Editing Decisions

Due to my chosen song having a slow tempo I decided that the edit should fit that to ass emphasis to the rhythm of the song. Also, I decided to incorporate multiple special effects to maintain the viewers interest and attention in the music video while keeping to the conventions of the genre and also the persona of the artist.

For the edit, I used Adobe After Effects as it gave me greater control over the video and allowed me to carry out any effects I wanted to use while being able to maintain the continuity of the video.I used masking and keyframed warping effects to allow Character 2 to travel through the shot in a more mysterious way in the shot below. I also keyframed the scale of the composition to create the effect of the camera tracking forwards in the shot to give the shot some movement and energy.

One of the most edited shots is the one below, for this I rotoscoped Character 2 and then incorporated various particle overlays with a turbulant displace over them to create a smokey effect. I could then composite this back into an open shot. I keyframed the height of Character 2 and also the opacity of the expanding smoke, this made him appear like he was rising from the ground.

One of the more subtle effects was used to create a transition between two shots. The first shot seen on the left featured the camera tracking to the right of the tree, the second shot was a still establishing shot. By rotoscoping the area to the right of the tree and overlaying it ontop of the still shot it meant that as the camera tracked left to right it revealed the shot behind. I used the feather tool and also a blur to reduce the strength of the line between the two shots. I also motion tracked a fixed point on the first shot, I applied the tracking data to a null object and then linked the second shot to the null object, this meant that the second shot moved in the X and Y axis to match the camera movement from the first shot to give the overall transition a more natural look.