Creative Critical Reflection

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

My music video challenged the conventions of a regular Christmas music video since there was a huge difference in budget. Usually, Christmas music videos are extravagant and include scenes with high-budget items like cool presents, expensive cars, exaggerated Christmas trees, etc. For my music video, I chose to record in my neighborhood. I did this for two reasons, partially because I wanted to give the video that cozy feeling of just being in a conventional neighborhood, and partially because I didn't have the budget to make my music video the common excessive Christmas music video, 

 

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

 My product engages with the audience using many things. First, my music video is told as a love story where a girl had her heart broken and later was fixed by her true love. Many people love a good happy ending love story so this gets the audience engaged easily. The audience is drawn into the story and makes them want to stay and find out what happens to the girl who got her heart broken. The interesting setting and storyline makes it impossible for the audience to not continue watching. Another way my product engages with the audience is through the bright lights and the song choice.I chose a very common Christmas song that many people are familiar with and happen to know the words too.

The song captures the attention of the audience and pushes them to listen more and maybe even sing along. Also, I included changes in the POV of the scenes. For example, a few of the scenes were in black and white for a flashback. This engages the audience because it gives them something to think about and shows them two different time periods that they can connect back to each other. My music video would be distributed as a YouTube video or on

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

My production skills developed greatly throughout this project. I experimented with new types of props, new settings. new camera angles and even learned how to use different parts of my editing app.

For this music video. I used more specific to the genre props and more thought-out props in comparison to my previous project. For example, I utilized more complex props ]like the heart and the box scene in this video. This prop went along with the storyline and helped explain the narrative in a cute and simple way. Another new prop and setting used was the car. For my last project, I had one set throughout the whole video. For this video. I used multiple different places. one of these places being the car. In my opinion, having multiple different settings made the video more entertaining to watch. This was also an improvement compared to my previous project since I experimented with new settings. Another skill I improved on this project was the use of different camera angles. For this project, I used a lot of the same angles from my last project, however, I did them right this time, and more professional than the last. One well-executed angle I used was the establishing shot of the car at the beginning with the heart and box on top. Overall, I think my production skills developed greatly throughout this project.

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

I used the same app that I used in the last project on this profect but went into more detail and used more features of the app. I chose to use the same app for this project due to its simplicity and convenience. I got good results from using iMovie last project, so I chose to use it again but utilize more attributes of the app. For this project, it was a music video, so at a point in the video. I wanted to have the characters lip-sync to the lyrics of the catchy Christmas song.

This means that later I would have to edit the lip-syncing to fit perfectly with the song and the people. This was really hard to match up and get the timings right. For the first few times of trying to do this I couldn't get it to work out. The video would delay and then the storyline would be all off. After working with iMovie for a little, I figured out how to match everything up.