Lip Sync Task four

For this exercise we needed to capture footage to be able to lip sync to “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”. When shooting this it was different to previous times that we have recorded because we had to sing to the music with the thought of whether it would sync up when editing. For this Lip syncing we needed to repeat the movements and the singing multiple times but changing the position of the camera, which we done about four times. We done this so that the audience would not get bored and only be looking at one static shot of the two people singing. Four each of these different positions we only used one take when editing and this was so that when syncing up the footage to the music we only needed to match one part of the footage which would meant that the rest of the footage would be successfully synced. At key parts of the song we made sure that the movements were the same so that when editing there would be no continuity errors. The main thing that needed to be achieved was that we needed it to look realistic, as though we were actually singing and we done this by playing the music whilst recording and having the actor sing the song. This was good because it came across that they were singing in the final edit and therefore made it look realistic. When the person was singing it did not matter about the quality of the voice because the audio from the recording would be discarded and replaced with the song.

Once all of the recording had been completed I then had to edit all of the clips to make the music video. The first thing that had to be done for this was to sync up each of the clips to the song and this was helped by the use of markers. Markers were used to highlight a part of the song and for me I done it when Elton John first started to sing. I done it on this bit because it is a clear part of the song and would also be clear in the footage for when this starts. Although I knew that when the first part of the footage is synced the rest would be I also placed markers at other significant parts and then used them as references to make sure that it was only fully synced. The use of markers was very helpful because this meant that when I added in the other clips that we recorded I could go straight to those parts and make sure it synced and I feel like I used them successfully in order to obtain my goal. The first part of using the markers was to play the song and pick out parts that would be easy to see that the video is synced up with the audio.

The next thing that I done after I placed the marker was to find the part on the video which was to be synced up with the markers that I had created. For the his was a key part because if this part was slightly off then it would mean the rest of the footage would also be off and the music video would lose it effectiveness.

Once I found the section of the video where I was going going to sync up I placed my cursor at the start of the clip and then cropped the video up until the point of the desired part. 

I then moved the footage to the marker so that the footage and the audio would be synced to point when Elton John started to sing and the first person in the video also did. 

Now that the the footage was synced up I took expanded the start of the footage so that the video then started for the beginning of the song rather than starting at the part where i synced up the the audio and the video.

Layers were important in helping me successfully edit the footage to the music because it meant that I could place all of the clips into the composition before I started to cut them and make the music video. This meant that all of the pieces of footage were placed onto their own individual layers and once I selected a part of the footage that I wanted to be shown on a certain part of the music I would just be able to delete that section of the recording on the other layers that I did not want and this made the task a lot easier than if I was to have done this task all on one layer. I repeated the previous steps from the markers section to sync up all of the footage to the audio. After that I then went through each of the footage and the audio and decided what I wanted to be shown at what parts.

I chose to have the second layer on the composition to be the first thing to be shown at the start of the music.  I placed the play head on the end of the section that I wanted to be shown and on the clips I used to cut tool to separate that section of the footage from the rest of the clip. Now that the first section of footage was separate i deleted the beginning part of the footage from the clips that I did not want to be shown. 

This is repeated for the rest of the footage until the music video has been completed.

I lip synced the footage by having a point in the music which was clear and placed a marker there then I dragged the clip that I was going to sync up and found this part on the video. Once I found this part on the footage I then cropped the footage to that point and moved it to the section that I placed the marker on and then expanded the footage back until it reached the start of the video. I then played the video to see if it had successfully synced up which it did all of the times. I then repeated this for all of the other clips in order to sync them up.

Although it was important to ensure that all of the footage was synced up it was mostly the parts of singing on the close ups of the people singing that I was most careful about. This was because if this part was not synced up then it would break the illusion that they were not actually singing the song. This did not matter as much on the medium shots because it was not only their mouths that are being shown and therefore would be less likely to be noticeable if the footage was slightly out of sync.

lip syncing from Daniel Cole on Vimeo.

Task Three - Understand the techniques of music videos

For this task I had to take different pieces of footage and apply music music to it to make a music video. There were various techniques that i had to do for this music video in order to show that i was able to successfully create a music video. These techniques were to sync the music with the different clips, ensure the rhythm of the music is matched with the movements, use split screen efficiently and be able to use chroma key.
        The first thing that i done was to import the music onto the project and then apply it to the timeline. For this I had to go onto file -> Import and select the music track from the files on the computer.

 After I placed the music into the project and placed it into the work area I then had to import the separate clips into the project so that i was able to start creating the music video.

Now that the separate clips were imported I then had to cut them down as they had areas of black screen which I would not be able to use and therefore had to remove them. This meant placing each individual clip into the workspace and then going through the clip and cutting out the black screens. I done this so that it was easier to work with when looking for what clips to place at which point in the music. Below is the the original clip in the timeline.

 This screenshot shows after I have cut around the black screens.

 After cutting around the clip to make the black screen and the footage into different parts I then selected and deleted the black screens.

 I then repeated this process with each of the clips and placed them on their own different line so it would be easier to move them how i wanted to after I had completed this step.

 After all of this I then moved it so that there were no gaps between the clips.

 This was the part of creating the music video which was the hardest and took the most time. For this part of editing I had to re watch and listen to the song multiple times in order to know what part of the clips will go best with the music. Having the clips on their own line made this process much easier becuase it meant all i had to do was move the clips left and right to place it in the right place and not have the other clips getting in the way of each other.

                             

I used a few effects for the music video in order to mix it up and would also keep the audiences attention. The first effect that i created was split screen which is where there will either be different clips playing together on the same screen or the same clip copied so that it is seen more than once at the same time. The first step to creating split screen is to stack two or more clips on top of each other on the separate lines.

 The next step is to double click onto one of the clips which will open up the effect panel for that clip where the rotation, opacity and size of the clip is shown and can be modified. The thing that need to be changed in order to create this split screen effect is to change the size of the clip and make it so that the clip covers a half of the screen. In this programme the width and the height of the clip is linked which means when one is moved so is the other and this has to be turned off in order to change the size in the desired way. It is turned off by clicking on the icon that looks like two chains that are linked together.

 When the clip is moved the other clip will be seen behind the clip which has just been changed and you should be able to see how the split screen will work from this. Once the clip has been modified to how you want then i repeated the step on the other clip to show all of the clip next to the clip and then the split screen is shown.

 This is the finished product of creating the split screen. When this effect is used in music videos it can be used to create different effects whether it be a contrast of the two clips such as happiness and sadness or emphasis by showing the same thing from two points of view or two people experiencing the same thing.

Chroma key was the next effect that i created for this task and this is when the colour in the video is distorted and in this case it is removing the colour from the video but leaving in one colour. To do this I clicked on the effects panel in the bottom right window and searched for 'Leave Colour' (on different pieces of software the name for this effect is different but still performs the same task. After finding the effect I dragged it onto the car clip in on the timeline. Once I done this, a list of options for this effect appeared which changed how much the effect would change the clip.

For this effect i wanted to keep the colour of the red car on the clip but remove the rest of the colour and this required experimenting  with the effects settings in order to get the look that i wanted. After selecting the colour that i wanted to leave i then went on to change the settings for tolerance of the colour, so that the higher the toloerance the boundary of the colour is increased and allows more red to be shown. I also changed the amount which is the amount of colour de-saturation i wanted to occur.