Music Video Reflection

 For my music video, I used the conventions of my genre to my advantage. I used the cliché love and relationship related conventions of the pop music genre and incorporated that into my theme. Some of these conventions include a more feminine aesthetic and theme, looking and singing directly to the camera, and a storyline which revolves around a love story. Although my video doesn’t necessarily represent any specific social groups, my target audience were young woman, which I related to my “issue” of unrequited love, which was my theme for the video. This is a social issue which I wanted to represent because it not only relates to me, but a large population of people with a similar demographic to me as well. Additionally, the fact that it came from personal experience made it quite easier to portray a storyline in the video. Something that makes my product engage with audience is it's relatability. Firstly, the theme and storyline of my music video may come across as relatable to a younger audience. Additionally, the production of my product comes off as realistic and something that my audience could feel like they could recreate. The product would also be something that would be more realistic to view on a phone or handheld device rather than something such as a television. Because of this, I would most likely distribute my video on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram reels. These apps offer fun and often humorous content to young audiences, which I think would fit perfectly with my product and its goals. My production skills developed because I had to use many new techniques and conduct research to execute my product. I was constantly researching and combing through similar products to find production techniques and examples which worked for me. My initial research was in my ‘idea’ phase of production. In this, I watched a large variety of music videos within my genre until I reached a select few which had certain features that I planned on incorporating throughout my product. Watching so many videos also helped me find which features all the videos had in common, as well as what made certain ones stand out and how this aided or limited the message which they were attempting to convey. My next step was to create my storyline. I went into the project knowing what general idea I wanted to display, but in production I learned how to properly display my ideas through creating a storyboard. One of the most difficult areas in this specific process was the limitation of my poor artistic skills, as well as making each image and its description as specific as possible. One change I would've made in this step if I were to redo it would be to write the specific lyrics as well as the description, which I learned would have made my filming process exponentially more effective. My next step was filming. I learned a lot about production in this process. One thing I learned was the importance of paying attention to details. For example, I only had two costumes for my shoot, but the storyline takes place over three days, so I should have brought one more outfit to change into in the middle of filming. Because I had many realistic limitations, there were several features which I discussed in my blog that were simply not feasible to execute in my final product. One of which was location. I had several location changes throughout my process, but I ended up filming most of the scenes in a parking lot, which ended up working out quite well, especially for my ending. The last process of production was editing. Although this was by far the most difficult step due to my personal inexperience, it was also a huge learning process which taught me many tips which I will use in future projects. A huge limitation I had was only being able to use the free version of CapCut. Besides this, there were several editing tools which were available to me that helped me immensely. I used the free transitions, which worked effectively, but I plan on using smoother transitions next time, perhaps in another editing app. I also learned how to layer sounds and videos, but this was unfortunately not available for my specific song due to copyright issues. Another technique I used was increasing the speed of my video, which aided in shortening time as well as creating a more upbeat high tempo aesthetic in my productI integrated technologies both in my filming and editing process. In my filming process I used my phone because I did not have access to better technologies, camera wise. But I did learn several setting which made the final look more professional looking. Firstly, I set my camera to HD rather than 4K, for a clearer look. I also set the camera to 60 frames per second, which produces clearer motion shots and make it simpler to speed up or slow down in editing if needed. In my editing process, I used the editing app CapCut to create my video. I primarily used it due to its easy to learn and beginner friendly format as well as my generally positive experiences in the past. The last technology which I used in my process was Vimeo, to help embed my video into Blogger. This was by far the simplest option as all I had to do was upload the video, then embed the code given to me. I also chose Vimeo over YouTube due to the fact that many of my peers were having issues uploading due to copyrighting rights.