Music Video CCR

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PT94q3pi-ad0WViu-VWEiQkBmdr_Y031DGMO1e45By8/edit?usp=sharing

 1. How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?  While creating this music video my group and I consistently looked back at other music videos in the same genre to grab inspiration. Due to this our finished product mostly used existing conventions and a similar filming style to videos within the genre. There were several things we saw from other pieces of media that we wanted to incorporate into our video. The main similarity between our video and other videos within the genre is the editing and shots. We saw a lot of distance filming in other videos and decided to make the majority of our video in the same way. For example, in our closing scene we have a wide tracking shot which switches to a point of view shot and then fades out. We also took aspects like the physical actions of the people in the music video. There was a lot of tapping to the beat of the song, so we decided to try our best to include that. We did also challenge conventions a bit by including one main actor to tell the full story rather than a big group. Now, when it comes to social groups and issues, there's not an exact group that the video targets. However, the storyline for the video addresses the issue of loneliness and abandonment. The whole point of the music video is showing one friend being outcasted and ignored by their friend group. This also challenges conventions as it is a unique concept that I have not seen addressed much within the genre.  

2. How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text? 
While creating this video I wanted to do my best to tell a story as that would be the most effective way of getting an audience engaged. I did not have the benefit of having access to a big budget or really good editing, so I had to mostly rely on implying the meaning of the video. It was a difficult line to balance as I didn’t want to make it very confusing and just bore the audience, but I also wanted to avoid directly saying what was happening in the video. I believe me and my group developed a story that toed the line effectively. We made it clear what was going on and what we were trying to portray in the video, but it is up to the audience to fill in the gaps to fully understand the storyline as it isn’t spoon-fed directly to you. We also left the emotions of the main character up to interpretation. While, in the story, we did make it clear that the character in the video was frustrated, we never explain if they are feeling sad, defiant, or angry. This allows the audience to connect the story with their own experiences and decide for themselves what they think the character is feeling. On top of this a big way of getting the audience engaged with the video is to just simply have a catchy song and, in my opinion, Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand was the perfect choice. For distribution, I would likely target social media to try and get as much attention for the video as possible. Specifically, I would upload the video the YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and then promote the video.  
 
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project? 
Through the course of this project my abilities, while still beginner level, have advanced greatly. At the beginning of the project, we were instructed to research similar videos within the same genre of our song to understand the conventions and help with our film making. While researching I was not only building my research and analyzing skills but also the research was helping me look closer at each individual element of a music video. I was analyzing shot for shot different editing styles, editing techniques, and camera angles. I was trying to think about why the director chose to structure the video in their own way and was able to translate that into my own project. After researching it was my job to put together a rough draft and work with my group to come up with an idea, we all liked. I had to compromise and change my original idea several times which helped my creativity and adaptability when coming up with the story line. Another big factor where I improved is working with others. My group had a lot of issues with scheduling and creative differences which did get frustrating at times, but I was always able to come up with a compromise, which is crucial in producing a video with other people. While filming and editing I took a lot of time to slowly learn how to implement the ideas I had but through that process I got much better in making decisions with filming and how to structure and put together a project through editing.  
 
4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project? 
While making this project there were several choices to make about what tools to use in the creation of the project. The first time that I had to decide on hardware was when we were preparing to film. My original plan was to buy a camera gimbal meant for iPhones. I wanted to use a gimbal to avoid issues like having a shaky camera as gimbals are used to stabilize the camera. They also have several features I wanted to utilize to help with things like pans and tracking shots. In the end I decided against it as it was too much money for an amateur school project. I also looked into using a professional camera to have a higher picture quality but the only one I could borrow was missing its capture card, so I had to resort to filming on my iPhone. The next big choice to make was what software to use while editing. I looked at Filmora, Adobe, and CapCut and tried to pick which one would work the best for my video. In the end I picked CapCut as it is simple to use, and I didn’t have to learn much to use it. There was also a couple of small choices to make like where to get the background noises and how to get the music file and for that I just found YouTube videos that had what I needed and used a YouTube to MP3 website to convert all the sounds I needed into MP3 files.