Music Video

Final Music Video

This is our final music video for the track Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey.

To edit our music video, we used Adobe Premier Pro as I feel confident when using that to cut and link shots together along with audio. The main editing was cropping the shots to the right parts, especially the singing scenes as I found this very difficult to link to the correct words in the song, however after a few times of doing it, I found it became easier and that I had learnt a new skill. I also used the transitions on the program to link certain shots together, mainly through cross dissolve, however I didn't include many as I felt it began to stop looking like a music video of that genre as they rely on short cuts which change between locations etc. I added a fade out at the end to the audio and the image as I felt this was a better way to finish the music video rather than bluntly ending, and it worked well with the end of the track with a slow motion shot of her turning around. After we had edited it, we had to upload it to YouTube, however we experienced difficulty with the audio when doing this, and therefore had to take a different approach, and that is why we used vimeo to upload our music video, although I think it gives a clearer image than YouTube anyway.

When I was putting the shots into an order I felt worked best, I tried to include a link between the lyrics and visuals, and I decided the best place for this would be when the lyrics say 'I've got my red dress on tonight' as I had taken a beautiful shot of Georgina wearing a red dress outside of Wollaton Hall which I wanted to use slow motion on, and this was very effective in the video. I used the speed tool a lot during editing as it gave me the opportunity to make the video build up with the tempo of the track, and emphasised her dance performance at key moments. As well as using slow motion, I also sped up shots such as the couple walking up the stairs at Wollaton Hall, as I felt this would look better than a long shot of them walking slowly.

The finished product works well, as there is an interesting range of locations and costumes which works well with the narrative of the video and makes it easy to follow. For me, I felt that the slow motion shots of the leaps and dance moves work incredibly well as I wanted to alter these after looking at our draft video, and I am glad that I did it as it builds up the tempo with slow and fast shots now. We did further filming of the singing performance scenes in a different room against a blank wall, and chose a close up camera angle for these as it made them different from the previous singing shots, and I feel the combination of them together works really well and makes it more interesting, We altered a lot of the lighting throughout the video after I wasn't happy with the draft, and now I think you can see a clear contrast from the Summer scenes and the sad scenes, and the natural lighting looks brighter now.

These images show how I experimented with the different colours, lighting and contrast on images in the editing stages, until we got the result we wanted. This was on a train scene, however this was not the colour we opted for in the end.

I am particularly happy with the long shot near the beginning which shows the sun in the sky and pans across to a blurred image of the artist which slowly focuses, as this is a typical example of what Lana Del Rey includes in her videos. She always interprets a shot of the sky or weather at the start of videos which relate to it and uses many hand held pans which blur at first and begin to sharpen as it gives a personal feel to the video, representing a home video. I also like the dance shots as I think the shadows look professional and creative when she dances, and the lighting was professional stage lights so I am happy they give an impressive effect on camera as well as in person.


My personal improvements would be to check that all of the singing scenes are lip synced correctly, as some were a little off the beat after changing around shots on Adobe Premier Pro. I also would have included another actor into the video if I were to do it again, as I feel after a while it lacks the interest with it being the same person on camera all the time.