Editing

We edited our pop video using Final Cut Pro. First we shot and edited our storyboard to the track so that when we had the footage it would be easier to see where everything went. We assembled a rough cut of the pop video within about a week of digitising the tapes. After this we added and changed various shots for a further week until we were happy with our final cut.

Once this had been done, we had to put in the special effects. This involved exporting every clip with blue screen on it or that needed another special effect. We imported the clips into Adobe After Effects and, using keying, motion tracking and blurring techniques, added the cityscape in place of the blue screen. For the execution scene we layered on stock footage of blood gushes and muzzle flashes:

Once all the special effects were done, we imported the clips back into Final Cut Pro and added them back into our final cut:

We then used Compressor (from Final Cut Studio) to create two copies of the video, a low quality one which was small enough to upload onto my Blog and YouTube, and a higher quality one for DVD. The whole process took about three weeks, working for about two hours most week days.