Creative Critical Reflection

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

    One of the main conventions of indie music videos is telling a story, which is why I chose to follow the same idea. I created a storyline that is easy to follow and aligns with the lyrics of the song. Creating this story was the most difficult part of the process because I had to make sure the story was completed in the assigned time frame. However, I did challenge some conventions by deciding to edit my video in a brighter and more colorful style. Most indie music videos use color but in darker tones. I decided to take a different route in order to represent the world seen by a child. The people that are most likely to identify with the music video are indie music lovers. Since indie music is based more on originality than having fame, the fans are similar. They are open to more interpretations of the same song, in hopes of learning something new. I also think music lovers in general can identify with the music video. Watching this video can be nostalgic and it may remind them of themselves.

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

    The music video engages with the audience through the storyline itself. The storyline is clear and easy to understand. The bright editing could also attract and engage audiences better. This is similar to when someone goes to a fair or carnival, everything is bright and colorful in order to draw in more people. My video would be distributed in multiple ways. It could be endorsed by the artists and shared on their social media pages and it could also be put on the artists websites. The video could also be put on YouTube and with monetization it would be put in the recommended section more often.

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

    Once again, I used iMovie to put this video together. However, I was planning on editing the color of my videos before putting everything together. I uploaded everything onto my computer but then realized I was not able to edit my clips directly on my computer. I had to edit the videos on my phone which was much more difficult since the screen was smaller. Once I finished editing, I re-uploaded the videos to my computer and put them in iMovie. However, since I had edited on my phone the quality size of the videos were too high for iMovie, so once again I had to move back to my phone. Thankfully, the clips worked perfectly on my phone. This project taught me to check the size of all my files before uploading to a certain editing software in order to avoid any setbacks in the future. I also learned how to shorten the time of my transitions. I had originally set them to three seconds but my video clips were being cut off. Overall, this project reinforced the editing skills that I had learned from previous projects.    

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

  For recording the scenes, I used my iPhone XR to record all shots. As far as hardware equipment I used my MacBook Air laptop. For editing, the software used was iMovie on my computer.  Unfortunately, when editing the videos, iMovie wasn't working because the videos were considered “high quality”. Therefore, I went back to my phone and used my camera roll editing skills.  I edited each video to shorten lengths and place them together. Also, I used my screen record feature on my phone to record the music from Spotify. Further I uploaded the video with the music in iMovie and embedded the video in order to detach audio. I then uploaded the finished video edited in my phone with all of my recordings.  Finally I combined the music and the video in iMovie to obtain final results.