Film Editing

On the 11 th of December we were guest treated by a film editor named Laurie McDowell who came to talk to our media class about the illusion film art of editing for films and music videos. It was a very informal discussion on the concepts of editing itself such as how editing is used to tell the story using the transitions of clever editing techniques like action match to smooth the audience from one cut to another and the important understanding of how editing is an illusionary film art that cuts to where it really counts of the drama in between the dialogue.

The most important comment that I found was to film a sequence several times from different camera angles so as not to bore the audience with a still frame of the performance and continuity editing.

He also explained the use of editing in music videos to engage and distort the audience but stressed the importance of cutting with the music, beat and lyrics with graphic images and creating escapism through the music with fast pace action.

'How video DIDN'T kill video the Radio Star' - Blog notes

Our group has read and studied an article by Stephen Hill in the magazine MEDIA MAGAZINE on How video DIDN'T kill the video the Radio Star to understand the history, development and some relative theories on music videos and how audiences and institutions have consumed and distributed them.

In this post I will respond to a comment by Stephen Hill on Institutions essentially how "Digital technology, broadband and mobile phones are all changing the way in which audiences consume music video". Stephen Hill states how MTV was the most significant event in the evolution of the music video, however I disagree with that statement as MTV was moreover one of the most successful and more popular music television channels to broadcast music videos to its audience. There have been a number of successful popular music television channels before MTV's first broadcast such as; Top of the Pops in the UK, American Bandstand in the US, Countdown and Sounds both in Australia and Beat Club in Germany. All these music television channels have come before MTV and were centre pieces in the emergent youth culture revolution that MTV would descend from. For it was these first music channels define the forms and conventions of music videos: close-up shots of lip synching, choreographed performances, synchronised recording to an individual track, in time editing to the music and the taking of high and low angles.

Top 10 favorite music videos

Here are the group's top ten favorite music videos (Random order)

1. 'Grounds for Divorce' by Elbow (2006), Genre: Alternate-Rock

Mise-en-scene: dark gritty pub, western cowboy style background suggested by the styling of the clothes of some of the patriots, bottles and glasses.

Narrative: a bar from the barman’s view, visited sometimes by the seldom customers who are in the middle of divorce, and the barman was working on a cocktail for it, divorce can also mean that the band is not the same after ‘The Seldom Seen Kids’ death. The song implies or suggests that when people are divorcing they seem to want to fall into some hole down in a bar with whores (the female dancer is perhaps a meaning to this as a seldom depressed looking customer looks on at her). 'She' may even keep everything apart from the Chinese cigarette case, or it sounds like quote for the barman - 'keep the change' or 'change for u'. In the second verse, some guys are sitting around a table playing cards ("jokers") and lending each other money ("flesh by the pound" is a reference to one of Shylock's lines in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, if direct reference it is hard to prove, but maybe a reference that the band members feel mistreated like the character) while some women look on and make comments.

The performance of the band members don't seem to make themselves really stand out individually within the song except for the lead singer who appears to strike the table repeatedly. This suddenly creates a dramatic impact upon the audience, almost like a wake up call, the use of slow motion and playback during as action takes place, such as hitting a table, dancing to the music, pouring alcohol, etc., builds up an underlying tension of possible anger and depression. This is perhaps due to a previous band member who died recently before the song was written and this how the band wishes to express their emotions over their recent loss.

2. 'Around the World' by Daft Punk (1997), Genre: House

This music video was selected as one of our favourites because of the well performed synced dancing with the track. Although it is repeatitive in the sense of 'walking around' the set, it is a vibrate performance that we find quite complexing. Each group of costumed performers is doing a dance or movement in direct sync with the music and quickly changes pace along with music while maintaining perfect sync. The key hook is a steady bassline and a vocoder-processed voice singing "around the world" in continuous chains. Upon analysis of the song, Michel Gondry noted its distinctive structure: "I realized how genius and simple the music was. Only five different instruments, with very few patterns, each to create numerous possibilities of figures. Always using the repetition, and stopping just before it's too much." Michel Gondry's music video for the song features robots walking around in a circle on a platform (which represents a vinyl record), tall athletes (as described by Gondry) wearing tracksuits with small prosthetic heads walking up and down stairs, women dressed like synchronized swimmers (described by Gondry as "disco girls") moving up and down another set of stairs, skeletons dancing in the center of the "record," and mummies dancing in time with the song's drum pattern. This is meant to be a visual representation of the song; each element in the video represents a different instrument. According to Gondry's notes, the androids represent the singing robot voice; the physicality and small-minded rapidity of the athletes symbolizes the ascending/descending bass guitar; the femininity of the disco girls represents the high-pitched keyboard; the "itchy" skeletons serve for the guitars; the mummies represent the drum machine.

"Around the World" was Gondry's first attempt at bringing organized dancing to his music videos. Gondry: "I was sick to see choreography being mistreated in videos like filler with fast cutting and fast editing, really shallow. I don't think choreography should be shot in close-ups."The sequence, initially developed by Gondry, was further expanded and streamlined by choreographer Blanca Li.

