In the first rough cut, I focused mainly on arranging my shots, following the storyboard in order to construct a basic narrative structure. The goal is not a clean, perfect video, but to visualize the overall flow and ensure the shots work well together, which also supports understanding of the storyline.
During the second rough cut, I focused on integrating the music into the sequence, which could gradually influence the pacing and overall rhythm of the video. Besides that, this process also serves as a baseline for me to identify flaws or inconsistencies in the footage, such as awkward pacing, missing shots, or continuity issues.
For example, in the bedroom scenes, the footage I filmed in my house was dark and grainy, significantly reducing the quality of the music video. Additionally, I couldn't include all the essential shots to convey the narrative effectively because the music's first verse is short. Because of that, I hurried to rent a studio, re-filmed the bedroom scenes with better lighting, and changed the pre-narrative a bit. Initially, there should be a pre-narrative in which the protagonist is woken by a phone ringing. Then he realized he was late for his meeting with his duo (the other artist). In the developed version, I changed the scene to one where the protagonist was already dressed and woke up ready to hang out.
Additionally, I rearranged some montage shots to maintain the music video's consistency. Also, there are some shot changes, such as in the first chorus, where I replaced a wide shot of choreography with a tracking shot to create a greater sense of movement and energy. I believe this will add more dynamics and engagement, since most of the dancing shots in my music video are already still.
From this
To this
In the thrid rough cut, we can see the differences among the rough cuts starting to be noticeable because of the color grading. At this stage, I mainly focused on improving the visual aesthetic of the music video. I edited the shots individually based on its footage’s original color, while still trying to match the color between the shots that have the same settings. This process is important because it is essential to maintain the consistency in color of the music video to create a balanced visual for the video.
One of the main issues I identified during the color-grading process is that a majority of my footages are all overly saturated, which makes them look orange. In order to fix it, I entered the “Basic Correction” category of Premiere Pro and looked at the temperature line. I adjusted the temperature slightly towards cooler (blue) tones (drag to the left side) to neutralise the excessive warmth present in those clips, making it feels more natural and more “human”.
Example:
I divided the screen into two sides to do the comparison more easily: The left side is my raw shot, and the right one is the adjusted one. In this picture, you can see my actor appears overly orange due to high saturation levels. This creates an unnatural skin tone. While, on the right side, after adjusting, the shot becomes more natural and visually pleasing.
More examples of my shots for the color grading:
I accidentally increased the bleu too much. I have changed it later on.
This one is also excessively cool rather than a clean environment.
I also gave it a try with creative category where I was able to adjust the color wheels to further enahnce the visual style of footage. This section allows me to make more changes in midtones, shadows, and highlights. However, during the adjusting process, I found it hard to keep the same color tone between shots that have the same settings. Therefore, I still focused mainly on the basic correction.
For this shot, I paid more attention on the contrast to make it looks brighter rather than the temperature, since this was filmed indoor with white lighting, so there is less orange color than other shots.