Editing

Throughout our lessons and editing sessions, me and Sharay focused on adding effects to the video to make it fit more into the 90s theme, and seem more experimental. We added a title that we felt would fit the whole VHS look.
Firstly, we started with creating the title, on Illustrator. We had previously decided to not use the idea of having the names in the font styles of their references, and we did not want to add the individual names so we came up with the idea of having a grouped logo with the names. However we also wanted the name of the song to be feature so this is what we ended up coming out with:


We wanted to make the font resemble the VHS type font to link to the 90s theme we were going for and so we decided to use this font:

 For the names, we went with a bolder font so that they stood out. To make them stand out more we decided to add a rectangle background behind it in a different colour for each name and also a white shadow behind the name. The colours were decided on based on the colours the members wore in the video - so as Ariana wore red her background was red and the same for Lil Kim with blue. The only one who did not have the same colour was Nicki as hers was black and we did not want the writing colour to be different so we changed it to pink as pink was a colour we featured a lot in our video and would therefore link.

For the actual video, in the last few days, this is when we focused on making it look 90s. We had previously used a VHS glitching overlay to make the video look as if it had been filmed on a VHS camera and low quality however we felt like it did not have the affected that we wanted so we looked up ways to create the proper VHS look on our actual footage on YouTube. We came across this video which helped us greatly:


It taught us how to use special effects such as wave warp, noise and colour balance RGB to create the effect we desired. Using this video, I edited the end of the music video and some of the beginning to create the perfect VHS look. We duplicated each clip three times and changed the colour balance and opacity on each to give it the colouring that most VHS videos have. We added noise to make it grainy and also used the wave warp to fit into the look of other VHS videos:


I used the tools and different measurements to use what the video taught us and then tweak it to fit the look that we wanted:


By the end we had achieved the 90s look we were aiming for:

Editing Booking

Me and Sharay managed to book in time to edit in between lessons, so during our free periods:

Re-shoots

Whilst editing together the clips we had for our music video, we found that the ones for the basketball scene that was meant to reference Love and Basketball did not really fit into the video. It was hard to find other shots it could transition into and when it was placed together, it looked like too many different locations in one video, overall giving it a messy look.
We decided to change the referencing scenes for Nicki from Love and Basketball to Clueless as well, and shot our scenes near the lockers in Orient House.

Rough Cut Video

As it was a rough draft a lot of things were not synced or edited properly. A lot of the lip-synching was off as we had just moved a lot of the clips down to fit in the intro part and had not had the time to resync it. Additionally, there was a lot of blank space in between where we did not have footage, so we made a note to get footage to fit into these places. I think the Lil Kim part was quite good in terms of the clips and editing as it all seemed to flow. Ariana's part was also good but the lip synching needed to be fix and we also needed to add shots that were similar because some of them looked too random. Same with Nicki's part. Additionally some of the shots looked too long so we needed to find shots to cross cut with. Overall, it is a good start but needs to be largely improved and edited.

Rough Cut Feedback Video

In this video, we got feedback from a class of first year media students as well as my class on our rough cut of our music video. Whilst a lot of people said that they liked it, it seemed like the main issues were lighting, colouring and lip-synching synchronization therefore these are the things we will focus on when editing the rest of the music video.

In the next lesson, we also got direct feedback from Vanessa and Tom. In this feedback, we were told that we had too many mid-shots, not enough location shots, the colours did not mix well and that our pink studio scenes did not work. From this feedback, we planned to film more close ups and long shots when re-filming Nicki Minaj's scenes as well as to go to more graffiti locations such as Hackney Wick and Shoreditch. We were also planning to change the pink scenes to the all white studio scenes however we both still liked how it looked so we decided to leave them in.

Southbank Filming

Today we went to Southbank to film some location shots. We initially planned to go to Leake Street Graffiti Tunnel however we could not find the area, and the people around did not know either, so they directed us to Southbank skatepark. Before we went to the skatepark, we shot some videos and took some pictures at the Southbank centre, that we could use in our print product. Here is a few of them:

Southbank by Keisha
We then went to the skate park to film our parts, and get some shots of the skaters. As it took us long to find the area, it was dark by then so we only got night time shots and it was raining however I think we managed to get good shots:

I also decided that we should wear the outfits that I had previously allocated to hackney wick as it fit with the graffiti style of southbank more, however I slightly modified them:

Location Photos Call Sheet

Filming

During yesterday's lesson, me and Sharay decided to do filming of Nicki's part. We originally planned to film in the basketball court but it was in use so we decided to film in the locker rooms instead as it still gives off the sports vibe and can fit the theme:

After filming, we went back to lesson and put the footage onto the harddrive and Premiere Pro. As Sharay did not have a lesson next, she stayed to do some editing on the new footage:

Today's Lesson: Editing

During today's lesson, I started to edit together the clips we had filmed in the studio. As we had two sets of locations for Ariana's part, I focused on editing together that part. I did some editing on Nicki's part as well, however it was only some scenes as we didn't have lots of footage filmed for that part:


I played around with some effects, such as strobe light and transitions like cross dissolve. With the strobe light. it looked good but it was hard to time it at the specific times that we wanted it to strobe therefore we took it out and decided to just add a cut or fade to black in those parts:


Whilst I was editing, Sharay was creating titles for us to place on three of our shots on illustrator. She purposely used the same font that was used for the films that we were referencing:


One thing we found about the studio scenes was that a lot of them were out of focus or we were out of frame therefore unusable. Due to this, we planned to re-film some of the scenes, and change the way we filmed it.

Studio Filming

Today, we had the studio booked so we shot Ariana and Nicki's studio scenes. I brought in my own camera equipment:

This included a LED head light, as we were planning to film outside and didn't know if it would be too dark and so wanted to take the precaution. The headlight is attached to the top of the camera, and a dial on the side can be used to make it brighter or dimmer:

The headlight comes with two different covers, we decided to use the white one as it seemed to make the picture brighter but not too bright which is what happened with the cover off:


After lesson we went into the studio, set up the lights and me and our other actress, Jamariah, got changed into our outfits. We took a few scenes with just the white background, but then we wanted to add some effects and colour so we taped pink filters over the lights to change the room colour to pink.  When doing the pink, we had to change the IOS of the camera to make it darker in order for the pink to come out properly whilst simultaneously showing us on the camera properly. We tried to do this with the blue but it didn't come out as well on the camera: