AICE Media Studies Music Video Reflection Questions By: Joshua Olin P.3

How does your product use or challenge conventions? The song we used for our music video was, “Slide” by Calvin Harris. The genre of this song is a mix of funk, R&B, and pop. Music videos for these genres typically consist of people having fun and hanging out with each other which is exactly what our video was it was just a bunch of friends hanging out with each other.

How does it represent social groups or issues Our music video does not feature people from a large variety of backgrounds. It features two white males, one white female, and one Hispanic female. This represents social groups as not being confined to one sole race or ethnicity, as the people shown in the video are not all of the same ethnicity and still are able to socialize normally.

How did your product engage with audiences? My project engages with teenagers as it features a song popular among that age group. Furthermore, it features teenagers hanging out with other teenagers which further appeals to this age group as this is typically what people of this age group enjoy doing.

How would your product be distributed as a real media text? My product would be distributed as a real media text through YouTube because it was made for fun and for others to enjoy. The easiest way to do so is for free, on a service that most everyone has access to, which is in this case in YouTube.

How did production skills develop throughout this project? My production skills greatly improved throughout the making of this project. For one, I mastered the use of the camera and became adept at deciding which camera angle would best suit each idea we wanted to film. Also, I became more experienced in coordinating the actions of our actors throughout filming.

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project? The software I used to create this video was Pinnacle Studios. We used this to edit our entire music video into the final product. The hardware I used included the Microsoft computers in Ms. Cat’s room, which we used to dump our raw footage onto and edit, the mouse and keyboard with which I used to control the computer, and an Canon HD CMOS camera with which we recorded our entire music video. I also used a Magnus tripod to film shots that needed to be from a certain angle or very still. Finally, the online aspects I used in making this project included WordPress, with which we blogged through the process of making our music video, Apple Music, with which we found the song we wanted to use and FLVTO to convert the song from its YouTube form to and mp3.