Critical Reflection Questions - Music Video Project

1. My product uses conventions by mimicking camera movements and angles that can be seen in music videos. For instance, a medium shot can be found in many music videos. I used this in my scene by my group members and I setting up the camera in a way where you could only see me from the waist up. This is a great shot as it focuses on the actor yet shows a some context on what the actor is doing or maybe even how they are feeling. Another convention I used was posing and lip-syncing in front of the camera. In many music videos, there are a lot of scenes where the actors are singing to the song while looking like perfection. My group and I tried to exhibited that in my music video; however, we chose to not lip-sync for half of the lyrics and lacked a bit more candid moments as we looked into the cameras many times. This somewhat correlates with how I challenged some conventions. Since we were a bit less traditional, in a sense, it seems as though the focus of the music video was more on the actors and less rather than the song itself. This is because the actors would not normally make the music video seem like an ad for a model agency and I feel like we may come off that way in our video to some people. I believe it seems this way because we tried to give everyone their part in a fair way that feature everyone and their persona in a beautiful way. My product represents social groups or issues by including actors of multiple races and ethinicities. This shows that everyone can be a beautiful, musical icon. More specifically, the ''success'' in a particular music genre does not apply to just one skin-color. This would appeal to the audience, generally the youth of today, that is in support of equally in every shape and form.

2. My product engages with audiences as it provides a imagine of beautiful people that come in different colors and from different cultures singing to the same song. It is the representation of powerful, diverse young women that, despite stereotypical differences, they all sing the same song. It symbolizes how none of the actors are that different. This further symbolizes how the people in this world as a whole are not that different, as we can all sing the same song. This feeling of powerful youth could cause the audience, which would normally be other young people/adults, to react positively to it as it resonates with them and their views on equality and woman-empowerment. My product would be distributed as a real media text by appearing as a Youtube video for the song, as well as an ad on Youtube and on television. Any possible platform that includes music videos, and that the youth partake in, would be ideal.

3. My production skills developed during this project as there were certain changes that I would consider to be big. For one, I had to work with other people that were directing and brainstorming for this video as well. So far, I have only ever had to deal with myself, dictate what I need to do and how I need to act. This time, I was thinking of how all four of us were going to act, as well as taking instructions and getting help. The transition was not as hard as I was already thinking ahead of how I wanted this team process to go; however, filming a video with a team of people instead of doing it solo was a bit different than what I was used to. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the process of filming this music video, even when it was awkward acting in front of others in the beginning.

4. I integrated technologies in this project by filming the scenes on one of my group members´ iPhone 11, as well as my phone for the individual parts. We all chose her phone since we felt the quality was better. After filming, the same group member sent me the video she had edited so far. I then emailed the shots to my iPad as I like to edit videos there. This allowed me to dump the footage onto iMovie. There were still some individual parts we needed to film separately. After filming and receiving those clips, I went to Prequel to place a filter that would tie the whole video together. I proceeded to dump them into the missing parts of the original video and I edited them into our preferred music video.