--- As I Destruct + Ultraviolet ---

Video Editing: 3 music videos - a retrospective (Part 1 of 3)


--- Project Info ---
Track Title: As I Destruct
Artist: Threat Signal
Film: Ultraviolet (2006)
Completion Date: July 2007






My first go at video editing proper. The project started out after I watched the film Ultraviolet, directed by Kurt Wimmer (of Equilibrium fame) and starring Milla Jovovich, and was kind of annoyed at how although visually very striking, the film was let down by hammy acting, underdeveloped plot structure and characters and an over reliance on CG.

Although the film was released in the UK, not many people know about it due to its limited success. So I had an idea of 'what if I could make a music video using Ultraviolet and make it look Ultra-cool'? After all, the action scenes were all there - I could just remove them from the context of the film and create my own storyline.
So that was the basic premise: for people to watch it and go "wow- that film looks cool, I wanna check it out", even though the actual film was not.

Threat Signal are a small metalcore band from the US and I knew that I wanted to use one of their tracks for this video due to their songs being both hard and melodically epic at the same time. I picked As I Destruct as I already had in mind which scenes would go with which parts of the song - such as the zoom and slice intro, the getting dressed scene and the guitar solo bullet dodging scene.
The rest of it, I pretty much did as I went along after importing many scenes into iMovie, many of which I didn't end up using.

There are some bits of the video that are still scrappy but on the whole I am very pleased with the result as it was my first effort and I managed to communicate many of my ideas well. The video has over 70,000 views on youtube (at time of writing this) which probably has to do with Threat Signal being a small band and anyone looking for videos on them will most likely run into this.


Some of my favourite bits are:

- The zoom onto the roof top at the very beginning and the guard falling on beat.

- The getting dressed scene soon after that. Sets the tone well and shows that Milla means business.

- The first fight scene where she is smashing the guard's armour - interesting because the actual sound from the film is present here and you can hear the smashing sound at times.

- The injecting and screaming scene - although these are actually two different scenes in the movie (oh the wonder of editing...)

- The bike sliding on the lyric '...tiiiiiime to gooooooo...' and the following rooftop shooting scene. My favourite shot in the entire movie is of Milla standing on the roof and 'gun-fu' shooting the guard below her.

- The bullet dodging guitar solo scene. Fits so well with the music - although the sequence did need considerable editing to make it so. If I could change anything about this scene however, I would make a smoother transition into the beginning of the scene.

- The body scan scene with cut-aways - I dont know quite why but the 'triumphant' feeling always gets me here.

So on the whole I am happy with the end result as I achieved what I set out to do - create a video that makes a not so cool film into one that looks very cool.
I'm also proud of the fact that I managed to create a slightly different narrative in my video than that of the film. Something which is returned to in my later videos.


Here is the video below:




Coming next:

The Sacrilegious Scorn + Vampire Hunter D
Video Editing: 3 music videos - a retrospective (Part 2 of 3)