Finally finished with Final Cut

My music video is now finished and fully edited, I will embed it below.




I think overall the production went very well. My piece resembles the original accurately, yet differently enough to let the audience know that it's a parody. As far as the comedy goes, I have showed the video to just under 20 people in my sixth form, not all of whom I am friends with to ensure that their review is fair, and also multiple media teachers to get their opinions. Just about everyone enjoyed the video and laughed at it, most of whom have never met Jack and are therefore laughing for the reasons I want them to laugh for. Not because they think Jack looks like a tit, but because I have parodied the original to make it funny, and that has been recognised.

Everything is okay now

I came into school for one day over the holiday and managed to re edit my entire production. All of the clips were still in the same place, however I was unable to line the music up with the clips perfectly which led me to editing the clips anyway. I then re edited Jack's voice back in the same as I had done before. I was able to edit his voice in somewhat faster than the first time as I now knew what I was doing, and was familiar with the process.

I immediately uploaded it to Vimeo to ensure that I have a version of it published where it can no longer be interfered with. I will embed the video below. It is the final version of my music video, though there are some things I would like to have changed, they would've required re filming which was not an potion without finding new actors.

It's the Final (Cut) countdown

As it turns out my latest version never uploaded to Vimeo, leaving me with an old version of my video. I still have evidence on my blog in previous posts showing that I edited Jack singing the song however I no longer have that version of the video. The latest backup is the version which is currently on Vimeo, there were some editing tweaks made after that, and mainly the singing and instrumental version of the song to remove Carly's voice and replace it with Jack's.

Final Cut No

Somehow I was able to wipe Final cut including my entire music video and that of two other media students on the same machine. I feel that is something that should not be possible to do by accident. Luckily I was able to get their work back with help from someone in my group. The macs at school do not have time machine set up properly so I was unable to use this to revert to before the accident.

By using a backup file within Final Cut I was able to get the timeline for their work back, which then required me to just re upload all of their clips and it automatically reformatted them to fit the timeline. I will attempt to fix mine as well in the same way, however I feel it is not as urgent because I have more or less finished my video and uploaded it to Vimeo.

White balance

Some shots of my video are very white. I attempted to fix this using the white balance however this just made the footage look terrible. The problem is the light exposure from outside, which I can't do too much about without making the entire shot darker. I played with the colour board and contrast settings on final cut and was able to make the shot less white, however I did not like the look of this.

This is the original footage with no filter. The sky is very bright however this is without the filter.

 This is the version from my video with the "artificial light" filter similar to the one used in the original video, giving it a yellowish hue.

This is what I managed to create using the contract controls on Final cut. The whites are slightly darker yet I think it looks too dark and yellow. I therefore have decided to stick with the middle option.

Class review

I showed the first edit of my music video to my A2 media class to get some feedback on how to improve. Just about everyone was able to enjoy it with plenty of laughs which is exactly what I wanted, even the people who don't know Jack so aren't just laughing at his misfortune. Everybody in my media group is between the ages of 17-19 which fits my target audience of young people aged from 13 to around 20.

The aim of making this video wasn't solely to appeal to people within that age bracket, but to entertain those who have seen the original and either didn't like it, or just find mine funny. I figured the original video would've been seen by young people aged around 13 because that's the age where teenagers start getting into their music therefore when the song was released it would've been very popular with that age group.

Similarly with older young people aged 20, they are internet conscious and listen to the latest songs in the charts, which Call Me Maybe would've been on when it was released. Therefore all the people within that age bracket should recognise that my video is a parody and can laugh at it. The response I got from my class shows that I have appealed to the right age bracket.

The feedback was mostly positive with some ideas on changes to make, as it was only the first edit. Unfortunately due to the unavailability of the actors I have used I was unable to re film, so all the changes suggested needed to take into account that I can only make changes post filming in the editing stage. Certain suggestions such as removing certain clips and replacing them with something slightly better were unfortunately not fulfilled as I have no footage I can replace them with. I have already used the best clips from all that we filmed which included one repeat of a shot, however it is very hard to notice.

I recorded the group giving me feedback and have uploaded it to Vimeo, I will put a link in this post. A popular idea was to record Jack singing the song and replace Carly's voice with his. I had already planned to do this therefore I removed the section from the video because most of it is me explaining how I intended to do it which I have covered in another blog post. Also I had to reduce the length of the video significantly as Vimeo only permits a certain amount of upload-able data to users.

