Critical Reflection Questions

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

For my film I did it on a song which can connect to everyone in a sense of feeling. There are millions of songs that have been made and each one of the song writes strives to be the best whether its's country or pop. This also goes with the music video of the song. Everyone wants the music video to not only have the same energy as it would have in the song but, be something you can watch or replay in your head every time you hear the song. Most if not all music video's you see a lot of different angles which make it look and makes you feel another way towards the video. This song wasn't a song the you just rhyme words like rap and not saying rap doesn't tell a story in a lot of the song but raps usually don't tell a story like the song we used. This song can be compared to Memories from Maroon 5 and See you again from Wiz Khalifa ft Charlie Puth. These three songs tell a story and people enjoy song likes these. Most teens listen to rap, in my opinion and I also listen a lot to rap but what I also like doing is switching up and hearing some of these songs that tell a story. Liliana and I search for a good song for a whole day there were too many to choose from. It was mostly harder for me since I only listen to rap or Spanish music and obviously, we couldn't use a Spanish song because then we would've had to translate that and it would've been more work, since usually translating from Spanish to English or vice versa it doesn't always sound or feel the same. When discussing how we would go about shooting our music video, looking at conventions of genre, styles of music video we used and showing social issues was important for us. Conventions are important when creating media texts as it is easier for the audience to decode the text. All music videos can be filled differently some outside or some inside, it all depends on how you want it to look. Mine was part outside and part inside we just wanted to have both of them included. All songs and artist compete who is better but they all won't win every day. One song could be trending one day and then the next another song steps up to first place. The song that we chose is deserving of us making a music video for it and I really started liking to song afterwards. Most angles we used were wide shots and some close.

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

This music video will mostly be on YouTube, but you can also stream this on many other platforms. The target audience that I am aiming for is everyone, I want everyone to hear and watch this music video. This song is made for all ages and anyone could like it. If you're a parent and has a song you could like this song because it reminds you of your son, same thing with moms. Our target audience will have a psychographic mood, active audience and will be able to identify with the music video and its message. If we were to pick a product company to produce our film, it would probably, we TuneCore because we would get to keep 100% of our sale revenue. Also, on TuneCore it's easy to distribute music and quickly to get it out to the public. This music video would be released in all types of platforms but mainly YouTube. The artist of the song could a lot put the word out by tweeting about it or posting the music video on his Instagram or Facebook account. This could work by using posters highlighting the message of my music video to spread the word out more. Before spreading the word and engage audiences we have to decide to use a social networking site which like I said either Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Recently Twitter has gained popularity and would be the first place that we should chose to spread the word. Facebook can be the second option because Facebook pages allow you to sponsor your post and build audiences, which also helps in marketing certain products in an effective way. This is one of the highest marketing strategies for this music video. This plan makes more people watch it which also means it becomes more popular, not only will this help us do to the top of trending, but people could purchase the song and companies could pay us to use our song for a commercial they need. Just like Facebook Twitter also has this marketing strategy but not as good as Facebook or it's how you think about it. You see Facebook throws this at you when you buy a sponsor from them or an ad and the more money you put into the ad the more people will see it. And not only that but Facebooks algorithm will find the perfect audience for you causing the song to get more popular. It's almost like they force you to this. Now Twitter on the other hand has a trending page which people can see what the latest craze is, and what people from all over the world are talking about. This meaning you even get your song onto there by tweeting it everyone or if not, most people will see it and play it. Obviously not everyone will like it, but most people could or will. There are many places to stream the music video whether you chose a different path could be better or not but I think this strategy is good. 

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

Having this to be my second filming project for this class I say I my skills have actually improved mostly with coming up on what we need to do before filming. I didn't really feel nervous it was mostly just a feeling of calmness because thinking about it why get nervous when you're learning but talking about this you could be nervous but not because of learning but you could think that you can't do something when you can. I was proud of myself that I'm improving on my projects and the more I do them the better I understand them and the more ideas I get on future ones too. Like throughout this music video I thought of some good ideas that I could do in the future if I got this project again. I couldn't execute them into this project while I was thinking about them while doing it because we didn't have time to change many things since time was short for both of us. I think something I would do different is try and do everything before a trip. During the week of Thanksgiving break I went to Colombia to be with my family and my partner Liliana also went on a trip. Even though we decided to do everything after break I feel like it would've been best to do at least part of it before we both left. The editing took place on her laptop and I think it was a better decision because she was more comfortable on her own laptop, so I just went with it. Also, I know I've said this before which was that I wanted to find or buy an editing software and I found a really good one but, for some reason it wouldn't download properly. When it did download it wouldn't open which is so weird but we did it on her laptop so that was a good decision. Finding that song was honestly the hardest part. I was sitting there for the longest time. I'm still improving on that but now I have a better understanding on how and what to do to find the song. Also, another think to note is that always try to use a song that you research to make sure that it isn't copy witted or a song that you can find a lot easier. That should've been the first step we did for choosing the song, trying to look for it and getting it into the editing software. This would've made our editing so much faster and smoother. But we all are learning (the more you know).

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

For this music video project, we used iMovie and It was a good decision because one it's free and two mine wouldn't download it's best the we used her computer and used that editing software. For mac users you can't really go wrong with iMovie because it just comes with the computer. Well, you do have to download it still but that doesn't take too long and it's a lot better than Cute Cut which was the editing software I used for my commercial video. We didn't really have to use photoshop or anything like that It was all in the transitions we used and the way we filmed. Everything came together and I'm happy about that because one I'm learning, and two editing is getting easier and easier every time and so is filming. There are great editing software's out there that include it all but those are for people that dedicate their life and time to editing like YouTubers and movie editors. I right now if I were to pay for one it would be like paying it and that's it it's all mine not those that you have to pay monthly or yearly those are expensive. I wouldn't also say expensive but if you were to buy them you would have to be making money off of editing in order to make use off of those software's. If your just like me and do this for school, then buying one shouldn't be the option unless you don't pay monthly or yearly you just buy it and that's it. Another thing to note is when you are getting a free one get it from the app store. Here's the story behind this. When looking for editing software's there are websites where they make you add extensions and it's free but then when you're done adding the extensions you have to pay. I look out for this now because not only did it happen to me when I was trying to add the song to the editing software it also happened when I was searching for a better editing software. Other than that, I am happy with my project and how everything turned out.