With this project, I knew going in that I wanted to focus my attention on altering the tempo of the video and use of music in the video, and how that would create changes in the narrative. I also wanted to use colour to experiment with how that would affect the tone and mood of the video. I chose to use the music video for Ed Sheeran’s song, ‘Thinking Out Loud’ for this project as it has been a favourite of mine for a long time and I wanted to see how I could manipulate it.

In the first edit, I wanted to create the illusion that the two dancers in the video were almost fighting. As such, I chose a very fast paced action song and sped up the duration of the video. I also cut out parts of the video that seemed too slow or ‘lovey’ and added a red tint throughout the video to create a more intense, angry atmosphere. Overall, while I liked the concept of this clip, I felt that I could have done a better job in executing it to sell the illusion of a fight, perhaps by better syncing the moves to the beats of the song, and fluctuating the speed of different parts of the clip more such that it doesn’t look like the whole video has been merely sped up.

For the second edit, I chose to use the theme song from the popular video game, ‘Skyrim’. I wanted to create a very high fantasy, dramatic atmosphere and decided to employ a purplish-blue tint to try and achieve that. This time, I paid more attention to the beats off the song and trying to make them sync up with the video such that there is a connection for the viewer between the two. I also think that using a quick blackout screen between certain clips added to the dramatic effect and flow of the video. Unlike the first video, I kept clips to their normal speed, or near their normal speed and tried to cut out sections of the original music video that were too fast or that did not have enough movement going on.

The last edit is probably my favourite one in terms of execution and also has the most narrative to it. Inspired by the rather sad sounding song I found, I wanted to try and depict a relationship that was slowly falling apart. The video starts off with clips of them dancing together with no interruptions. However, towards the end, I started to cut clips off into a blackout screen in moments where they were about to touch or in moments where they were ‘pushing’ each other away in order to try and communicate the growing disconnect between the two. I think that I could have made this a bit more obvious, perhaps by slowing down the clips a bit more in order for the viewer to process what was going on.  I also think that use of black and white instead of colour definitely added to the melancholic nature of the video. Overall, I was definitely the most happy with this edit out of the three and I also felt that it was the most successful.