Rough Cut In The Making

Hira started working on the editing and compiled the videos in one place. However, due to our school suddenly dropping our mock exam timetable less than three weeks before the exams, Hira and I had less and less time to meet up and work on the editing as we had initially planned. So after she had made a rough cut, I transferred the Premiere file from her laptop to mine and worked on the rough cut. 

This is her working on the rough cut in school while I grace her with my presence:

The first step was to organise all our selected footage into folders so that it would be easier for us to select them and import them into Premiere. It would also make locating videos according to the shotlist much easier. We divided the footage according to the locations where we shot them.

This video is edited enough to be a rough cut but is too rough to be the first cut so consider it as a work in process.

In the first 9 seconds, there is a series of cross-cuts and parallel editing, showing the girl in her present situation (just waking up from what appears to have been a party) and glimpses of a particular event from her past. The interjection of those shots between her waking up implies that fragments from her memories are coming back to her. The flower symbolism runs throughout the music video and this marks the start of it, establishing it as a motif since the beginning. The picking of the flowers represents the beginning of her relationship.

This shot is a camera zoom which is generally rare to find and even not preferred in video making, however we wanted to add it because it is actually a convention in the indie genre, so we wanted to include such elements.

This shot of the girl walking is seen at several points in the video and represents her "journey" in a literal way. Walking is also interpreted as a way of seeking some escape or cathartic release. 

This is another generally unconventional camera movement which is similar to a handheld camera and is seen in many lofi indie music videos. This scene is also an intertextual reference from the film Portrait of a Lady on Fire which depicts a lesbian couple. A scene from the movie shows one of the women sketching another on the page (page 28) of a book and that page number has a significance later on in the movie as well. 

The flower motif reappears in this scene. The fact that she's trying to water cut flowers (which can't grow unless in very specific cases and conditions) and nourish them reflects her relationship once again by portraying how she's trying to make something that stands no chance, survive and bloom. 

This scene includes two match-on-actions, once when she reaches out to pick up the pill bottle and the next when it goes back to the initial point. The first one was added to focus on the bottle of capsules, which shows how deep she's emotionally and mentally fallen and the toxic way in which she's dealing with her problems. 

This is emphasised by the shots after the jump cut, when she's stirring the bowl of capsule cereal. Her body language and expressions for which we used a medium shot to show her unexpectedly casual, lowkey bored and nonchalant manner, implying that this isn't something new for her. 

Apart from being used as a motif to represent the relationship, yellow flowers are a well-known symbol for hope and love. Since she is eating the flowers it represents her desperation to hold onto and not let go of her relationship.

This shot cuts back to an over-the-shoulder shot of her playing around with the cereal, and after that we see her pour out some drink in a glass and drink directly from the bottle. All these scenarios highlight her toxic ways of dealing with her breakup.

Also, her continuing to drink after the party is clearly over, as indicated by the mise en scene, goes to show how she's trying to hold on by trying to keep the party going (here Goodwin's theory of the relationship between the lyrics and the visual is also followed).

This scene is another intertextual reference from Breakfast at Tiffany's. In the movie, the lyrics of the song Audrey Hepburn sings (Moon River) mostly seemed to fit our main character's thoughts as well. 

Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way. 

Also, in the movie, Holly's personality from the perspective of many 21st century audience, appears to be pretty toxic at first with her dealing with her problems in unhealthy ways like avoiding them, however, by the end she does come to realise her mistakes.

In these scenes, a series of jumpcuts and cross-cutting were used to show two paradoxical ideas simultaneously - the girl who appears to be waiting endlessly for someone to arrive, and the walking scenes, the meaning of which I already mentioned above. This shows the conflicting nature of her own thoughts as well.

Here, I used a series of match-on-action again in order to add continuity, because most of our video lacks in continuity as it shows multiple broken and stranded narratives and scenarios.

These scene and then from 2:30 to 2:46, the shots are handheld camera shots, a lot of them POV shots, as they are her past memories of her time together with her girlfriend. This camera movement is a common convention in the indie genre.

These two reverse shots represent a sort of moment of epiphany for her as she re-evaluates her decisions (the drink going back in the bottle) and decides that it perhaps is time to let go (hand reaching for the flowers drops). The wheel of the cycle running over the flowers signifies the end of her yearning and desperation to make things work. This is reiterated by the final scene, when she wakes up (this time on the couch rather than on the floor) and walks out, closing the door behind her, which, upon deeper inspection, also represents her closing the door to her past.