Music Videos: “Behind the Edit”

I know…I know it’s supposed to be “Behind the Music” or “Behind the Scenes”, but I edited this video so this is my “Behind the Edit” blog.  Click here to watch the video.

Last month I was offered the opportunity to edit the official music video for “Nothing Left to Give” by New Jersey based rock band REVERSE ORDER.  It's from the band's latest CD "Made in America" available here on iTunes.  This project was a challenging experience in many ways.  First, I was not involved in the pre-production or production process.  Secondly, I never had any contact with the director.  I was simply handed all of the unedited footage, the song, and a very loose outline by the band’s manager, Cindy Russo.  This non-standard workflow makes the “Nothing Left to Give” music video the perfect subject for a sneak peek at what goes on “Behind the Edit”.  It also offers a unique example of what editors bring to music videos…especially since there was no director involved in the post-production process.

There are numerous aspects of this music video I could talk about, but I'll focus on the three post-production techniques that I feel affected the video the most.  I edited this project in Adobe Premiere CC and I continue to be impressed with its capabilities.  Over the next week or so I will post tutorials on how these effects were accomplished.

First, I want to discuss the overall look of the footage.  Judging by the files I was given, I suspect the video was shot with a DSLR Camera.  If you take a look at the still from the original footage below, you’ll see that it was nicely exposed pleasingly colorful, and very clean.

(A still from the RAW Footage)

However, when I listened to the song and studied the lyrics.  The raw footage didn’t really represent the desperate story that front man John Russo was singing about.  The footage needed to be roughed up to enhance the edgy mood of the song.  I decided to apply a Bleach Bypass filter on all of the scenes.  The easiest way to describe this filter’s effect is to think about comparing the look and feel of brand new blue jeans to acid-washed jeans.  It removes a lot of the color while giving the scenes a harsh, cool, faded look.

(With Bleach Bypass filter) 

One of the things I love about DSLR Camera’s is their ability to produce clean pictures even in low light.  However, I abandoned that clean look by adding grain to the scenes.  I wasn’t trying to convince anyone that this video was shot on film, that’s something I’ve always despised. Video is video and film is film..period!  In this case, the grain made the scenes grungy.  The last thing I did was add some color saturation back into the mid-tones because the Bleach Bypass filter was a bit too extreme.  The grain can be seen on John's black shirt.  The final result is pure rock-n-roll.

(The Final Look with added Grain & Mid-tone Colors boosted)
-Click the picture to see it full screen-

The next thing I focused on was the static group shots of the band.  It’s important for me to note that what follows is not a criticism of the director or production crew.  I wasn’t on the shoot so I have no idea what they were up against in terms of time, logistics, or budget.  Below is a still from one of the group scenes of the band.  It was recorded on a locked down tripod with no camera movement or alternate angles.  Most music videos have shots changing every few seconds, but these shots basically just sat there.  I had very little b-roll of the band to cut to and it really dragged the pacing of the video down to a screeching halt.

(Static Wide Shot)

I noticed that there were lights on stage that were purposely used as part of the set and that gave me an idea.  I used a combination of color correction to increase the intensity of the hot spots and Lense Flare filters to make the lights on set flash to the beat of the music.  Yes, I manually animated each light flash on and off to accentuate the driving beat of Cruise Russo’s drum playing. This added the visual interest the scene lacked on its own...making it perfectly fine to hang on a wide shot and watch the group perform together.

(With Animated Light Flare-FX)

The last challenge I’ll focus on was the one exterior location.  It was shot in an empty parking lot.  Once again, these scenes were recorded as wide shots on a tripod with no alternate angles, close-ups, etc..  There were three takes of the same section of the song all framed wide.  First and foremost, as you can see below, the color of the scene did not match the rest of the video at all.  It was warm and the interiors scenes were cool.

(Exterior Scene from Raw Footage) 

I added the Bleach Bypass filter and grain as described earlier.  I also tinted the scenes blue to match the rest of the video.  The outdoor scene was much brighter when edited into the rest of the video, which was shot on a mostly black stage.  After much experimentation with color correction and filters, I decided on the simple solution of adding a soft black vignette around the scene to darken the edges and keep the viewers attention focused on John.  I also decided to quickly fade in and out of black the first time this scene was used.  These techniques helped these scenes blend better.  Later in the video, once viewers were used to seeing the parking lot scenes, I was able to go back to straight cuts.

(Exterior with, Bleach Bypass, Grain, Blue Tint, and Black Vignette) 

Finally, to combat the boredom of the wide shot that would need to be on screen up to 12-seconds at each occurrence, I started scaling and re-framing the shots as if to make them look like alternate focal lengths.  Since I had 3 takes of the wide shot, I switched to a different take with every cut I made.  This made John’s action slightly different from cut to cut.  It also made the reformatting less obvious and the overall scene more interesting.  The two shots below were both wide shots before I reformatted them.  Notice that I repositioned the vignette to follow John and keep the effect's continuity in tact.

(Above:  Two examples of reformatting the same shot to simulate additional focal lengths)

And there you have it!  Hopefully you’ve enjoyed my first, if not the first, “Behind the Edit” blog of a music video without a director.  I could go on and on about why I used black and white, slow motion speed shifts, and motion stabilizing, but even I’ve had enough!  I hope what you take away from this is the creative impact editors have on music videos and just how much we care about our work.  It’s intricate, technical, and dare I say…artistic all at the same time.  For the most part, editors work in complete anonymity and love every minute of the process anyway.  After all, no one ever says, “Wow…who edited that music video!”  Maybe someday, someone will.