Editing on Final Cut

Whilst using Final Cut to edit my music video, I have learnt a range of new skills from cutting to the beat, colour correcting, making jump cuts and using new effects to name but a few.

This screenshot shows me incorporating an effect onto a piece of footage. The effects ease the transitions between the pieces of footage and deter an abrupt jump from happening.

As seen in other posts, I used the RGB effect to alter the colour of  a scene. In the build up shots before this scene appears, each shot resembles one of the colours used, before the final shot with al three colours appears. This random burst of colour is exactly that, random. Although the green links with the colour theme of the digipak, they are the only scenes that have been edited in this way. This links in with the 'gag' aspect of the video as effects, colours and transitions fulfil this type of genre.

This shot shows me working to get this footage in time with the music, essentially, each foot tap would be in sync with the music for the duration of that shot. As you can see, I put the waveform on the audio track to make it easier to visually see the timing of the song, which allowed me to cut to the beat easily.

Moreover, this screenshot shows me cutting each quick shot to the beat. There was a series of shots taken for the 'da lat da' section of the song and each line had a different character. As a result, it was crucial to get each clip in time with the song as they were very quick transitions.

This is showing the process of making jump cuts on the Final Cut timeline. All you do is make a freeze frame of the section of the clip you want, drag it onto the timeline, and then take the other freeze frames from the rest of the video, in sequence. The end product is the freeze frames on the timeline that when played, jump from image to image in an effective way.

This screenshot shows me turning a series of clips into one big effect. Again, this relates back to the gag video, where from my research I saw that over the top, random editing, was a convention of this genre. Each clip comes on in sequence and then the fifth clip comes from the middle and takes over the screen, before the shot changes.

Finally, this screenshot shows me matching two of the trickiest masking shots to the music. Individually, they are about 2-3 seconds each, but took over 5 hours to make, each! However, they look very effective in the sequence and this is one of the effects that I enjoyed the most, as I never realised it was a possibility for my music video.