Our video in terms of Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis has her own theories about what a music video should be. She says that videos should be "quick cutting or editing on the beat ". This is one of the first things we considered when making any edit when producing our music video as I and the rest of the group agreed that this was a solid theory to stick to.

She also says that ". . . the editing in a music video works hard to ensure that no single element (the narrative, the setting, the performance, the star, the lyrics, the song) gains the upper hand" She is essentially saying that everything should be in balance and moderation to make sure that no part takes over the video and overpowers the rest. However this is quite a generic statement because some videos actually like to go for the opposite effect. In our case we have actually followed this theory and put everything in balance and moderation.

In reference to Graphic Match she says "Such an edit joins two shots through shared compositional elements such as colour and shape, irrespective of context . . . Music video can be can use graphic matches so freely because the genre has reason to draw attention to its materials and production methods: the viewer can reveal in an interesting edit, in a nice shape shared by two images, and in the cleverness of the direction and the editors work, any of which might draw us away from the narrative of a Hollywood movie. The graphic match can highlight elements of a popular song".

We have used this when cutting together our performance base however when we cut to the narrative all of the colour and shape changes which is the effect we were aiming for when making the video.

Dolly Shot

"Most music videos make such extensive use of the dolly that a static shot seems anomalous. The dolly shot keeps the video moving, it starts almost invariably as soon as the video begins, and only ceases towards the end. It provides a simple way for a music video to catch and sustain a song's momentum".

This is something that we struggled with making our video although we didn't realise while filming it at the time. When we was editing we realised that still steady shots look overly still in a real film. They just look so dead so we had to add artificial camera movement to liven it up.

Camera Shot

Music videos do not follow the usual conventions of films, "not only is the relation between the figure and space not frequently off kilter, but the camera bisects the figure in places that would be unacceptable for the classic Hollywood film".

"The framing of music video makes us aware of the edge of the frame and of what we cannot see".

This is basically saying that music videos have much more freedom with the camera and they can break the rules of films. We have used this on several occasions in our video just to make some of the shots more interesting by requiring more audience attention.