CCR Blog
1. How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or
issues?
Our product is our music video. This music both challenges and uses conventions. Let's start off with how our music video challenges conventions. In most music videos, a convention is that the people making them usually have high budgets and lots of money to spare. These high production budgets those people have and the high amount of money they have is how they are able to spend lots of money on their music videos. They can spend it on things like experienced crew members such as directors, editors, makeup crew, and costume crew. They also have the money to spend on expensive props, high quality camera equipment , a set, and expensive lighting equipment . With this normal convention, our music video challenges this. In the making of our music video, we didn't have the normal high tech equipment. We used our phones to film every single thing shown in the video and we used free editing software, while normal music videos use premium quality software to edit their videos. For the props we used it was just normal plastic flowers so we didn't spend that much money in total due to the lack of high budget we had unlike normal music videos. The set we used was free since it was a public park and everything else we already had like our phones and the flower props. We didn't have paid high quality actors but just normal students.
Another way we challenged conventions is by lack of lip syncing. In most music video, a convention is that the performer or subjects in the video tend to sign the song lyrics and lip sync. They do this and then the actual music is added over it. But, we challenged this. In our music video, we didn't go the normal lip sync route but instead we decided to tell a story through our video. So, since we didn't go that route that shows how we challenged a convention. A way that we used convention was with some of our shots. In lots of music videos, they use close up shots. They do this to make the audience feel the emotion of the singer or actor in the music video. We also did this by using up close shots to show our audience the sadness one of our actors was feeling at the time so they can feel the emotion as well. In conventional music videos, they also tend to have establishing shots before the lyrics start. This is done so that the audience can get a preview before the lyrics begin, we used this convention by having establishing shots of the set we used.
Our music video represents social group and social issues. In our population, something that the community lacks, has a low population of, or some have a problem with is interracial relationships. In our music video, we used an interracial relationship. We represented a couple that were part of two different cultural groups. For our male actor, he was from African American descent. While the girl actor was from a completely opposite group. We even went further with this and used a female actor who represents two social groups being half white American and half Hispanic. By doing this, this may attract more people to watch a piece of media with a social issue that is lacking in the media community.
2. How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Our product engages with audience by having a storyline to it. This will keep the audience engaged because they will want to see where the story goes next unlike types of music videos where the main subject lip syncs the entire time. In our music video specifically, we told the story about a couple. This couple specifically took a weird turn once the female companion believed her partner was cheating on her with someone else. This is also how our music video engages with the audience because it took a turn they wouldn't expect. When watching our music video, the audience may think that the male partner actually was cheating until it is revealed that he was actually attempting to propose to her later that day. Another way our music video engages with audience because it leaves the audience with a cliffhanger. In our music video, we end with the couple making up after the female companion finds out her partner actually wasn't cheating and just preparing to propose. This leaves the audience to wonder "What will happen next?" keeping them engaged in our music video.
Our music video has been distributed as real media text. It will be distributed as real media text due to the fact that we posted it on YouTube. YouTube is the place where all artist post music video for their music. Even the biggest artists around the world do this. This makes YouTube the place to have an audience engage in our real media text and since it is free to upload to YouTube, this makes it easy to distribute our media.
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
This music video was the 2nd big project that we did. It started with our first big project, our commercial, to this. Looking back and comparing the filming to now, I would say my production skills developed a tremendous amount. When I look back at my first project, the thing that sticks out the most is the lack of diversity within the shots used. We only used a pan shot and the others were really just your normal shots. In the music video, I can clear as day see the drastic change. I mean, we used establishing shots, high angles, low angles, aerial view shots, over the shoulder shots, POV shots, zoom in shots, and more. An important factor we always made sure of when filming this music video is to make sure every shot was purposeful and would appeal to our audience and this relied on our editing which is another skill that progressed.
For our editing, I also see a big progression within myself since I edited the music video. In our last project, we just did the simple fade in fade out edits. This was not appealing. You can see in our music video, we went as far when editing to change the filters to black and white. We thought this was so purposeful because it sets a mood. I used so many more transitions than I did in the commercial. I edited in live text messaging in our music video and it looks so sophisticated compared to the editing I would've done at the start. Lastly, when adding on sound to our films. In our commercial, the sound for some clips were low and just really hard to hear. In this music video, the music is loud and at a normal tempo showing the progression as well within my production skills.
4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?
When filming this music video, I integrated technology in multiple ways. When filming, we used technology specifically an iPhone 12 Pro. Using this technology it allowed for our shots to come out very clear. One teammate did the filming while I did the editing. Being that we used an iPhone, the clips were able to be transferred at an easy paste from their phone to my phone. We were going to use a camera but ended up sticking with the iPhone and didn't use any of the scenes we filmed on the camera. We also used technology to edit. I edited on my phone, like I said previously. When editing on technology, it allowed me to change the clip itself such as the brightness, cropping of takes, and more. It also allowed to add in transitions and bring all the clips together as one. Technology was the key piece of making our music video. Also, like I said previously we used technology to upload our project on Youtube. Specifically, I used my laptop to upload
Comments
Post a Comment