We selected this song because we enjoyed wonderful choreography in sync to the music as a wonderful set piece and that as part of the artists' post-modern style, Daft Punk, neither they nor the performers faces can seen in the video. We thought we could do something similar to this video, since we all are a bit camera shy and aren't decent performers what so ever, but do an act that features repetition would tire the audience almost immediately unless it was well worth looking at for several minutes.

3. 'Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr (1984), Genre: Pop.

There is not much that we really can say about this video as it a direct tie-in with the movie at the time of its release (1984), filled video integrated footage from the film intercut with performances of Ray Parker Jr. The film's theme song, "Ghostbusters", written and performed by Ray Parker, Jr., sparked the catchphrases "Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!" and "I ain't 'fraid of no ghost(s)", the video ends with footage of the four main Ghostbusters actors in costume and character, dancing in Times Square behind Parker, joining in the singing. There's not much of a narrative, as the video is more for commercial purposes of prompting the film, however, the music video produced for the song was considered one of the key productions in the early music video era because it didn't need to prove that big expensive effects (depending on how much the actual stage production cost) were needed to create a successful music video.

As for performance, throughout the music video Ray Parker Jr's performance is more of a advertiser for the main product using the video integrated footage from the film as reference point.

We choose this music video merely because we liked the catchphrase and music which were the most memorable thing about it. Nothing to inspire us for own video

4. 'Bones by the Killers' (2006), Genre: post punk revival

5. 'I don't wanna miss a thing' by Aerosmith (1998), Genre: Rock, Power Ballad

6. 'Heartless' by The Fray (2009) Genre: Piano Rock

7. 'New Divide' (2009) by Linkin Park, Genre; Rock

New Divide by Linkin Park, is one of my favourit videos of all time because of the way that it was made, it is very different from other videos, becase there is a mixture of the band playing and the movie Transformers 2, also the effects and edits used are quite unusual and interesting, this is the first video I see that has used 'Thermal Camera Effect' nearly throughout the whole of it. Also for those who have watched the movie Transformers 2, will realise that there is a lot of hidden symbols in the video, and a lot of the scenes are linked to the lyrics. There are two versions, the Transformer version or the alternate version which consists only of the band playing. The Transformer version of the music video features scenes taken from the movie, along with shots of the band inside the Tomb of the Primes (The 7 original Transformers) while performing the song. A lot of special effects are also seen and the video is heavily edited in places making use of thermal cameras and using flying food parts as texture around a lot of the thermal imagery. The song employs a verse-chorus-verse format, akin to the majority of their first two albums, plus a mechanically-themed breakdown halfway through the second chorus.

8. 'Smooth Criminal' (1988) by Michael Jackson, Genre: Funk

Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson is a very interesting video because it is as if it was a part of a gangster movie, and what I really liked was that most of it was choreographed, and the dancing was amazing. Also the narrative of the video is very interesting and cool.
I also think that the setting that was chosen was very appropriate to it.

Smooth Criminal is the seventh single from Michael Jackson's Bad album (1988). The song contains a fast-paced beat intertwined with Michael's lyrics about a woman named Annie, who has been attacked in her apartment by a "smooth" assailant.

It was released as a single on October 24, 1988 and peaked at 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was re-released on April 10, 2006 as a part of the Visionary: The Video Singles box-set. The re-released Visionary single charted at #19 in the UK. In 2003, the song appeared on the Number Ones greatest hits album.

"Smooth Criminal" was presented in a ten-minute long clip in which Michael dances through a 1930s-style nightclub (known in the film as "Club 30s"). The version of the song used in the clip is different from the album version: the background beats are different, there are several new lyrics, and the song is much longer overall.

The version of the video that is usually aired on network television is 4 minutes long and is merely a sped up version of the clip from the film. Michael briefly moonwalks before the famous anti-gravity lean.

The ten minute long "Smooth Criminal" clip is reminiscent of the musical number known as "The Girl Hunt Ballet" which is featured as the final number in the 1952 musical film The Band Wagon starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. "The Girl Hunt Ballet" is a spoof of Mickey Spillane's hard-boiled detective novels.
Smooth Criminal was a song that almost didn't make it into the Bad album. With the final decision to include the song, Michael originally decided to make the music video a western-styled short film. However, he later decided to change the style into a 1930s nightclub style.

9. 'Stand by Me' by Ben E. King (1961) Genre: Soul

10. 'Deadweight' by Beck (1997), Genre: Rock [Couldn't import or upload a picture of the music video for some reason, as the picture was always blocked]

This song has a music video directed by Michel Gondry. It interweaves footage from A Life Less Ordinary with images of Beck, who lives in a paradoxical world.

'Deadweight' by Beck was selected because of its wonderful visual gags, trickery and (by what we see as) other worldly wackiness, the mise-en-scene shifts back and forth between a office workplace and a beach as an employee enjoys a relaxing 'beach' like holiday at an office while working hard at a beach while surround by fun as a contrast to the fun he his having at the work place and the other employees working like drones in the office. But the real enjoyment is the exaggeration weirdness of juxtaposition such as a man carrying his car whereas a cars carry people and the image is contradictory in terms of weight.