My Thoughts on the Rough Cut

After officially finishing our rough cut of the music video, I have a few opinions of it, largely positive but not completely positive.

I think more or less all of the shots we have used are perfect and are used in exactly the right spots, and I think it is one of the highlights, showing a lot of promise for the finished product. I am also a big fan of the special effects that we have put in place, they are very good for getting across the style of the music video, as well as including the diamonds and the playing cards, and I really like the impact it makes on the music video as a whole. We have used quite a lot of slow motion in areas, which is both for a stylistic aid and also for helping get things in time where necessary.

On the other hand, the speed of cuts and shots in the beginning of the music video up until the first chorus is very off and I dislike it. I think it moves far too slowly and does not keep the viewers attention. There is a particular shot of Ellie which is very dark and contains her doing nothing which could cause problems in the cinema, as it is so dark and empty that it could turn viewers off right at the very beginning, so we are going to have to change that, which could prove to be very difficult. This is because we have to keep it exciting while keeping in time, and because this section of the song is very slow, it means that there's a clash between the two ideas - slow but exciting.

Finally, I love the way we close our video, capitalising on the idea of using a CCTV effect in the video, we went a step beyond, adding static to the shot, jumping from a shot of us finishing the song to a final shot of an empty room, with the band and the diamonds gone, leaving only the instruments. This works very well and I am pleased with the way in which it has turned out!

All in all our rough cut is very promising and I am very hopeful of the final cut, because I believe that once we have sorted out all of these problems, we will have a very strong music video that is very close to what we originally set out to do. Cushty!