Editing conventions of music videos and premiere pro refresher

November 03, 2017

This week we had a talk from Matt about how to edit a music video effectively. he also reminded us how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, the software we'll be using to edit ours.

The stages involved in editing a music video are:

  1. sync everything to the music
  2. performance cut
  3. narrative cut
  4. effects
  5. colour grading - which is last because it's pointless to colour grade every clip when we won't even be using a lot of them

Matt told us that picture syncing is much easier and more reliable than sound syncing. To do this, you choose the clip you want to sync and find an arbitrary number on the clapperboard (not the first number because that's on screen for a while). We find the same number on the timeline, press 'i' for 'in', and take the picture only (not the sound) from the clip and drag it onto the timeline. Check the sync for accuracy.



Sound syncing is only used if the picture sync doesn't work or isn't possible. For this one, you find the start of the drum or sharp obvious sound using the left/right keys. Again, press 'i' for 'in' once you've found the same sound on the timeline, and take the video only. Check sync again for accuracy. 

Once everything is synced up, we should rename the clips sensibly and matter-of-factly so that they're easy to identify and cut between. We should also sync all of the clips first because it saves time in the long run. Once any new cut of the video is made (eg. performance cut, narrative cut), the timeline should be duplicated using right click. 



Matt says that there are 3 rules to editing music videos:

1. Listen to the music and illustrate what it's doing (eg. usually, cut to the beat) - the first time the singer sings, you must show a close up of the singer.

2. Group shots together - put all of the drums in one place etc. This makes it cleaner and easier to work from. It also looks better if you go from mid --> close up --> close up of one instrument at a time. You don't always need to cut to the beat because it might not look right at times.
3. Cut movement in / graphic match - makes it interesting to watch


We should make a plan and stick to it so that if anyone else in the group takes over editing, they know what they're doing and won't mess it up. We should also do it in small chunks (eg. 10 seconds at a time) to make sure that those 10 seconds look as good as they can before moving onto the next. 

Matt's last points were no rough cuts because they're a road to failure, and don't show anyone what you've been working on because they'll have their own opinion that may contradicts yours and will waste time.

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