Music Video CCR

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

    I believe that our product challenges a stigma that teens can't work themselves into exhaustion. Though I don't see most of that stigma around my generation much, I can see people born before my generation seeing it. Each generation changes drastically, and each person has their own problems that people before them may not fully comprehend. Assuming that, our product represents the social issue of being in a repeating exhaust and tense scenario every day. Many people, ranging from any age, I feel, have gone through some type of intense stress since the pandemic has started (and before, possibly) and because of the repeated lockdowns, we are confined to our homes stuck following a routine. I feel that many students understand the feeling of exhaustion due to the immense workload they may be receiving and having no variety in their life due to the pandemic. I am experiencing this, and I know some of my friends are experiencing this as well. When you look at social media, there are many posts containing these stressful feelings. We are being worked into exhaustion, with no time for ourselves and return to normalcy. Our product begins with my group members and I living and doing our daily tasks with no energy as if it was drained from us. Throughout the duration of the video, we slowly find time for ourselves and we have one moment of peace in a continuous cycle of stress. Our video represents this.

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

    Our product would mostly engage with audiences born during my generation as I can see our music video relating to the problems that many people might have. As a real media text, I see this music video appearing on social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and FaceBook. These social media platforms have features where you can post a minute-long video (or longer). More so, a video on these social media apps would be accessible to many people, as opposed to cable TV or commercials on television, where it might not have great accessibility. I do not see this video appearing on cable TV or streaming sites as it is not appropriate if it was there. Its duration is too long for a commercial and too short for something you'd see on streaming sites such as Netflix or Hulu. 

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

    My production skills improved greatly since my commercial project. I learned how to use camera angles better so our project's message can be conveyed in a more adept way. I believe I mostly improved on my pre-production and production skills. My group and I created a plan that best fit our schedules and after brainstorming our ideas, I created the storyboard. During production, through trial and error, since I redid my scenes, I learned how to make my shots make sense and how to meticulously plan and place objects and myself for maximum efficiency and to make it look well in the video. I learned how to place my phone as I was using it to record in different areas for different angles As for my post-production skills, I believe that I have improved a little, but not as much as I would hope. As mentioned in my previous blog, we could not do 2 shots that we planned due to miscommunication. I was hoping to do those scenes but had to replace them with a black background and text. If I had done those scenes, I feel it would be safe to assume my editing skills have improved, but since I had it, I cannot with confidence say that they have. Editing for our project was greatly done by group members, Nikaliyah and Perla, and I had to piece it all together and make it look nice. If I had to take away a skill I learned during post-production, I would say it is coloring. I feel I did a nice job on that.

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

    For our convenience and efficiency, my group members and I felt it would be better to use Video Star (which is an iOS app) to edit rather than a computer program as one of our group members did not always have access to a computer, and since we recorded our shots on mobile devices, it would be easier to import and export through said mobile devices. We all had access to Video Star and enough of its features to create, piece together, and export a video of our liking. Video Star comes with many features and accessibilities that made editing our music video easier. We taught each other how to import videos into the project, put them together to make it look like what we planned, and export the video and send it to the group chat we made for this project. We even tried to do transitions, but through experimenting, none fit for our project and we left it alone as it looked best. On my part, I made a coloring different from the commercial I did, as that one yielded a creepy and dark vibe. We envisioned a calm video, so I tried my best at creating a warm coloring. I did this using Video Star's transform and custom coloring feature. I felt that adding coloring was not enough on my part, so I added the lyrics to try and add dynamism to our video. I also did this with Video Star's multilayer and custom text feature.