Creating my performance video.

I edited my film with premier pro. Having never used it before I was slightly sceptical at how it would turn out. To help solve this problem I asked my friend Henry who is very familiar with premier pro to give me a few pointers such as how to overlay footage and change the transparency etc. Furthermore, I also used youtube tutorials and internet articles.

Before I started editing the video I wasn’t really sure of which direction I wanted it to go in, but once I got started it was fairly obvious to me that I wanted to create something different, and a bit confusing as I want the viewer to watch it and be a bit unsure of what’s really going on. This is because it’s in keeping with the idea of a mask and it’s ability to conceal from, thus confuse its audience as people can be left wondering what is really going on behind the mask – thus for them to be left wondering what’s really going on the video creates a complementary element to the masks. In order to pursue this factor effectively, I felt that overlaying clips on top of each other and changing their transparency so that both clips are somewhat visible, was an effective way of doing this because the double vision effect in the video is nudge towards genuinely having double vision which is a stereotypical vice for confusion.

Furthermore, I cut out a lot of airy, pointless sections from clips and then put them back together with the middle bits missing, this I feel helps to get rid of unnecessary parts as well as generate a fast paced, obscure feel as the clips gain an element of disjointedness. I also sped up one of the clips so that when the clowns are walking freakishly towards the camera it appears that they are doing so at an unnatural, fairly creepy pace. In this instance the acting/directing teamed well with the editing to construct a whole new identity that’s being provided by the mask.

I decided not to use any sound as I did not feel that it would contribute to my film in any way because it would detract from the mystery of the mask as to be able to hear what the mask is concealing/protecting would leave less to the audiences imagination. I thought about adding in some ambient sound that would stay consistent throughout the film however I chose not to due to the fact that I would’ve only been putting it in for the sake of sound, and so not for the right reasons.

In evaluation, I think this film was successful to the extent that it displays the masks and does allude confusion through the editing and creation of it. However, I think with some more time and effort spent on premier pro getting to grips with it I could’ve added in more discombobulating elements such as playing around with the colour and adding different screens and shapes.

Here is the finished video: