First edit

The first edit is finished, and I am extremely pleased with it. During editing the colour scheme was changed to black and white, which gives such a good, vintage look to the video.
It seemed that after a little bit more filming, there was more than enough footage, which all fitted in perfectly with the timing of the song. I feel the dramatic lyrics and sound of the song is really portrayed in the footage, and you are taken on an emotional roller coaster when watching the video - which is of corse what we wanted, for the audience to empathise and feel for the people in the story.
So, after only one edit, I am very pleased with the way it turned out, and I feel it won't take very long at all to get the video side of the project finished completely.

Telegrams & uniforms!!

One thing that needed researching was the way in which wives of soldiers were informed of death during the 1940's.
I knew that telegrams were used, but wasn't too sure what they said or how they were laid out. After researching, I found out that they were usually small, as to save money on paper, were very short and straight to the point, as to save on ink, and were usually delivered by hand, as to save on fuel! Although they were usually printed, I recreated a telegram by hand, using a small peice of paper and a small envelope, and I feel it worked rather well!

Above - The telegram received by the wife by hand

Although we couldn't afford to buy or borrow a vintage 1940's army uniform, we did manage to borrow a more modern one from the father of somebody in the group. When in black and white, I'm quite positive nobody will realise that it is a modern uniform.

Above- the uniform which was borrowed being worn

We thought filming had finished, but it seems not!

We had filmed all of the scenes we initially wanted, apart from the war scene which was swapped for more mauning scenes. We just couldn't find a way of shooting the fighting scene in a believable way, so decided against it.
Everything went great with filming, we managed to use an armed forces uniform of somebodies, and the weather and such things were on our side. All of our scenes done, we were happy...
Until editing started two days ago. We have realised there just isn't enough footage, as our initial idea was to have most of the shots in slow motion when edited, we over predicted the time to have it slowed down.
We have decided to resolve this problem in two ways, by filming short random shots to fill in parts of the song; flowers, shots of the house, dramatic mood setting shots after the death, which also helped show our genre of dramatic, slightly indie art-housey style. And we are also to try and find a radio edit of the song to see how much shorter it is than the 4 min 9 secs we are currently using!