car driving. The reason I added this effect is because I felt that the colours in that certain shot were distracting the attention from the car. To do this I placed both of the clips on top of each other and then changed the bottom footage to black and white in the effects. I then selected which colours to be shown, in this case red, which made only that colour visible. Using only the colour of the car made it stand out, as well as the colour being red. 

I used the reverse technique in the video when a breakdancing bear started doing a breakdance move called the windmill. To do this, I used the shortcut keys Cmd + J to select the speed and then changed it to -100%. This plays the clip at the same speed but just in reverse. This resulted in showing the bear completing the move and then going straight back into reverse. I then used Cmd + J to put part of the clip in slow motion. I changed the speed from 100% to 80% so that the move can be seen in more detail.