Skills development

Things I have learnt this year:

• Editing on the beat - The main difference between editing this year and last year (when we made an opening to a thriller film) was that this year, the cutting between shots has to be quick and precise to the beat of the song. Our song is up-tempo and fast paced which meant that in some ways it was easier, because the beat was very obvious to follow, but also harder because it meant that we needed so much more cuts.

• Synchronising the music to video - This year it was important that the lip synching was in time to the song otherwise it wouldn't have looked realistic. We did this by picking one word in the song and matching up all our base tracks to that word so that come editing it would be easier.

• Filming base tracks - Last year we managed to just get away with using random shots and putting them in at any time because we didn't have to worry about matching it to the lyrics of the song. This year we had to constantly just film the whole song through so that when it came to using Final Cut Pro, we could just lay all the clips out and cut between them.

• Camera Movement - Last year my opening was made up of  mostly close-ups and extreme close-ups to create tension and ambiguity for the audience. This year, we the singer had to be the main focus point in the video and so we had to constantly show new and different ways to capture her. Also, we had to constantly have the camera itself actually moving so that the video didn't feel too static. We learnt how to use the figrig, which was to make moving the camera easier, though it was quite hard to have one person operating it.

• Green Screen - This year I used the green screen for the first time. Through our experimenting, we learnt that you have to have the lighting so that there was no shadow, you have to make sure that there are stray bits of hair and clothes and that the artist isn't wearing anything green.