Evaluation Q3 : Are you pleased with the footage and your finished edit? Is it how you expected it to look? What works really well and what would you change?

I am very pleased with my final edit of our remake video for Taylor Swift's Shake It Off, which I completed with Alex Nicolaides. All of the footage captured looked really professional and sharp, which made it exceptionally easy to grade and edit with. 

Our Editing Workflow

Occasionally we could not achieve perfect shot-for-shot likeness with the original, due to complex dance moves or cinematographic techniques for example, however in these cases appropriate and good looking footage was captured instead, through guidance by our director, Dom and main camera op, Ed. Below I have Alex N and my completed edit.



Alex N and myself edited the video over the course of 2 weeks, both inside and outside of lesson time, using dual monitored edit suites and Premiere Pro CS5.5. The actual cutting and positioning of the shots took the longest period of time and due to the high quality nature of our rushes, grading only took a couple of days. I think our grading for some set-ups definitely looked different to how I originally imagined it would, such as the band set-up I did not expect to look so dark, however other set-ups such as the end dance scene definitely look as bright as I had first envisioned. Overall, I am still extremely happy with all the shots, however if I was to complete the remake again, I would have tried filming a few different shot types as slow-mos, as we often had close-ups, but not necessarily the wides or mids that the original used.

Annotated Diagram of Premiere Pro CS5.5

I really like how well some asepcts of the video came out in particular, for example:

• The tutting set-up
• The ballet shot's grading
• The slow mo ribbon dancing

I liked these most of all, as I felt they fully met, if not exceeded my expectations for how professional they look. For example, I think the grading of the ballet shots very closely mimics the cold, yet glossy hollywood look of the original ballet shots.

Before and After Grading

The ribbon dancing slow-mo