Final straw with Final Cut

I have experienced numerous issues with Final Cut which are solely down to the program or the Mac I am using being glitchy. The most common is un rendered footage/ audio in the editing timeline. This is a big problem with editing because I need to be able to see which clip I am editing to make it as accurate as possible.

In the past I have been able to fix it by moving to the unloaded clip and clicking on it, then waiting for it to buffer. However I did experience a large section of Jack's vocals being missing, even after I had closed and re opened the program multiple times.

As you can see in the image the audio appears to end, however it is still there as I could hear it when I played it. Although I knew it was there, I needed to be able to see the sound waves to be able to edit accurately. Eventually I managed to get it back by zooming all the way in on the footage, then by zooming back out again. I have no idea what caused this, perhaps the size of the file had caused the program to slow down.

More editing of vocals

As I have said in an earlier post the timing of the song I have used is not the same speed as the version Jack sang to, therefore I have had to edit Jack's singing in chunks speeding some sections up and slowing some down. I have cut in between certain lines and spaced them apart to replicate the song as well as I could.

Although I am doing a parody, I still want it to resemble the original where I deem necessary, and I think the more accurate the vocals are to the original the better. I feel tat having the timings off would just make the piece look lazy and unprofessional on my behalf.

Editing Jack's singing

I asked Jack to sing the song so I could replace Carly Rae's voice with his. Unfortunately Jack's singing talent isn't as good as I had hoped. He had the confidence to do so which made him a good candidate, however I would have preferred someone who could've produced a somewhat nicer to listen to version. Sorry Jack.

I did ask someone I know called Toby Watts who has performed in several drama productions, including the production of Grease at my school. He is a good singer, however he was unavailable when I needed him. Furthermore I wasn't sure if having someone looking dorky would go well with a talented singing voice. Conclusively I decided Jack singing as well as he could would be a good fit.

The downside of this is that the acting he did, and the editing I had done prior to recording his voice, was all synced with the original track. Regardless of Jack's voice not being that of an angel, he also wasn't able to exactly reproduce the song with all the perfect timings, not that I expected him to. In addition, the instrumental version I had downloaded was not the same length as the original, meaning it was slightly out of time. This led to a large task of re editing all of the audio for the video to line up with the footage. Unfortunately I was unable to fix the original lip sync issues with Jack's acting, and if anything they may be slightly worse with Jack's singing as well.

I can't re film now as Jack is unavailable for a time period I would need him for, and I cannot re film with someone else otherwise I would need to re film the entire video which would prevent me from meeting the deadline.

Voiceover

I recorded Jack singing the song on my iPhone using the voice memos app. From this app I was able to email them to myself, open the email on a computer and transfer it to a memory stick. I then transferred it from the memory stick into the mac and uploaded it to final cut pro. Finding a version of the original song without lyrics, an instrumental version, was rather challenging. I eventually managed to find a version on a website as a music video without singing, which I again emailed to myself thinking I could repeat the steps from before.

However it would not allow me to transfer the song from the email to the computer, so I had to take it a few steps further. I downloaded an app on my phone which converted videos into downloads. It took some effort and actually downloading two different apps but I eventually managed to get the song saved to my phone. From there I did the same using a memory stick on the computer and uploaded it to the mac.

I replaced the original video which I had been using to line up the lip sync to Jack, with the instrumental track. I detached the audio and deleted the footage leaving me with just the instrumental soundtrack. I then had to edit all of the audio from Jack's voice to line up with the music and the video.

Word/text effects

In the original video there is a scene in which Carly is in a "fairy-tale world" where the background is a pink sunset and both characters are dressed like a prince and princess. In this scene above their heads is the title of the song, and below is Carly's name. I attempted to recreate this through the use of text features on final cut, however there is one element I am not happy about. 

The original was undoubtedly created through the use of a green screen, meaning both the background and the text are behind the characters. Whereas I added the text in post production therefore it is over the heads of the characters. As far as I can tell there is no way I can edit the words to be behind the characters, not without using a green screen. 

