Critical Reflection Questions - The Music Video
How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?
While choosing a song, my group and I already had an idea in our heads. While there are many genres that have songs about love and heartbreak, we chose a song in the pop-rock genre. We did thorough research, looking to artists like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Maroon 5 to see what they did for their music videos. Our product uses many of the conventions in the pop-rock genre. First of all, our music video follows a story. We use many components of mise-en-scene, including acting, costume, props, and set. Furthermore, we tried to use similar shots and camera angles to what one would see in other pop-rock music videos. The only thing we did differently was in editing, where we did a split screen. We hadn’t seen any other videos do this, but we felt as though it enhanced the story, so we did. A major social issue our video addressed was cheating. It is unfortunately common now, and we thought it would be interesting to make a video on what it could feel like for the people being cheated on.
How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Although the story-line throughout the music video is sad, we tried to keep a fun, and upbeat mood throughout the whole thing. To get the audience’s original attention, we chose to start with a scene of the girls talking about the “guys” they like. Then the music slowly comes in, which grabs the watcher’s attention. The concept of this video is also something a lot of people can relate to, so that alone engages the audience; however, we also include funny scenes to make the audience have a laugh. The last scene in the video, when Sabrina catches Charlize and him together, the girls chase him and “beat him up.” This scene is so silly it’s comedic. The best way to distribute it as a real media text would probably be on TikTok. TikTok is one of the most used apps in the world right now, mainly used by teenagers. “This Love” by Maroon 5 is a song that was popular throughout the current generation of teenagers’ childhoods, so that alone would make people interested in watching it. Because it’s such a short video, it’s more likely to do well. There is also a specific portion of people on TikTok that enjoy watching school project videos, so it could do well on that side of TikTok.
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
Throughout the entirety of the planning, filming, and editing processes of this project I was learning new skills. For example, I didn’t know how much research went into creating a music video. I learned about all the strategies to engage an audience, and what camera angles and editing techniques were commonly used in videos in this genre. Through planning and filming, I learned how we were going to make use of these strategies. During the filming process, I definitely had a major learning curve. At the start, I accidentally recorded horizontal instead of vertical, at bad angles, etc. But as we continued, I got better at it. I learned about what angles are good to display different things, and what kind of movement was better in what scenes. I made use of tracking shots, which I learned can make a scene much more interesting than just staying still. I also was able to develop my editing skills. Although I had used the editing software Movavi before, I had to use some different tools to make the music video. One of the tools I had to learn how to use was split screen, which we used to show the two girls writing in their diaries. I also had to learn how to split audio from video, add new audio, and make audio fade in. I had a huge learning curve throughout the whole process, and it truly was a very fun way to learn about production.
How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?
Although most professional music videos use professional cameras and other equipment to film, we didn’t have the luxury. Cameras are expensive, and as we are just teenagers, we couldn’t afford to buy one and didn’t know anyone who we could borrow one from. Instead, we used our basic phone cameras to record. Fortunately, the quality was not awful and we were able to get some pretty decent shots. We used a website called Blogger to blog. The decision to write our blogs on Blogger wasn’t ours, as it was mandatory for the whole class; however, the website is very intuitive and easy to use, so it wasn’t a bad thing. In terms of editing, we went a little outside of the norm. Unlike most of our classmates who used iMovie or Capcut, we decided to use an editing software called Movavi. This is a professional editing software that my dad already had, so we thought it was a good idea to make use of our resources. Although the difference between using this rather than simple apps appears small, the way we were able to make the audio fade in and get loud once the story started was something we probably couldn’t have done with Capcut. However, Charlize did edit some of the song using Capcut, but that was because she is more familiar with that app than Movavi. While there was a learning curve, I feel that making use of our resources like this definitely made the video better quality.
Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pjjFjNiFS6TIPNUAs7Om6_AFf5sZGVACyvLwyvvw0NY/edit?usp=sharing
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