Behroz Hyder Media Studies A-Level Blog

 

 Before releasing the video on YouTube we wanted to show the video to our friends, media studies classmates and our Sir so we could get some early feedback.   All of them really liked the video and were impressed by what we did especially the disintegration part. One of the students suggested that we should remove the film damage effect but other than that on one really wanted to change anything.

 Now since all of our shots are edited and complete, we just have to compile them in premiere pro and export the music video. Here is the overall final sequence in after effects. We thoroughly watched the video and decided it was finalized and no changes were needed. We did fix a small error in the disintegrations scene where the actor's finger was visible but it was easily fixed by masking it out. We will release the music video on YouTube after some time!

 All of our editing is done except for the final shot now. The final shot is of the actor laying on the ground, with the car behind him. The car acts as out main light source but we also have an LED light. We recorded this with the song playing at 1.5x (2x was too fast for the actor to keep up) so now in editing we can slow down the clip to almost 62.5% and still have the actor lip syncing correctly to original audio and since all of the song is fast paced, this seemed ironic to end it with a slow and calm shot as the camera is dollying in.  Although we said all of the After Effects work were done, we decided to edit this in after effects too since we wanted to add the spotlight effect as the video closes out. we slowed down the video to 62.5% and matched the lyrics with the actors lip sync. We color graded the video to make it dark and added the spot light effect so in the beginning only the actor is visible and so as camera pans in, the surrounding becomes darker and dark an...

 Right before the disintegration sequence, for a second there is a super fast piano beat. Although just a second we thought it would be interesting to have a super fast montage of pictures here synced with the piano beat. We took some pictures of the nature, some of the green screen background and majority of the pictures of the lead actor. This was also to emphasize the moments of life going through his mind.

 This Sequence comes right after the character is beat up by the stranger. In this sequence our main actor spots an unattended car and steals it. We just had to color grade it to a blue tone, since it was recorded in daylight we gave it a blue tone so the overall theme of the video does not fade. There are 6 shots in total,  the actor walking towards the car POV shot of actor looking at the car and it's owner A dolly zoom of character as he gives a smirk A shot if him getting in the car A shot him driving away with the car Lastly a shot from inside the car while he is lipsyncing. This whole sequence then leads up to the soul punch sequence. Warp Stabilizers were added to all the shots to make it smoother and some of the clips were slowed down.

 There are two shots which comes after the first lip sync and before the first hook sequence. We didn't edit these in after effects because there is no heavy effects to be deployed. The shot is of the actor looking down at the bridge and another looking up as the rain pours on him. We color graded the clip to give it a sort of bluish look to put an emphasis on sadness and then we also slowed it down + added warp stabilizer to make it smooth.

 After the neon light sequence there comes this shot of the actor waking up in the middle of somewhere. Since the first shot was clean we wanted this one to be a little less clean so we added some Saphhire Glitch Effects on the first Shot but on the second one we added nothing and just plainly color graded it as he woke up. We also added an adjustment layer over the whole of music video which are animated at the start to show black bars and which then stays throughout the video to give it more of a cinematic look.

 Up until now we have been doing all of the after effects work and now all of the remaining post production work is in premiere.

 This Sequence is similar to what happened previously but in day light and this time the actor steals a jacket from a stranger. No heavy VFX needed, just color grading and joining clips and adding a small flicker. It also includes the actor walking around empty streets and a shot of breaking the 4th wall and attacking the camera guy angrily here is the final result: 

 This sequence is where there is some story to this art. The script is that the actor will posh a stranger, the stranger will chase down the actor and the actor then gets beat up. Also includes dancing type scene in between. No heavy editing needed, just added fake camera movement to tripod shot to make the scene less dull color graded the shot with a little bit of purplish theme, also added S flicker as they run and a little glitchy effect too. The dancing shot is already edited and discussed before so we just added parts of it here. Here is the final result:

 This sequence comes right after the main beat. The first shot is green screen of the actor dancing. We wanted to give this a party type look so we keyed out the green, added a white solid as background and added Sapphire Flicker to flicker different light so it looks like the actor is at a party(in his mind) We also created a null object and parented the clip to it so it scales in with the beat. Next shot includes a close up of the actor as he opens his eyes,  we slowed it down and added warp stabilizer to make it look smooth and made it look retro with the color grading. Here is the final result:

 Next we added another neon heart clip which we previously edited to lipsync with the ongoing lyrics. After this we have the lyrics saying " O O O" with each o there is a different scene synced to it and velocity effect added adapted from the AMV style music video and then after a few white flickers it cuts to the main beat which we previously already edited. All of the clips used are color graded using lumetri key. Here is the final result:

 Next we have a normal lipsync shot which slows down and gaussian blur blurs in, and another shot cuts in which slows down and blurs out both are colorgraded and velocity effect added. Next is just a sequence of pictures casually scaling in, cutting within sync to the beat. Directional blur added to all pictures to make it look aesthetically pleasing After this there is the green screen shot in white hoodie, with the actor doing some action and lipsyncing. We added the emboss effect and color graded it while adding a scale out to this shot.

 This Sequence leads up to and includes the first hook and the main beat. It also includes the first lipsync we did earlier. This is the biggest composition in after effects for this project. First we edited a shot of the actor being confused and looking at his arms as the lyrics go "I'm going through withdrawals". To show a metaphorical way of withdrawal we created an effect which creates an echo behind the actor of what he does. Instead of using the echo effect itself, we just duplicated the clip and placed the duplicates before or after the original shot. Also to make it better to look visually we added the filmdamage effect on top of an adjustment layer Next is a green screen clip of the actor doing some action (not lipsyncing) and another green screen (lipsyncing) there is a lens flare transition between the two over an adjustment layer. Filmdamage effect added on top of both.

 The first lyrics to lip sync were not yet edited so we decided to edit them in after effects. The shots looked a bit boring so to match it to the rest of our song we added the emboss effect which makes the actor look like a shiny object and color graded the shots and added a cool flippy transition to them using position, rotation and 3d properties. Lastly we also added an spotlight effect to the second clip to make the focus more towards the actor.