New music video

Hello all. I just completed a new music video. It's a tune off of my cd, "Mike Ian Big Bang Volume 2".

Please let me know your thoughts on any editing advice.

Thank you!

Awesome, visual style marches music style, love it.

Enjoyable music, Mike. Thank you. It’s an interesting video, & I agree with Ben, the pacing of the cuts matches the tempo of the track. For me there are certain aspects which stand out as exceptionally effective in this piece, a few others still leaving a bit of room for improvement.

The likability of the musical track is your strongest suit here, there’s a very easy feel which fits with the good wine theme. The colorization on certain shots is gorgeous. An outstanding one in this category is the closeup down the guitar strings. The warm tones of the wood really pop here. The trumpeter disintegrating into bokeh bubbles was something I thought I wouldn’t care for, but ended up loving it, even twice. The silk scarf across the frets at the end is another shot I love, although I’m not sure I’m appreciating the slight jitter on your slow-motion there. A smooth as silk slowmo would have been preferred, though that might be a youtube playback / encoding issue, or even to do with the camera frame-rate that captured it. The tech guys here will correct me, but I think you pretty much need 60fps capture rate to make the slowmo smooth. However, a lot of jitter can be ameliorated in FCPX with optical flow / frame blending (whatever they’re calling it at the moment), or use Twixtor.

A few times in this forum we’ve discussed the use of effects & the often tendency of anxious passionistas to throw a few too many into their production. It’s beginning to sound cliche here but many times less is more. Some of your effects like the bubble decay work well, some not so much. The majority of your effects are rather overt, a few more subtle ones might take the piece further. The reflection effect for me is a bit overused in Apple circles, with software & websites, so it doesn’t add anything for me here. Also the vertical strips effect doesn’t really mesh with everything else you’ve got going on.

I like your desaturation while keeping one color, whatever that effect is called (some name it the Pleasantville effect, though the first time I recall it being used effectively was the little girl in Shindler’s List). I think you use it 2 or 3 times here, the first is the strongest, it loses a little appeal later. Personally, I like the dripping water over glass effect, but I’m not sure I like it in all the places you’ve put it here. One or two less instances might work better.

The main thing that lacks subtlety for me is the lighting. Everyone is too well lit overall or too evenly lit, so the image appears a bit flat since there’s no background, I’d prefer them in a beam of light as if from a overhead spot, even with gels added in post. This way, as they play we’d have them slightly moving in that beam, giving us a sense of depth. There is also very little depth of field when we see our musicians flat from profile, I’d prefer some DOF as we look down the guitar neck in those medium shots, just like we have in the strings closeup I mentioned earlier. If the musicians were playing in pools of light, it gives us more of a live performance feel than a flat studio lit room.

This lighting issue also effects our emotional connection with your girl. Because she’s too evenly lit, her whole performance appears staged, artificially posed. If she too were gliding thru pools of light the allure would be more substantial thru subtlety. We also see her face too soon. I’d start with the shoes & legs, tease us for a while as she’s moving into the story. Speaking of shoes, there’s a shot where they share the frame with a wine glass, it’s a bit incongruous to have those items on the same level. (End of the night, glass on its side on the floor next to a shoe, might work, but not here). The first time we see her suddenly in panties is too much too soon. The shot I would have preferred is to establish her wearing that scarf as a skirt as we see her waist down walk in slowmo thru a pool of light, perhaps wine glass in hand. The scarf needs to be layered enough times so we don’t see panties yet. So it’s believable that she could be out dressed like that. Then we return to her later, to see her spin while slow dancing with the scarf unraveling revealing the panties. But your lighting has to come way down, the panties need to be revealed briefly as she is leaving the pool of light. Then you can have your later shots of the legs undulating across the frame, again thru a softer beam of light so the panties are bordering on the darkened vignette of the frame. You can see how all of this sets up your final scarf across the frets shot, beautifully.

Again with the lighting on her, since it’s all too even & bright, more imperfections show. There are FCPX glamour plugins that soften faces perfectly. The colors are also currently a bit stark & lack the warm wood feel we have in that guitar strings shot. Your theme would greatly improve if the wine, scarf, panties & lipstick were all the same red. This can be accomplished in FCPX.

Another effect I enjoyed was the cymbal reverberating like water.

Nice work, thanks for sharing, Mike.












J. Matthew
Global•Watch•Media•Consulting
www.GWM2.com

Twitter - @GlobalWatchM3

Wow! Thank you J! Excellent review. thank you so much for all the pointers. I am new at this. Not the music part but the video part. I didn't really have a storyline at all for this song. I just knew I wanted some red wine some red lipstick red guitar. Lots of red basically. You mentioned Final Cut could make all the reds the same. How does that work?

You have a great spirit, Mike. AND, I see you got the girl, so you must be doing something right. There she is again, resplendent in red. Reminds me of one of my favorite songs, Lady In Red.... but I digress.

As for your color matching question, my background is in film & television but not so much the technical side. Whereas I used to have camera operators & editors working for me, FCPX has opened up my options for increased creative control, but I'm still learning that aspect. However, there are plenty of videos here at FCP.co, & all over the web that teach us color grading & precise color matching.

Here's the FCP.co forum where you can find all sorts of tutorials as well as being a place you can feel free to ask specific questions that experienced FCPX & Motion geniuses will be happy to answer for you.

Here are a few outside links I hope will help introduce you to the capabilities...

Larry Jordan Intro to Color Correction in FCPX

Steve Hullfish Color Correction

Target a Specific Color Using Color Mask

Ten Great Color Correction Tutorials

I'll push my own very well reviewd course.
Final Cut Pro X 205: Color Grading

Thanks Ben (one of the fellows I was referring to). I've also bookmarked your link & will recommend it next time this question arises.

And this time I will let you

Umm... that sounds ominous. Am I out of line by posting links to free tutorials elsewhere, Peter? Don't want to overstep my boundaries.

thanks

I'd like this to be a resource, not just a one line link farm.

People get banned from other sites for promoting their own stuff with URL replies

Ok, none of the links I posted had anything to do with me or my site, just links I'd collected on color correction. Only wanted to share them with Mike who was asking, & that was after our fairly in-depth conversation. Should I not do that?

Thanks

What if its free stuff?

I just think its all about the legs.....