Editing the music video

Before I edit every time, I dump the footage that I want to use from the SD card into a folder. This archive was named "actual footage" in order to import all the videos at once. Once those were placed as raw footage in the editing studio, it was time to edit. At first there were 12 scenes, according to our storyboard. Although there were many takes, Darwin and I had to agree which video out of all would be best fit for the final scene. I placed all of the footage onto the track as the first step. Secondly, I went through all of them and muted the audio. When editing, I analyze how the scenes work and what could be removed. I had to shorten the length of some videos because the actual scene would be enacted in the middle of the video. I played around with the speed in some of the clips, which worked when videos were too slow.

There is a setting in "iMovie" where you can stabilize a shaky video. I could say that this was used for multiple scenes. It helped to a great extent because it makes our music video smoother. Then, Darwin taught me how to get an audio clip from his laptop. I had to go copy the link of a YouTube video of the song, and download it as an mp3 audio. It was added to the third track in the editing studio. I had to start the song halfway into the first verse. I cut the audio clip and shortened it to our last lyric at the end of the video. The song was 1 minute and 8 seconds long when edited, and that is how long the music video was expected to be.

While I was editing scenes 3,5, and 6, I did not like the way they were put together. I also realized that one of the scenes was filmed wrong, since I was following the storyboard. Also, when I thought I finished editing, the video was 58 seconds long. I had to think about adding a scene and re-filming the other ones, which took place on 12/01. The new footage was imported again, and it made the final product longer. One main thing I had to work with while editing was fitting the lyrics with the write scenes. I wanted scenes 5-7 to fit with the song, but it wouldn't have the start of Verse 2 to start with scene 8. However, I had to make Verse 2 to fit with the scenes after 8 because then the song would end correctly for the music video. I added transitions (cross-dissolve) to identify that there is a crosscut from being in different locations. The project was finally finished after this step and Darwin exported the video. 

Reshooting

On November 23, Darwin and I were able to film everything on the storyboard. When we edited the footage the following Monday, we realized that one of scenes looked too choppy. I tried to fix the video by editing the best I could, but the entire thing ended up being too short. I wanted to re-film some scenes so that they could be longer. On Tuesday, I got home and made my friend Emily be the cameraman. The scenes that needed to be longer were the ones of me crying and scrolling through pictures of the couple together. I had to make it more clear that I was crying over a relationship, so I smeared a bit of mascara and used mater droplets. I finished those scenes on Tuesday and was planning to meet up with Darwin and Juan on Friday. Unfortunately, Darwin had plans and we could not do anything until Sunday (12/01).

On Sunday, I picked up Darwin and Juan and edited once we got home. I had to analyze what scenes we needed to record again. I also suggested to Darwin that we add another scene of the car driving and arriving at the girlfriend's house. We needed our prop, which were the fake flowers to be in the passenger seat, then we told Juan new orders for the scene. We did not want him putting on his seatbelt because he would just be getting to the house and parked. Afterwards, I recorded a few takes of Juan changing the gear using the stick shift. He then had to pause while taking out the keys and look over to the flowers he bought her. The movement I used for this shot was a tilt down to the flowers. This was supposed to graphic match to the scene of Juan giving me the flowers. With our first rough draft of the video, these scenes were not put together and it did not work.

Since we were already using the car, I had to get in and drive around the corner and begin from the street. Darwin had the camera and I was the driver because it is my mom’s car. I am the only one trusted with driving because I have my license and I am her daughter. We shot a couple takes of the car driving and going onto a driveway. At first, I was worried that since the windows were not tinted, the camera could see who was driving. However, since it is a moving car, no one would be able to see who is in it. I had to be careful during these takes because I did not want anything to happen to the car. I had to wait for cars to pass by before parking onto the driveway. My reflection of this scene is that we only added it because we needed more time. Also to establish that the boyfriend is leaving his mistress’ house and driving to his new location.