Rough Cut 1 - Weird Sky

Here is my first version of Weird Sky:

WEIRD SKY ROUGH CUT from Eughan Wooding on Vimeo.

The beginning is rather awkward and slow, however this is intentional as it contrasts heavily with the later portion of the video. I've had to start it with Jack sitting down as there was very little room but chose to have the milk inside of the microwave to clearly indicate some quirkiness to the video, it's not a serious piece and I wished to reinforce some surrealism in Jack's actions being weird or abnormal within the video, as to suggest some psychedelic undertones. The mise-en-scene clearly indicates Jack's life is a mess within the narrative and perhaps represents the drug-use ideas that appear in psychedelic content.
I would like to note that my arm can clearly be seen on the right, where I was essentially turning on the light on the phone for the shots, I do have some clips where my arm isn't shown but will have to review those as they get slightly blurry during the first part of the clip - something I could mask by intentionally blurring the footage and overlaying the song title.

The action match shots are quite clear in my opinion, the only one perhaps needing editing is the transition at 0:07. The maintenance of continuity here isn't necessarily done for any particular means, other than to maintain continuity and convention. However, it does help to clearly indicate the milk and therefore reinforce it as a key prop that affects the video.

I tried to make some psychedelic and kaleidoscopic imagery with the four sky clips, which I don't believe looks the best. I did consider placing something else within the shot but haven't really decided, but I definitely think the images need to have something else going on or acting as the focus. This part was achieved by flipping the clips in Premiere and I made sure to add some colour overlay. The parts where the colour on screen changes were something I thought of to keep the long duration shots more interesting, and to accentuate the beats in the song. I did struggle to edit this part, given that I can't count beats in songs very well, I therefore commissioned help from Niamh who is experienced with editing to the beat - as she has done on her YouTube channel.

There is a part at 0:43 where I simply continue the shot of the three clones but I feel this is quite boring and might either require some overlay - as seen by the lava lamp earlier. I used the lava lamp in order to conform to psychedelic convention as it is quite iconic in being associated with psychedelia.

The next portion of the video is comprised of some basic animation through images I took of Jack spinning, these images I cut out and saved as PNGs using Photoshop. The backgrounds don't look good currently but mainly act as place holders, in fact some parts reuse the clone sequence but I intend to animate over these sections. I used the images that flash up at 0:55 as references for parts of the animation in the future i.e. when the screen should fill up.

The kaleidoscopic clip that overlays at 1:11 comes from me filming a household painting with a kaleidoscope filter from Snapchat, the edges are rather hard but I have no other means of producing kaleidoscopic clips of my own. However, I believe using some Royalty Free clips from YouTube for the backgrounds and overlays might help to bring the video together. On the topic of Royalty Free, I used a UFO sound effect from Soundbible at 1:16 to add to the drug-feeling Jack's character would be feeling as the audience is removed from the television and back into reality for a moment; the music also makes a very sudden drop and quietens to show that the events aren't occurring within the music video the character is watching (again like the King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard video for Cellophane). I don't think I like the sound effect and believe I could maybe try tampering with it to make it sound more jarring and truly immerse the viewer, into feeling how Jack's character is i.e. disorientated and confused. The sounds are also there in order to create a sense of drug-addled since this section will have animation over it, with Jack's hand melting.

The next segments will likely become increasingly overlaid with images and clips to add to the psychedelic imagery, almost as if the bad trip is coming to a head. They seem to remind me somewhat of the tunnel scene from Willy Wonka, which perhaps adds substance to the claim that it establishes a sense of unease within the viewer.

The overall editing stops towards the end of the video however this is mainly because these segments will be filled with some animation and high amounts of overlays. As such, I believe focusing on completing these sections along with fleshing out the other areas I've highlighted will result in a more cohesive video.