Editing to the Beat
One of the key conventions of music videos is the art of editing to the beat which is a difficult skill in its self and takes up a lot of time to get it right with the clips that you have and incorporating them into the video.
One excellent example of editing to the beat is DJ Fresh's Louder:
One of the main reasons why this video is successful is because of the editing to the beat that takes place throughout the song to make the narrative seem that much more crisp and clean and makes it actually look like it fits in with the song.
Throughout the video we see consistently excellent work with the editing. For example in the beginning of the video the song starts of slowly, thus so does the narrative, and this is captured by the lack of edits and the fact that the video is slowed down in post to match the speed of the song. Some of the edits are on the strongest beat of the song however some are on slightly weaker beats of the song but in contrast to the rest of the video the edits are on the stronger beats meaning more edits and faster edits as the song progresses through its stages. Going back to what i said earlier about the slow motion, throughout the video if the rhythm of the song is slow then the action of the video is slow, this incorporates both the slow motion of the editing and the amount of edits that are used in the designated parts. Interestingly the song uses no lip syncing which is a convention of the majority of music videos, but this is down to the conventions of the genre and I will come back to this song when it gets to it. but I can not stress the importance of this convention (editing to the beat), in many ways it is one of the major factors that makes a successful music video.
As I have mentioned before editing to the beat of the song is actually a very hard skill to do, so I did a bit of research and found out the best way to achieve this using Final Cut Pro, which is one of the video editing software's which I will be using inside of college. Here is the Tutorial I looked at.
Final Cut Pro X
There is another type of editing software that can be used at college to edit my video and this is Adobe Premiere Pro and I also looked for a tutorial for that as well just in case i later decide to edit my music video using the different software. Again here is the tutorial.
Adobe Premiere Pro
There also is another editing program which is not supplied by college but one which I own at home and this would be my preferred program of choice as it is the one which I am most used to using, and this is Sony Vegas Pro and I have also looked at ways to edit to the beat on this program so I can do some editing if not all of it outside of college to suit my personal preference. For the last time for editing to the beat here is the tutorial for that software. Its not the best but it explains the principals quite well
Sony Vegas Pro
Lip Syncing
Another convention of a successful music video is the incredibly stressful and difficult skill of lip syncing the soundtrack to the scenes of the video, if it is a performance based clip which again is also based on genre so I will get to that in a bit. However if this skill is pulled off to a high standard it makes the video seem at least 10 times more appealing.
One excellent display of lip-syncing is Bruno Mars - When I Was Your Man
One reason that this is a good video and example of lip syncing is because it is a performance clip and the words are in time with the miming to make it look as though the artist is actually singing the words of the song, also when he sings the high notes it actually looks like he is putting in the effort which would be needed to sing those notes if he was performing live. This makes the video look less artificial than what it actually is.
As I just mentioned the lip syncing looks as real as can be in this video and makes it seem as though it is actually a performance, hence the term performance video, however there is other types of lip syncing that can occur in narrative but they are usually used sparingly during this ans this is because of a few reasons, but one in particular. If you have a narrative in the video where you have someone being chased lets say by the police then they are not going to be able to sing the song whilst running away from the pursuing party as they would more than likely be a out of breath and why would they be singing in a situation like that anyway, it just leads to a break in the diegesis that the narrative to the video originally created. One way in which they try to avoid this is by adding a performance section in the video which gently breaks the narrative of the video so we can see the artist singing, that is of course if there is any singing in the song, which again depends on the genre that the song is. however, not veering away from the point, breaking away slowly at appropriate breaks in the narrative allows the level of diegesis to still be in tact.
This is a difficult skill to perfect but if it is done properly it looks very good indeed, so I found some tips to help make the lip-syncing in my video as effective as I can. I start off with this interesting piece which these guys put together and it shows how different effects of lip syncing can be achieved.
This next clip certainly is not the best one but it still has some helpful tips that could be incorporated into my video.
Genre
Like the conventions of the music video something which is just as important is the conventions of the genre, because it is that which in turn effects the conventions of the form, like the lip syncing and the editing on the beat of the song. It also effects some of the other factors that are incorporated into such as the narrative of the video and the type of the video that it falls into, weather it will be a performance video, a narrative video or an abstract video.
House/Dance
This genre usually follows the majority of the conventions but in different ways, for example the type of narrative that the genre tends to follow is that of a mixture of narrative and of abstract as there is sort of a story line but a very loose one and there is often things that don't make sense and there is also little, if not no performance clips, because the majority of these are often DJ's, here are 3 examples of what I am talking about.
This song has a bit of a narrative but not one that goes with the lyrics, and there is also none of the conventions for other genres of music.
Again there is not really any relations to the lyrics of the song, apart from the fact that the actors in the video are wearing animal masks.
Here there is again not really any relation to the song and there is just a random story line filled with dancing, which has nothing to do with the song, I think that they just made a video for the fact of making a music video.
Pop Music
The next genre which I am going to be looking at is that of the pop genre which feature more often than not a use of all three of the narrative techniques, narrative performance and abstract and includes lip syncing. Again here are three examples which prove my point and incorporate all three of the narrative types.
Rap
The other genre which I am going to be showing you about is the rap genre and this genre focuses more on the performance and abstract versions of the narrative, with strong links to guns, cars and above all girls, again these can be seen in the following three videos.
Indie/Alternate
The final genre I am going to be focusing on is the Indie genre and the conventions of this genre are they will usually do a video which follows a narrative and they will also have a performance elements in it. For the last time here is the three clips that back up my point.
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