Creating/Editing the video

Once everything was filmed, we had to edit our video using Apple Final Cut Express. The first stage was to open final cut and create a new project, providing us with the canvas on which our video will be made:

We then uploaded our footage from the camera to final cut and placed it in the browser. This is where raw, unedited footage is stored and can later be brought down into the timeline to be cut and edited.

Once this was done, we had to upload our audio so that the two could be put together, we uploaded the song in a AIFF format as this is the only format accepted by final cut. We needed the audio so that we could sync our video with our song. It then appeared in the browser, and was dragged into the timeline:

Before we could bring our song into our video however, we had to first make some small adjustments to it. For this we used garage band. We cut 13 seconds off the end by using the master volume function, making the audio fade out at the point we wanted:

Now that everything was in the right place we were able to get on with editing our video. Here's how:

First of all we would select the footage we wanted for a certain part of our song. (in the above case, the beginning) and drag it into viewer for a preview. If it was the part we wanted, it would then be dragged into the timeline where it could be cut and synced to run in time with our song.

Footage placed in the timeline would look like this:

We would then use the indicated razor blade tool to cut the video down into its various useful frames. Unwanted areas could be sectioned from the rest with the razor blade tool and then deleted, whereas wanted footage could be detached from the main footage and moved around as we please. The first cut of the project is shown below:

This process was repeated with all needed footage until we had our near-end result. The video with all cuts completed is shown below:

Now that all our cuts were in place, the video was almost done. However it still was not finished as we had to add our transitions. After deciding that cross dissolves best fitted our work, we selected them in the effects tab and dragged them over all of the cuts to make them cross dissolves:

The video at this stage was almost complete, but to give it a more professional effect, we added colour correction.

Some parts of the video, such as the burning picture at the end, needed to be slowed down in order to fit into our video better. For this we needed to change the speed settings of selected footage. To edit the speed of a clip, you need to right click it and click 'speed'. From here a window will appear that looks like this:


100% is the setting for the original, unedited speed. To slow clips down, we needed to decrease the percentage to a setting we felt fitted the music, like so:


Now that the speed, colour and order had all been corrected as we desired. We needed to add some final touches to make the video look like it was from a music channel. To do this we added a watermark logo and flashbar from 'Viva' into our work. Both were made on Photoshop are are shown below:


To bring both images into our work, we had to add them to the timeline, creating the style of a music video. The flash bar would be on screen for the first 4 seconds, and the watermark logo would be in the top left hand corner for the duration of the video, and so it was streched to cover the length of the audio.