CCR Music Video 12/11/2020

Critical Creative Reflection

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

The audience is expecting to see conventions in any media product, it is basically a building block. In my music video, I used different conventions. The music video starts out with showing the restaurant name which was "Rock Bar". This allows the audience to know where the filming was taken place at and they could go there to try the food. Then we get to filming at the beach which is typical in most music videos of my genre. The song we did was "Greece" by Drake/DJ Khaled. This was in the hip hop/rap category. In the music video, you can see it is about three girls having fun. This is usually featured in many songs in this category showing people just having fun. It portrays the youth of this century and how we live our lives. The settings in many hip hop/rap videos are usually at the beach, near the water, on a yacht, and etc. This was one of the conventions I followed when making the video. I followed this by filming at the beach with my group for the video. Another convention that was used was costumes. Typically in these music videos, you will see people in different clothing . In the music videos that are filmed in the beach type setting you will see girls in bathing suits or shorts and the males are usually in beach shorts. Since we didn't have any male actors, it was just us females. We were shorts and our bathing suits underneath our t-shirts and shorts. Music videos in this category made by younger rappers/singers are representing the youth. This is what we portray us in the video. The youth nowadays are wild and free without responsibilities. We are just living in the moment just like in the music videos where they are just having fun. In these music videos, the people are just living like teens doing what they want. This is what we wanted to show with our video so we just showed us being carefree and not worrying about anything.  My product represents teens living in this world right now. It is so stressful being in quarantine and having school just being at home. Our music video is telling teens to go out and have fun but do it safely. We only got one life to live so go out and make memories without regrets.

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

My product focuses on stress and relaxation and appeals to teens and adults. 2020 has made it extremely hard for many families and individuals and my product is meant to remind them to relax and enjoy life. It really has not been easy and it is meant to show that with struggles there is light. In the video, there is a scene showing the girls having fun with face masks on their faces. This one scene makes all the difference because when the viewers notice that the girls are making the best out of their situations, despite the painful pandemic, it encourages them to do the same. If my product were to be distributed as a real media text, then I would want my video to be seen through legal music websites and on a large media platform like YouTube. YouTube would be the best option because almost every music video is seen by the public through that video-sharing platform. People would also come across the video as an advertisement from two other huge media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. This way my target audience (teenagers and young adults) will find the video faster. The product could also be distributed on Instagram like a trailer or a sneak peek.

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

Before taking this class I’ve never used iMovie before simply because I didn’t know how. In fact, I was in the dark when it came to editing video clips in general. However, during this project, I was able to learn more of the different features iMovie offered and how I can apply those features to my film. During this project I was also able to learn how to improve my filming skills. In my last project one of the flaws in the video was the fact that my camera was wobbly, and it was very evident in the final product. For instance, I learned tricks to make the camera less shaky or wobbly as I shoot a scene. In my last project one of the flaws in the video was the fact that my camera was wobbly, and it was very evident in the final product. My skills have improved because I got out more and learned from my group what to do. 

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

For this project, I used more hardware and software technologies compared to what I used for my past assignments. For software technologies, I used iMovie and Power Director. My classmate who also worked on editing with me used their sources for editing such as, Prequel, Picsart, and iMovie. For hardware technologies, our group uses a tripod to help the film. This allowed us to steady the camera as we moved it along. We also used the same tripod to hold the camera and record as all three of us created a scene. For example, one of the scenes in the music video required all the group members to play in the ocean while the camera was propped up by the tripod along the shore. In the beginning, I started to eliminate which scenes our group need for the file and used Power Director to reduce the length of each scene. As for online technologies, I used a website called YouTube to Mp3 Converter to create the audio of the music video. This website allowed me to change music shared from YouTube and convert it into an Mp3 download. After that, I can insert that newly-downloaded file onto iMovie along with the video clips for the music video. With the video clips and audio put together onto iMovie, I moved on and placed the clips in order.