Preliminary task 2-Critical Reflection Hunter Simon Period 3 11/14/16

Using Conventions My group used conventions by using many of the same shot types and camera angles that were seen in the videos from our research. For example, in all four videos researched, two shots were used repeatedly to show a bond between the two characters. In our film, we used many two shots to give off a feeling of love between the two characters. Low angles were used in the original Boyfriend video to make the male figure look stronger and bigger, which appeals to the female. We used two low angles in our project.

Challenging Conventions Although we used many conventions from our research, we also challenged them. In the music videos researched, the lighting was dark to help portray the meaning of the video which was love, but I felt high key lighting did a better job at giving off this meaning so we filmed our video during the daytime outside. We also concluded from our research that many medium close-ups were used to see the emotions of the character, but I felt emotion could be seen just as well by seeing the actions of the characters.

Social Groups/Issues At one time or another, whether you are a child or an adult, you will go through a stage of loving someone who does not necessarily love you back the same way. My music video represents the issue of tough love and how people react to it. Throughout the course of the video, the male character was trying relentlessly to talk to the female and get her to love him. At some points he does a good job of this, for instance when she holds his hand as they walk, and sometimes not so much, like when she pushes him off the playground. This back-and-forth mood was taken from the music video As Long As You Love Me. At some points, him and the girl were being very romantic, but while her father was around, they would barely make eye contact.

Audience engagement The audience for our music video is teenagers in love, and the video does a great job of engaging the target audience. The characters in the video were teenagers, so the audience could relate well to how the characters were acting. The video could relate to anyone in love, but the main audience is teenagers because they are the people who mainly act this way in relationships. The setting also engages teenagers because adults do not really hang out on playgrounds, so this setting would appeal more to teenage couples.

Video Distribution As a real media text, our music video would be distributed via free online media services such as Youtube, and also on paid services such as Tidal. The internet has taken over the music industry and people rarely purchase CD’s at the store or single songs/videos on iTunes, so the most views would be from posting the video on Youtube. Many paid streaming services are becoming popular such as Apple Music and Tidal, so signing a deal with one or more of these companies would bring in lots of revenue.

Production skills My production skills majorly developed throughout this project. Before filming, I owned a Nikon D5200 but I only used it to take pictures and did not even know t was capable of taking videos. At first I used automatic focus to take the videos, but by the end, I was learning to take videos with manual focus, but I do not have it anywhere near mastered.

Integrating technologies My group used a very wide variety of equipment to make our music video the best we could. The cinematic software we used to edit our video the first time around is called Adobe Premiere Pro CC and the program we used to edit the re-filmed video was iMovie. My group got the audio file of the song from YouTube and converted it to an MP3 file. To film our music video we used my camera, which is a Nikon D5200, but to refilm, my camera was not available, so we used Mr. Callovi’s Canon Rebel T5i, as well as a Sony tripod and a grip also loaned to us by Mr. Callovi. I feel very comfortable now with the different editing software platforms, and I also feel like I am much better at filming now than I was before.