Permission to use the song

In order to ensure I didn't violate any copyright issues, or just annoy the producers of Call Me Maybe I decided to email the record label. After finding the producer of the song (Josh Ramsay) but no way of contacting him, I then discovered the record label 604 Records was the label for the song. On their website I managed to find an email address hidden away with info in the title. Assuming this was the address most of their questions get asked I figured it made sense to send mine to that address. In the brief it states that providing I have evidence of contacting the producer of the song I can use it in my production.

Can't use the effects I need

One shot of the original video contains a focus pull which we were unable to produce with the camera as it was not complex enough. Without access to a camera capable of a focus pull I had to make do with the shot we have. The shot in particular is framed by my character and the inside of the car with Jack's character in the background trying to get my attention. The original video uses a focus pull to re focus on the male character, however the camera also pans slightly so he is centered in the shot. We were able to film a shot similar to this however there is more emphasis on the pan, as it lacks the focus pull.

Lighting effects

As far as lighting goes, there are only two locations in my video and one is outside. Seen as it wasn't dark there was no need for extra lighting outside, however in the living room I turned the lights on as it got darker. This does count as a continuity error as the lights are not on earlier in the production, however it is hard to notice due to the filters I have put on the clips.

It was quite a dull day which affected the lighting, however the filter I added somewhat counteracts this. Ideally it would have been good if the weather was sunny and warm, mainly because I caught a cold filming it was so bad. The filter doesn't really make it look like it is a nice sunny day, but it does mask it well enough to appear like the original video.

Actor acting up

One problem I'm not sure I can fix using editing magic, is at some points in my footage it appears as though jacks mouth is hardly moving. This is due to Jacks inability to enunciate. However I can't fully blame him, the day we filmed was absolutely freezing so the last thing on his mind would've been "I hope it looks like I'm really singing for Cal's coursework to look accurate."

With the deadline approaching and exams closing in, I don't think I can find time where everyone will be willing to come back and re film. However now I know this can be an issue, in future projects I will ensure that the footage lines up with the sound before it's too late to re film.

Furthermore I have realised that the version of the song we played during filming for Jack to sing to (karaoke style) plays at a slightly different speed than the audio track I have used to edit the clips together. To compensate for this I adjusted the speeds of the clips to either speed them up or slow them down to fit in time with the audio.

I will be asking Jack to re-sing the song so I can have his voice instead of Carly Rae Jepsen.

Final cut faff

The timings of some of my clips are slightly off, therefore I had attempted to change the timings of my clips to fit the audio of the song. I have the original music video as the bottom layer when I am editing on final cut, I then place my footage on the layer above. This means I see my footage but I can hear the song playing so I know when each clip needs to start and stop.

So far this has proved effective, however some of my clips are either slightly too fast or too slow, but I could not find out how to edit the timings of clips. Right clicking on a clip shows the option change duration, however this doesn't seem to actually do anything at all. Another member of my media group had a similar problem, so we googled it and found out how to do it. 

Now that I know how to do it it's incredibly simple, you just need to select a clip then click the speedometer symbol. This opens a sub menu where you can change the percentage of the speed of the clip. 

One of my clips actually needed to be slow motion, so I just reduced the clip speed down to create this effect. I don't know whether there is a slow motion setting which can be applied to a clip, but the way I used worked just as well.

Final cut filters

I googled and found out how to add filters to clips and how to change saturation etc. I have added a filter to all of my footage which adds the effect of artificial light. This is an attempt to replicate the filter from the original call me maybe video.

The filter gives my footage an aesthetic quality which makes it stand out from other home made movies. It makes my footage look more professional and more accurate to the original.

The original video seems to have a yellowish hue, I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this is, however it makes it look warm. This is the opposite of the weather we had during filming, so I have used the filter to make it look like a sunny day.

Editing with Final Cut Pro

I have edited on iMovie before for the project I did last year in media, my opening title sequence. I had never edited before, all the skills I acquired were self taught with some insight from peers. For this project however I have decided to use Final Cut Pro which is a professional editing software. It is far more complex than iMovie, and I have a again taught myself how to use all the basic tools required for editing.

So far I definitely prefer Final Cut to iMovie, it has a more professional feel about it, I feel as if I am producing a reasonable quality media product, as opposed to a slightly above average home movie with my mates.

Due to its complexity I have had a few issues with Final Cut, and there are easier ways of doing things which I am finding as I go. One thing I am still struggling to find is how to add effects to clips e.g saturation and contrast control, filters etc.