Construction Post 4: Music Video Post-Production

Having filmed all our shots for the video, we took to the edit suites to start editing our rushes together; we used Adobe Premiere Pro to do this. The main focuses for editing were; showing a coherent narrative story line, different paced cuts to add variety and finally grading each shot to make them more vibrant and clear. As a group we all worked on this together for many editing sessions to make it the best it could be.

Coherent story line

In the narrative, we wanted to show the unfolding of an argument between the duo, Mira and Jack, before showing Jack's journey through London to find Mira after she stormed out the house. A text message is sent by Jack and they eventually make up when he finds Mira sat on some steps. To show this journey, we wanted to use a split screen so that it was clear to the audience that Jack was in the process of finding Mira and going to all the same places as her.

GIF of narrative rough cut

In the rough cut, we used a split screen for the train journey only and then for the rest of  narrative it was single shots for each person. This however didn't allow for the story line to flow and make sense.

GIF of split screen on the train

When we spoke to our target audience about what it is they liked about the narrative in our main shoot, something that kept being said was that it was easy to follow and understand due to the split screen. They seemed to like the progression of the story and it was satisfying in the end when Mira and Jack made up.

Fast and slow pace editing 

Using different paces when editing is something I thought was very important because it ensures that the video isn't boring and repetitive. We wanted to use fast paced cuts for the jumpy rhythm at the beginning of the song and in the chorus. It was difficult to make this editing fit the beat, however, it looks very effective. When we asked for teacher feed back, we were advised to change the visuals when the song reaches its bridge and so for this we used slow paced editing as a way of visually showing change to match the song.

Editing on the beat - faster pace

Visual change - slower pace

During the bridge we also used cross dissolves between myself and Jack's face to serve as another visual change. In order to make the dissolve look effective we had to match the positioning and size of our faces. The image below shows where to find the tool on Adobe Premiere Pro.

To the right is an image that shows where we added the tool on our main shoot sequence.

To the left is an image that captures the moment the cross dissolve occurs.

Grading our shots

Grading is a key part of making a music video because it allows for the shots to stand out and can make the lighting look more vibrant if you couldn't get it how you wanted when actually filming in the studio.

At first we used the three way colour correction tool on Adobe Premiere Pro to try make our shots more visually pleasing but it was difficult to use because it changed colours that we didn't want it to such as shadows and skin colour. It also didn't make the background colours as powerful and pigmented as we were hoping for.


Instead, after receiving teacher feedback that confirmed our negative view on the original grading, we decided to use levels and brightness and contrast in order to grade our shots. These tools were much more effective and gave us the effect we wanted.


Below are two pictures of the same image but one with our final grading and one without. The difference between them can be seen mainly by the two shades of pink in the background. Despite the difference seeming quite small, it impacts our video hugely as the visuals are now more engaging and I stand out more, rather than the image looking flat.

Non graded image

Graded image

All of the things mentioned above are some of the most important things we had to think about when editing our video in post production in order for it to make sense and look aesthetically pleasing to the audience. We are pleased with our final product and feel happy that we have learnt from both the rough cut and teacher and audience feedback.