Okay, this is my territory, so prepare for some indepth criticism
First off the good points:
A. You match the lyrics well with the video
B. Good song, good footage (although the footage was a bit out of your control, so you say)
And the big bad points:
A. Little/no fading between scenes. Everything is a rough cut to other scenes. About the only time rough cuts work is in the same scenes, and with timed cuts (to a drum beat or something)
B. Each individual scene is MUCH too long. You are looking at 10 second+ clips of the exact same thing at many places, it gets VERY boring for the eyes.
C. Video compression is deplorable. If your class doesn't care about video compression, stuff the sucker in a Huffy-encoded .avi so you don't lose any quality of the footage. If you are looking for web-distributable footage, use DIVX, or at worst MPEG if you need compatibility. The Cinepak codec you used is as old as the hills, and has deplorable quality and compression. An average DIVX avi with absolutely no quality loss at that resolution would be at about 20MB, not 50MB. MPEG, maybe 35MB.
D. Clean up the footage. Get rid of the black bars that show up every once in a while (such as the second clip at the intro, and skiing footage soon after). A crop should handle it well without any noticible distortion.
E. The video is detached from the song. Other than the footage matching the lyrics, you wouldn't know it was a music video.
F. Take advantage of slowing and speeding up clips. A deccelerating slowdown at 2:15 when he points at you (fitting the lyrics) would work very well, so as to match the length the lead singer holds the word YOU.
G. At 1:03, the swimming clip should probably use a fade to black. The music fades out, let the video follow the music through. It's an obvious stop for that scene anyway, you are extending it way past where it should end.
H. You might take a look at a flicker effect, which involves black (or white) footage, and alternating between that and a clip rapidly to a fast drum beat.
I. At 1:24, I'd use some stop-frame effects, and zoom in on the motorcyclist. (Probably zoom in first). Give it a rapid picture taking look, as if the guy is taking pictures of the guy in the air, not a video.
J. In overall, just make sure you keep the footage on the person in the footage. If the person leaves the footage (such as behind a wave or something), switch scenes.
K. I don't know how much footage you have to work with, but if you stick with a single event (maybe the air diving, you seem to have a lot of it), and then fade out to the other events as if the person is remembering other things he's done, it might make the video have a more personal feel.
L. Don't misunderstand me with these tips. Don't throw massive amounts of crazy transitions, and wild effects like emboss and stuff. Most, if not all transitions and effects have VERY specialized uses, and do not belong in most videos. About the only effect I would use is color change, such as hue variations during a couple clips (remember, be easy on it, don't overuse!) and maybe some greyscale instead of color. Even then, don't go overboard, and you don't really need to do these in the first place, it's just fluff.
I can't really give you many tips on the editing software itself (I despise Final Cut Pro, more or less because it's on Mac :p) as I use Adobe Premiere, but I'd imagine it should easily be able to handle the things I explained above.
