Critical Creative Reflection.
CCR
Critical Creative Reflection
How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?
Our music video for "Best Day of My Life" challenges conventions by featuring a cast of two students of diverse backgrounds. Displaying two young children overwhelmed with the stress of class, sports, work, and the responsibilities of life. Despite the struggles these students are overwhelmed with, they are able to break away, even if it's just for a day, to have fun, and have the “Best day of their life”. The aim of us challenging these conventions is to break away from the convention music video norms of our genre that focus on a single narrative. By doing so, the video not only challenges the stereotypes, but also illustrates the idea of overwhelmed people, not just kids, taking a day off to celebrate the good things in life. Whether it’s with family or friends, the point of our video is to remind everyone to break away from the social norm, take a break, and have fun! Our music video used setting, costumes, and scenarios that relate with our genre because it fit with the idea we were trying to convey. Music videos in our genre are fast paced, vibrant, and happy. Which is everything we wished to have in a video focused on being the “Best Day of Our Life”
How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Our music video engages audiences, young and old, through its positive narrative. Viewers are placed into a world of happiness and freedom in which they don’t want to leave. Placed with a narrative of a couple of kids breaking away from the social norms, having fun, and feeling true freedom, viewers have no choice but to be entranced in the video. In the same way people watch their favorite movies or TV shows, implanting themselves into the experience, getting emotional for fictional characters, and acting as though they themselves are affected by these fictional events. We sought out to create the same effect of the audience implanting themselves into the experience. People may not be able to break free from the social norms themselves, but they could experience how it would be by implanting themselves in these two boys. Social media platforms would essentially become an extension of the video, by creating trends and challenges related to the song. we establish a dynamic relationship with the audience. These trends turn the passive viewers, implanting themselves into the music video, into active participants. This distribution strategy requires a throughout planned release on platforms, with a synchronized social media campaign. A challenge for this music video could be having people go out and record themselves having a day of fun, whether it's jet-skiing like in our video, or another thing the viewer enjoys, viewers getting out and enjoying themself is the main objective.
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
My production skills developed drastically throughout this project. Whether it was using new equipment like the drone, or old equipment like the cameras, I learned many new production skills throughout the production process. First, the drone.To keep it simple, the drone was terrifying. We used a DJI mini 4 pro, which I didn't buy warranty for because I had no reason to keep a thousand dollar drone. This made it all the more terrifying to use. I spent weeks before the actual filming of the video just practicing flying the drone, getting used to its sensitivity, technology, and flight capabilities. This made me comfortable with flying the drone, and I think in the end we got a couple really good shots that massively expanded the quality of our music video. Next, the cameras. I recently have been really into photography, taking photos for the school team, and occasionally short videos. But I have never taken long, fast paced videos in the aspect needed for the music video. It took a lot of trial and error before I figured it out, but I finally got the hang of keeping the subject in frame, and smoothly transitioning between the subjects when needed. Finally, the skill that improved the most for me throughout this project was editing. I had some prior experience using Adobe Lightroom, Premier Pro, and Photoshop. But I never really used them on this level before. I got to experiment with tools like crop, blur, perspective, and many other things I never even thought possible before this project. I do wish I experimented more with the transitions, but with the fast paced speed of the video, no transitions made sense. Cutting fast, on beat, and constantly throughout the entire video just; “worked”.
How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?
Technological integration in the music video involves the use of advanced camera equipment like drones and high quality cameras for high-quality visuals. Specifically with the drone, we used its 4k camera, in addition to its stability to get a high quality establishing shot of the rooftop we were on for our final scene. In addition to the drone, we used a Nikon camera on a tripod, to get an eye-level angle of our balcony scene, with the skyline in the background. We also used both of our phone cameras on tripods to get multiple angles of this final shot. The second most utilized technology of our music video had to be the drone. We used the drone for birds-eye view shots on the jet-ski, tracking shots when driving around the jet-ski, which we never ended up using. Additionally we used it for some high angle shots and tilt shots of us on the beach running into the water, and walking on the beach. Finally, the most utilized technology by far was Adobe. I used Adobe for everything. From cropping videos to make everything the same aspect ratio, to changing the brightness, contrast, and vibrance of clips to make everything fit together with the positive vibe of the “Best Day of My Life”, all of it was done on Adobe software. I used Adobe Lightroom to individually edit the aspect ratio, brightness, and contrast of each video. Then when I was finished with this process, I exported each clip onto my computer hard drive. I then imported each clip into Adobe Premiere Pro, in which I combined all the videos, edited the length so they matched each other, and matched the transitioning scenes to the music.
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