As we were relatively new to the software (Final Cut Express) it took us a while to get to the half way point in our music video, so we decided to render it so we would have an idea of how our final piece would look. Most of the transitions between shots were cuts, but we also used some dissolves/ fade to black to match the pace of the music and highlight changes.
Second Edit
After sequencing the video we added effects to different shots and took a more precise approach to syncing the audio with the visuals so that the lip syncing was as near perfect as we were capable of achieving.
We used some quick cuts between these 3 shots to match the lyrics "They're dumb, they're dumb, they're dumb!"
We added some dissolves in order to match the tempo and the 'feel' of the song, this technique was also useful as we encountered some problems with the artist falling out of time with his lyrics and this was a good way of disguising these mistakes.
We slowed down this shot so that it would match the 'bridge' in the song.
We added a filter called offset to this clip to create a faint image of the artist in the background; we used this effect as we thought it related to the theme of the song 'lunatic' as it could be a sign of madness - in addition to this there is a link to the lyrics, "My mind's f******, this is where it starts"
We used an effect called Gaussian blur in a number of shots, this was to make some of the shots seem like the artist's memories.
We changed the saturation levels in a lot of the shots, there were a number of reasons for this. Aside from our personal preference we thought that the de-saturated style of the shots would reflect the mood of the song, as the song is quite slow the colder feel seemed more appropriate as opposed to a pop video which would incorporate more vivid colours to match a higher tempo song.
To finish we added the title of the song and the name of the artist using the text tool.
