Music Video Editing - Session 7

As the instrumental comes to a close at 3:45 the tempo increases with a consistent beat being played at a higher volume. As a build up to the final chorus we have split a shot of the man walking down a back street with a contemporary shot of the empire state backwards and forwards five times in four seconds. This shows a split between the man and his dreams and the severity of his homesickness. At the beginning of the final chorus we have again illustrated the word 'America' by including a panning shot of a lit-up American flag as the word is sung at 3:55. The music video comes to a close with various inter-changing shots of both cities and is closed with two distinctive shots. The man is seen walking out of the end of the underpass, the same one he was filmed wandering through at the beginning which is followed by the final sped-up shot of an airplane taking off and flying over New York. I think this is a peaceful close to the video. 

Music Video Editing - Session 6

3:15 is the beginning of the instrumental section of the song. Whilst in New York I filmed some street performers: a man playing the saxophone, a man playing the drums and a man playing the guitar. After careful and difficult editing we have managed to fit the timings of these instruments visually being played in with the timing of the music soundtrack; this is a section we are very pleased with! In this instrumental we wanted to include footage from both Newcastle and New York along with frequent shots of the man to tie up the narrative of the video towards the end of the track. Lyrics are not present to potentially distract the audience from the video and consequently their full attention is on the shots which was conclude the point of the video; the man is studying in Newcastle and is dreaming about being home in New York City.

Music Video Editing - Session 5

At 2:31 the second chorus begins and we introduced this by using a fading transition to merge a shot of the Baltic building in Newcastle with the new World Trade Centre in New York. Before the tempo dramatically increases we included a cut to black to display a clear change in locations. When the lyrics say 'lift me up' we wanted to include worms eye view shots showing the scale of the city emphasising the height of the buildings. Within the chorus the word 'America' is repeated frequently and after playing with different timings on iMovie we decided to change each shot on the word America to make the video really fit with the song and flow with the phase and tempo of the song. These shots don't change dramatically on the word America, sometimes the same setting is shown just from a different angle. At the end of this section of the song are the lyrics 'give me strength to press on,' here we have included a shot I filmed from the Rockefeller Centre which shows the entire length of Central Park through to the other end of Uptown New York. This shot features miles of land which I think can be used as a visual metaphor of moving forward to 'press on.' 

Music Video Editing - Session 4

At 1:51 we wanted to fit two shots exactly with the two prominent beats within the song and I think we have achieved this with the man walking around a corner and leaning at the top of the Baltic building. With the lyrics 'to the tallest of the towers that fall and rise' I wanted the camera angle to begin shooting the lower part of a skyscraper and then gently pan upwards to the horizon, I think this suitably links the lyrics to the visuals. 'The names upon the list' lyrics are followed by a shot of the 9/11 memorial where there are legitimately names on a list; this was a feature we were certain we wanted to include right from the beginning of planning therefore I was determined to shoot it when I was in New York. The shot of the man viewing images on his phone is one of the last shots we decided to film last-minute and add in to clarify the narrative; he is looking at them because he's homesick. This shot is followed by one of him walking past Newcastle University and reading the New York Times, again shot last-minute to aid audience understanding. 

Music Video Editing - Session 3

 

At 1 minute 4 seconds the first chorus begins and the initial line is 'Rise to the top of the world America.' Because of this and to link the lyrics to the video we decided to cut to the first shots of footage from my trip to New York and introduce this new location to the video. We decided to transition between the two locations by using the shot of a lift here in Gateshead merging into a shot from a lift in New York which represents the adjective 'rise' in the lyrics. We suffered a problem with this when I was unfortunately unable to find a lift in New York which had windows showing the setting outside. To combat this issue we decided to still insert the clip of the lift in England and as it cuts to black, cut to a view of New York City from the top of the Rockefeller Centre. This way we are still referencing the 'Rise' element. This section is also perfectly timed to cut to the first clip of New York on the word 'Rise.' Following the location transition and the chorus introduction is a series of clips from New York introducing the location throughout the chorus. We have decided to try and use the New York clips mostly only in the choruses as this is the point in the song where America is sang about. Clips of New York continue throughout the chorus until 1 minute 48 seconds where the video cuts to a shot of the man lip singing the lyrics 'from farmers in the fields'  which is the beginning of the second verse were we currently plan to mostly use shots of England and a few of America.

