Rough Cut Evaluation

Our footage firstly had to be digitalised for us to begin editing on Final Cut Pro. To begin our editing process we watched our footage and then made separate bins for specific shots and locations. This way it made it easier and quicker to find shots we liked and fit in with the music. As we had a lot of footage compared to others it took longer for us to find our best shots and was hard to decide on which shots would look the best. We lay down a wide shot of the band in the studio for the first verse and then bladed in other footage of the girls, band members, instruments and bikes. This way the wide shot of the performance would be in sync and would work at any point in the song if we wanted to cut back to the performance. For other sections however, we had a lot of footage of the preparation and the tree performance so we cut a piece in at a time and due to the variety of shots we didn't need to use previous images. There is a stable structure in our video and our shots tend to relate to each other. We begin with a tracking shot from the girls feet cycling to the light that's been powered by the bike. This gives the impression that the video is about energy sufficient powering and helps to make sense of the happenings in the video. This then links into the girls cycling at the side of the performance and the band performing in the middle. The first verse introduces us to the band and as it goes on we have snippets of the preparation of the lanterns and bikes for the tree performance. Not much is revealed at this point to create suspense and to intrigue the audience. We then go into the biking which links into the bike theme and the 'boys and girls' coming together on their way to a festival which is the performance under the tree. During these shot this we still see the preparations however nothing is revealed so it has a greater impact at the end. By the last verse and the instrumental the band and girls finally arrive at the festival which is at night. The girls cycle on the bikes around on the tree this in turn powers the lights for the performance. As you can there's also a relationship between the bikes and the performance and the cycling to the festival and powering the lights for the performance.
We've were influenced by 'Electric Pedals' who design and build human-powered lighting, music, kettle boiling and other interactions, all powered by bicycle generators. Due to global warming and climate change which is becoming a great issue in our society today we thought it would be a great idea for our pop video to promote this and be energy sufficient. We contacted the company and with a lot of work and preparation we enabled this to happen.
We were also influenced by the energy and light hearted atmosphere The Rumble Strips and The Mystery Jets created in their pop videos and with a similar demographic audience we could relate to them. The Rumble Strips music video “Motorcycles” had a great influence on us. They integrated bikes into their pop video and filmed it similarly to us, out the back of a van.
Our rough cut differs from our animate story board but still has the same structure. On the day of filming we found more artistic ways of shooting e.g. through the bike wheel as the band performed and the hand held camera of the night performance. We also gathered a huge variety of shots that we could use which allowed us to be more flexible and creative with the pop video. As well as finding more initiative ways of filming we also thought of more opportunities to film e.g. the preparation, the band playing on the bikes, the bicycles cycling past the camera etc. We found it hard to start of with when beginning to editing as we didn't stick to the storyboard and we had so much footage but by separating all the shots into different 'bins' it made it made it easier and more practical for us to edit. We found some shots we had put onto the story board were unnecessary and boring and few we couldn't do e.g. the bike shot of lots of people coming in separately. Although we made several changes I think the cycling worked well even though we didn’t have them singing. In away it makes it look more realistic and more creative. I also found the hand held camera in the festival performance in the end worked really well and it made it seem like it was a real performance.
Strengths of our rough cut is that theirs such a wide variety of shots we have put in, which creates a more exciting visual experience Most of the cuts also work well together and show the relationship between the bikes and saving energy. The band also worked well together and performed well making the video looking more realistic and exciting to watch. The variety of locations creates a defined structure and storyline for the audience to watch which doesn't get boring. The contrast between all the locations also creates a huge impact on the final performance with the pedal power lighting up the tree and leads up to the climax.
Weakness of our rough cut is that there may be too many shots which can be too much for someone to watch and can make them very confused. The lighting of the performance under the tree varies between each cut making it look not as realistic and smooth. The ending of the song also isn't smooth from the jump of the soundtrack to the clapping which needs to be faded into one another. The cuts at the end of the video where the band is performing outside vary and often are very dark which makes things visually hard to see. The dark shoots give a sense of negativity and seem pointless so lighter shots must be found to replace these.
I believe there is more to do on our pop video. I would like to create sound at the beginning of the pop video and make the sound more smoothly integrated with the soundtrack. I would also like to change some of the festival shots as I believe some of shots are too short and jump a lot which is not attractive visually to watch and can make you very confused. I feel that there needs to be a bigger impact at the end so by putting more wide shots of the tree will create this and also can establish what we've been building up through out the video.
We have no work to do on AfterEffects which enables us to have more time to focus on our video and making it as professional as possible. We will take into account the feedback we received and apply it to our video as well as illuminating the weaknesses in the video.