Post Production

Post-production is the step where our thoughts and ideas combine. Where are 12 hour shoot seems to take life because now it's time for the clips to get combined and tell a story. which always reminds. This step allowed us to control the pace of the narrative and the tension in the story to keep the viewers invested in our musical video.

Now for editing. The  Dell Vostro 14510 laptop was used, which allowed for smooth performance and efficient rendering during the process. As for the editing software, we used Adobe Premiere V26. Which offers advanced masking tools and phenomenal colour grading options. Since Adobe was used in our A-level project, which made editing smoother this year.

Retrieving Footage

The retrieval of the footage is the first step in editing. After the SD card from the camera was removed, and then used a card reader to transfer data to the laptop. Making sure that every clip was copied and checked before the raw footage was working without any errors. This step was important to avoid losing any footage before the editing process.

                                       

Creating A Project On Premier Pro

The second step was creating a project in Adobe Premiere Pro. After creating a new project file, all the raw footage was imported into the media bin. The clips were viewed over and over again until the perfect ones were found to fit our narrative and the storytelling style. Once selected, the footage was precisely dragged and dropped to begin arranging in the sequence of the music video.

Arranging clips

After transferring the footage, the clips began adjusting according to the required scenes in the music video timeline.  The footage was arranged in a clear sequence to match the narrative structure. First, it was the bar scene, which introduces the setting mood and the atmosphere. Then,  the establishing shots at the park were added to show contrast and give context to the story. After that, the clips were inserted into the lip-sync performance in the bar to connect the visuals with the music. To make it more engaging and connect with the audience. Next,  the conflict and revelation of the untold story were added to build emotional tension and uncertainty. Finally, the ending scene is added carefully to give the video a complete and meaningful closure.

Applying Straight Cuts

The next step was applying straight cuts. The unwanted scenes were to give the story a flow.  During the lip-sync scene, it was rather difficult to synchronise and switch between the three cameras at the same time. But Premiere Pro came in clutch as it has a built-in feature that automatically synchronises all the clips, which saved a lot of time and made the process much easier.

 

SONG THAT WAS USED

Further Editing

Next, further straight cuts were applied to arrange the footage according to each scene. Fade-ins and fade-outs were also added between specific scenes where they were needed to make the transitions smoother and easier to follow.

After making all the cuts, an adjustment layer was added to help transition between scenes and show flashbacks for both characters. To create this effect, the Effects panel in the app was used to add a Gaussian Blur to the adjustment layer. Which then adjusted its opacity to 91% and the blurriness to 62.4%. This helped make the transitions smoother and gave a dreamy feeling to the flashback scenes. As you can see below, inthe  effect control panel (on top left)

After that, an overlay of old film grain was added to the flashback scene to help the audience feel that it was a memory. The overlay was already saved in the editing assets, so it was simply dragged and dropped onto the clips, and the opacity was reduced to 31% to make it blend naturally.

Overlay That Was Used

Color Grading

Now it was time for colour grading. For the bar scene, we shot everything in black and white using the camera’s built-in mood setting. This meant that there was only a need to adjust the shadows to enhance the atmosphere. For the establishing shots, the saturation was turned all the way down to 0, giving them a completely desaturated look. You can see the results below:

Before And After Colour Grading

For the lip-sync shots in the bar, the scene needed to look darker to match the mood. To achieve this, the shadows were decreased to create a deeper and more dramatic atmosphere. Instead of adjusting each clip separately, the changes were applied to an adjustment layer and then pasted onto the required clips.

Before and After Applying The Shadows

After that, during the conflict scene, further colour grading adjustmentswere applied. An LUT called SL Clean Kodak A HDR was used to give the scene a more cinematic look. The saturation was increased to 115.5 and reduced the vibrance to -21.4 to control the intensity of the colours. Then the shadows and midtones were adjusted according to each shot. These changes helped us achieve the dramatic and intense visual result that we wanted for the conflict moment.

Title

Adding a title is important because it creates the first impression and helps attract the audience’s attention. A strong and bold title can immediately create suspense. Since our music video was based on the song “Salvatore” by Lana Del Rey, we included the song title “Salvatore” as the main title, followed by the artist’s name. This made the video feel connected to the original track.

For the main title “Salvatore,” the font Impact (Regular) was used and aligned in the centre to make it bold and eye-catching. Below it, I added “Lana Del Rey” using the font Brush Script MT (Regular), also centre aligned. Placing both texts in the centre created a balanced and professional look, while the contrast between the bold and script fonts helped match the mood of the video.

Special Effects

After adding the titles, a cinematic look was created by adding an adjustment layer on top of the clips. In the app, a crop effect was applied and reduced the top and bottom by 12%. This created black bars on the screen, giving the video a widescreen, cinematic feel.

Adding Awareness Messages

After that, an awareness message was added in the scenes where the protagonist is holding a wine glass. A new text layer was created, and then, “Alcohol shown for narrative purposes only” was written. The Arial font was placed in the bottom left corner of the screen, with the opacity set to 42% so it would not distract too much from the scene.

After writing the message

Similarly, in the smoking scene, “Smoking shown for narrative purposes only,” a message was added using the same font, position, and opacity settings to keep the style consistent throughout the film.

Adding Subtitles And The Ending Scene

After the car crash scene,  a quote by Victor Hugowas added: “One truly dies only when one is forgotten.” This quote appears in the ending scene to create a deeper emotional impact.

For the final sequence,  straight cuts were used to keep the transition simple and serious. Then, the colour grading adjustment layer was extended to maintain visual consistency. In the bottom left corner, the end credits were added as subtitles, including the director, writer, cast, and production roles. This made the film look complete and professional.

 Sound effects were added to enhance realism and tension, including a car crash sound, ambulance siren, fire sound, notification sound, car acceleration, and a heartbeat effect. These sounds helped increase the dramatic intensity and made the final scene more impactful for the audience.

CRASHING CAR SOUND EFFECT

AMBULANCE SOUND EFFECT

GUN SHOT SOUND EFFECT

CAR ACCELERATION SOUND EFFECT

HEART BEAT SOUND EFFECT

NOTIFICATION SOUND EFFECT

Export Settings

After completing all the edits, the entire video was carefully reviewed on the timeline to make sure everything was smooth and there were no mistakes. Once everyone was satisfied, the video was exported in H.264 format with a resolution of 1920x1080 and 60 frames per second in progressive mode. The colour space was set to Rec. 709. Used hardware encoding with the Intel codec to ensure faster and smoother exporting. The bitrate was set to VBR, 1 pass, with a target of 20.00 Mbps to maintain good video quality.

For audio, the AAC format with 320 kbps, 48 kHz, in stereo was selected.

After confirming all the settings, the project was finally exported. This was the final step in post-production, where all our hard work was converted into the completed film.