Music Video Editing - Session 2

 

After the instrumental containing the time-lapses, the first line of the song is 'is this just an illusion.' During this line, we have decided to fit in a shot of the man walking away from the camera down an enclosed back street, this is a metaphor demonstrating the emotion of him feeling trapped in the city of Newcastle to study, rather than being free back home in NYC. We chose to use this shot at this specific time in the song due to the fact that after the man's footsteps match in time with the 3 beats of the song following the opening. The sound and imagery is in sync making the video more professional.
During this session we also edited together more shots of the man walking around this street in order to set the initial atmosphere of the video with the man feeling trapped and alone. We have used 15 shots all including the man, with a couple of location shots in between with the hope that this will introduce him to the video and clarify his emotion by continuing to display a constant negative facial expression until 1:05 minutes. Due to this opening section containing the man being so long, the audience are able to remember it and refer back to his emotion throughout the video as we begin to continue the story by adding establishing shots and the shots of New York which are the thoughts and dreams in his head.

Music Video Editing - Session 1

Today we had the first editing session for our music video, we worked on importing all of our time-lapses into the first instrumental section of the video. We have decided to edit all of our footage and create our video on Apple's iMovie. In order to create all of our footage that ranged from 10-30 minutes into 3-6 second time-lapses, we had to import them and edit the time adjustment in the menu bar at the top, we increased the speed to around x100000 meaning the footage was much shorter.
In our first attempt we made all 5 time-lapses the same length to create a more consistent unified effect throughout the entire instrumental. However I was not satisfied with the timings of the cuts of the shots with the track and also thought they were too long. I suggested we cut into each shot on the specific beats in the song, even if that meant some shots had to be repeated or be longer than others. I think this works so much better and has vastly improved the quality of the opening of our video. I am very pleased with this initial result!

Music Video - Locations - New York

Airplanes

Midtown Streets

Times Square

 

Radio City

 

Central Park

 

Strawberry Fields

 

Ground Zero

 

Top of the Rockefeller Centre  

 

Rockefeller Centre

 

Bryant Park

Music Video - Locations - England

Newcastle University

Newcastle University

 

Northumberland Street, Newcastle 

Hood Street, Newcastle 

Central Arcade, Newcastle 

St James' Park 

Outside of the Sage, Gateshead

Outside of the Sage, Gateshead

Central Motorway, Newcastle

Grey Street, Newcastle 

Underpass, Bill Quay

The Baltic, Gateshead 

Newcastle Quayside 

Ouseburn, Newcastle 

Ouseburn, Newcastle

Monument Metro Station, Newcastle 

Back Street, Bill Quay 

The Quayside - filmed from the High Level Bridge

The Tyne Bridge at sunrise

Grainger Street

Sunrise

Filming Day 10

Today was day 10 of filming and we decided to head back to the Quayside to film some more shots of the man taking in his North Eastern surroundings. In particular we wanted to experiment with the effect of light beams from the sun which I researched in my music video analysis'. We also wanted the film the man studying to make the connection between his move to Newcastle in order to study at university. Finally we also wanted to focus on a bit of lip singing as we felt we didn't have enough footage of this.

Filming Day 9

Today I went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre and filmed a number of high angle shots of New York City. I aimed to cover the variety of architecture and the scale of Central Park from above. I also filmed a couple of shots back on lower ground before heading to the airport, mainly to use as small filler clips in the final video; these include american flags swaying in the breeze and a policeman directing traffic. Finally I filmed the taking off of the plane when flying home, I set off at night therefore the display of the city's lights was spectacular, this is a shot I hope we can incorporate in the final edit. 

Locations: 
- Rockefeller Centre 
- Bryant Park 
- Newark New Jersey Airport