Critical Creative Reflection

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-sr8IyRIzn2EB0ko_L7rr3CTDWlPfZlOviq-I9U50fo/edit

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?

My product or music video challenges by using certain angles, editing clips, using captions, sound, and acting. Like, for example, for angles as I was filming I would put my hand higher or lower to make a high or low angle. I used shots such as, over the shoulder to show a character from the other characters point of view. Also, a Point of View shot, to show the world, or setting from their eyes or perspective. For editing clips, we used things like split screen, to show both characters at once, or fading in and fading out to go to the next clip. Our music video represents social groups such as showing the struggle of long distance relationships and the struggle of telling someone you don’t live near them. Although the video doesn’t show the struggle of long distance relationships it shows more so the life of an average teenager. Such as, going out to parties/clubs, hanging out with friends, and meeting new people. It represents the social group teenagers, and how they interact with each other with someone they like or are interested too. Our music video represents the whole concept of “love at first sight” and how it may affect teenagers such as, the fact the main character lives all the way across the country. This affects their relationship because they now can’t get to know each other, and the girl of the music video waits to tell the other main character after they have already exchanged numbers and start texting each other.

2. How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?

My product/music video would engage or my target audience would be teenagers. It would engage them by it being somewhat relatable to them. Almost all teenagers or young adults go through liking someone or being in a relationship and it not working out. So, it would grab their attention by it being relatable. It could also attract older people too, such as adults in their 20’s who have maybe gone through something like that in the past. Moreover, I think this can be distributed as real media text by explaining or showing what basically goes on in the real world in teenage relationships. The message we want to get across is that even though you may meet someone and they live somewhere or whatever the circumstances may be, you should still make an effort to make the relationship work. To distribute this media we would put it on social media such as TikTok or Instagram to reach the target, teenagers. This would reach them better because many teens don’t watch live television anymore. To distribute it I would like to make advertisements on these social media sites and have a link that takes the audience to Youtube to watch the actual music video. The ad would present a small snippet of the music video to attract the viewers attention. If they enjoy that small snippet of the video, they can click on it and watch the full music video. This would be the best way to distribute our music video to many teens.

3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

To be honest, I don’t think my skills developed incredibly while doing this project, but it did somewhat. Before we even started the project or the class at that, I already had a knack at editing, which is why I used an editing app I was already familiar with using. I knew how to do fade in and outs, insert clips, add music over the sound, all that type of stuff that’s just basically the basics of editing films or video in the first place. What I did learn production wise is how to actually create and build an idea for a music video. Before creating the project I had absolutely no idea what and high angle or low angle, or over shoulder shot or any of those things even were. I knew there were things behind the fact that movies put in angles that fit the scene or the mood but I had no idea that a lot of things can affect a way a film is. So this project helped out a lot with that, like I had no idea what a storyboard was either but now I do thanks to this project, I now understand the concepts of how people film movies and videos to gain attention from audiences. Also, I learned that it doesn’t just take five minutes to film a music video, it takes time. I learned that producing a music video or a film in general takes patience. Especially, taking over the role editing. It takes cooperation and agreeing on concepts or things as a whole if working with others.

4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

Technologies we integrated into this project were things like inserting clips into the software (Alight Motion) and inserting music into it. So like, inserting the clips was easy because we were filming on an iPhone that almost everyone knows how to use. We filmed a scene and just added it into the software. As for adding music to it, that was not hard but took a little more work than just inserting the clips. I had to screen record a video with the song we use- Passionfruit- by Drake- then take the video out and clip it so the audio wasn’t longer than the actual music video. Our music video wasn’t the most difficult thing to create because all I did was add the clips and add song that we chose to use. One extra thing I did have to do was mute the clips so the audio from the clips we recorded wouldn’t overlap the song. Which is why I used captions at one part of the video so the idea of that scene got across to the viewer. Also, I used a video from a classmate that we didn’t have since the videos you use in the project have to be actual videos and nothing from off the internet or anything that you don’t have permission to use. Other than that, that was all the technology, software, hardware, online things, etc that we used in our project/ music video.