EDITING: Use of Photoshop and Editing Software

I used photoshop elements to create my digipack. I needed to use a more advanced photo editing software than iphoto because the front of the album was to be made up of two overlapping images. All the images were taken on the day of filming at various stages in the dance. Apart from the close up of the face on the front they were shot in the light of the spots rather than with flash, which has lent them a softer, warmer quality.

I placed the second image (the full body shot) over the top of the close up. Originally the spotlight was visible in the corner of the close up picture, however I used the dancer to cover that, as it did not look aesthetically pleasing in the corner of the picture.

I used the eraser tool so that I had more control of which areas were erased. Once I had achieved the desired look in terms of juxtaposition, I altered the hue and saturation on the close up of the face, to a slightly more orangey glow. This was so the colours on the face and on the full body looked connected as the use of flash had created a much whiter light cast on the face. I wanted the image to look as if it could have been just one image, with the dividing lines between the two images being undetectable. I felt this would add to the polish of the digipack and create a more professional image.

Finally, I used the crop tool to make sure that the image was square and the dimensions of a digipack. I also added white text for the band name and song title - (for the full image see FINAL DIGIPACK).

EDITING: Filler Shots

I filmed shadow puppets and another sequence of shots of a girl to use as 'fillers' between the dance sequence. I used the shadow puppets to further the light/dark imagery, and also to keep the video playful, as I felt the dance routine alone may bog down the video into a purely serious piece, whereas Arctic Monkeys' videos usually have a tongue in cheek element (for example their Cornerstone video which features solely Alex Turner serenading the camera). I felt that, though the dancer is the protagonist in my video, it needed to contain another person to avoid monotony, therefore I decided to film, mainly still shots of a girl in a white dress. The reason for the simplicity was so I could experiment more freely with the lighting, without the images becoming distracting by too many elements. For example I filmed most of the shots with the light on one side of the face to cast a dark shadow across the other side, and hint at another side to the girl/meaning to the image.

Another interesting element of lighting at this angle was that the shadow that formed looked like a completely different/detached person, and thus hinted to a sinister undertone. Therefore on some of the shots the light is being moved from aimed straight on to cast no shadow, to the side so that the audience can see the shadow forming as though it has taken on a life of its own. In these instances I had to speed up the footage, so that the clip would fit within one second, whilst still allowing for movement of the shadow.

EDITING: Constructing the Dance Routine

I was very sure from the start of my planning process that I didn't want the dance routine in my music video to look continuos, as though it was following a narrative. As I spoke about in an earlier post, I wanted my video to reflect the exclusivity that Lady Gaga portrays in Beautiful, Dirty, Rich, consequently I aimed to show snippets of the routine, as though the audience is being allowed momentarily into an unknown world (I also used to neutrality of the backdrop to amplify this). However, given that Jeweller's Hands is a relatively fast paced song, no clip is longer than 2 seconds, unless being used to compliment a down tempo piece of the music. Therefore with such short clips, I felt that I had to apply a small sense of continuity, such as when the dancer pirouettes, the next clip is of her feet pirouetting. I did this primarily so the piece would look less of a mish-mash of clips and the routine would have some fluidity, thus not distracting from the music.

Below is an example of two clips of the dancer mid pirouette. The first shows a long shot, where the whole dancer is within shot, and the second is a medium close up of her feet as she spins. I chose to put the two clips together for a number of reasons. Firstly, I felt the close up would not work effectively without another shot to illustrate what part of the dance is happening. Secondly, the shots are less than a second long each, and it looked much neater to have the two together rather than an elongated shot from one angle, and the other featuring later in the video. Therefore I have added more fluidity to my video, which will allow the audience to follow the action, where with short non corresponding shots it may become confusing, and too long draw out shots may become monotonous.

Due to the effort I put into lighting the location, I decided my piece would look more authentic, and true to the theatrical location of a stage, if I didn't apply any effects during editing. However the few clips that I did decide to alter where for fluidity reasons, rather than aesthetic. Due to the need for a sense of continuity between the different clips of the dance, there were a couple of shots that I decided to 'flip', so that the audience could keep track of where the dance was taking place and from what angle. For example the two shots below show a before and after of one clip that I decided to apply the 'flipped' effect to. I did this as I felt the clip worked well at that point in the song, yet the dancer had just been shown heading in one direction and consequently it needed to carry on from that particular point on the stage.

As the dance was not the sole body of my piece, as I have shadow puppets and filler shots of light/dark imagery to further the conceptual idea of my video, to edit in, I decided it was best to tackle the large proportion of my piece that was going to be made up of the dance routine first. This was purely from an organisational point of view, as I felt it would be easier to deal with each aspect in isolation. Consequently, where I knew I would interject a shadow puppet or 'filler shot' I placed a blank screen, so that I could continue editing the dance in time to the music, without risking later having to adjust clips that had fallen out of time as a result of the new shots. This is demonstrated below, where the seventh shot is a black screen.