Evaluation Q3: Are you pleased with the footage and your finished edit? Is it how you expected it to look? What works really well and what would you change?

Finished edit of 'Shake It Off' remake video by Ella, Eleanor and Pru

When it came to editing the rushes that we had, we were all really keen to see the footage from the shoot day and to start editing them in sequence. We soon discovered that although the footage looked good, there were a few shots in the real 'Shake It Off' video that we didn't have and so we would have to work around this and put in other clips to replace them. The takes from the day prove our abilities to dance and act in front of the camera and we were all really pleased with similarities to the real video in terms of costume and style.

On the left is a shot form the real video and on the right is what we had to replace it with

Overall, I didn't expect the finished edit and the real video to look as similar as they do but as a group we used our editing skills to match the shots and lip sync as best as we could, in order to produce a good outcome. We had to pay specific attention to the movements of Taylor and match the actions that were the most obvious, for example in the finger tutting shot of Taylor, although her hands come up at different times, we focused on matching the nod. We managed to successfully edit all the lip syncs perfectly which was a key area of the remake, as we had previously learnt how to do this in the audition video.

Finger Tutting Taylor

The main area of our final edit that I would further improve, is the grading of it. The background we took all shots against in thew studio was white, yet in the real video the background colour is changing all the time. So if as a group we wanted to match the backgrounds more closely, then I would try to work on grading and build up my skills in this editing area so that the remake is as similar to the real video as it can be.

The left image is a still from our music video remake that hasn't been graded and right is the final graded edit. Despite the right image being closer in comparison to the real video, the background still isn't dark enough and the glossy feel isn't quite there. I would like to develop my skills in this area of editing so that for our coursework next term, all the grading is to perfection.