Abigail - Finalization
The finalizing of the music video is here! Soon would be the debut of the long-awaited music video. There is still plenty of editing work needed before finally exporting the video. But before further editing, I have to reveal the name of the music video.
An assistant also used the iPhone 13's camera to help film all Set 2 clips.
Title Reveal
For a while now, the music video has been left unnamed, and I have referred to it as "Music Video" throughout much of its production stages. That has been the case until today. I have finally decided the title of the music video. Introducing "Abigail", a 1 minute and 15-second music video featuring the lo-fi song "Ballads" by ENRA and dr. niar. I named the film after the fairy in the video, who is named Abigail, who just so happens to be my little sister in the video.
Set 2 Filming
Filming on Set 2 was a rapid process. All clips were POVs of Character 1 (myself). A screen-recorded clip of the post composition page of the social media app "Instagram" was displayed on the prop phone. Also shown in the recording was the comments section of each post, but they were not screen-recorded.
Subsequences
I replaced various source clips with subsequences serving their respective purposes. For example, I had to break a part of one clip to speed up one portion of this clip. Those clips then needed to be seamlessly stitched together and stabilized with the Warp Stabilizer effect. That subsequence contained another subsequence containing the clip mentioned in the last blog with a mask applied.
Another subsequence contained another clip with several other instances of the same clip masked so that they only display flowers. The result is as follows:
LUTs and Color Grading
LUTs, short for lookup tables, are a type of color filter used to alter the colors of videos in creative ways. Predefined mathematical formulas are applied to the existing clip to alter the colors of the video to its intentional form.
The goal was to have all of the clips in the video displaying the most vibrant colors possible. I used a specific LUT designed to amplify skin tones (as the name suggests) in almost all the clips in the video.
Shown below is a shot of Abigail entering the forest. This shot has the LUT applied:
Wand Sparkles
Throughout the video, there are several instances where Abigail, the fairy, waves her wand over some trees to plant some flowers. But despite the appearance of the flowers, there was a lack of representation of the wand functioning. So, I created five After Effects compositions through Adobe Dynamic Link and a sparkle effect using the Particle World effect in After Effects.
Shown here is a screenshot of one of the five After Effects compositions taken while I was setting up the keyframes for the position of the sparkles.
Sound
The prior plan was to include only the audio from the Ballads soundtrack. However, I added some diegetic sound elements to the video during this post-production stage. To be more specific, sparkle sound effects have been added to compliment the sparkles coming out of Abigail's wand. This effect instantly amplified the illusion of a "functioning" wand, although everything, acting and editing, has been illusory.
Other VFX
I used various transitions in the video, including Dip to Black and Cross Dissolve. At the same time, I used many instances of a glare effect, which I created using the Lens Flare effect on different adjustment layers.
After editing several crucial components of the music video, all that is left to do is to conduct final editing and quality checks before exporting the video for release.
