CCR blog

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

My friends and I chose to defy genre traditions for our music video. During the research process, I looked at various rap songs' music videos, specifically those by the same artist (Tyler, The Creator). Because Tyler, the Creator, is such a well-known artist, my initial assumption was that I could base our music video on his general themes. Tyler has a very unique way of producing music videos with surprising outfits and outlandish setups. For example, in the music video “See You Again” Tyler has a set on a naval ship and a small boat at sea, so the idea of trying to make our video similar to Tyler’s music videos was abandoned. That would ultimately be unattainable for my group. We didn't have any money to spend on costumes, sets, or activities. This is why we decided to focus on the fundamentals of our relationships. Friendship. Rather than creating a video about money, celebrity, or extravagant lifestyles, we ultimately opted to make a video about our friendship. A video in which we laugh, eat, converse, and generally have a good time in each other's company. Based on the study materials, I had the impression that the video would portray us as something we are not. I hope our video communicated that breath of fresh air. I believe the ultimate product is something you would not see in a music video of the genre, and I believe that is what makes it wonderful in its own light.

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

Our video consists of a very lighthearted tone, which gives the audience a refreshing feel that other videos might not contain. For instance, many people's music videos contain drugs, vulgar speech, and inappropriate actions. Lots of videos in our generation have this atmosphere that can be seen as cool and entertaining, but in my opinion it’s very outplayed. I would love to see more videos in a positive light that anyone can enjoy and won’t have to be censored to a particular category of people. I believe our video gives the look we were going for and is enjoyable for anyone and everyone. Others might love videos with vulgar speech and actions, and that’s fine. I think our video sheds light on a different side of music that isn’t popularly seen as often anymore. Not to say that people do not make lively videos anymore because I've definitely come across them, but they can always be shown more than they are in this day and age. People do commonly mistake rap music to be the primary genre for inappropriate style videos, but lots of pop artists do the same thing as well. Many genres nowadays go with what’s popular and don’t take time to think outside the box, which I believe our video executed. If this were a professional video, I would definitely post it on YouTube over other places such as Instagram or TikTok due to those places containing the majority of short clips. People would most likely not watch the entire video because they are used to the short clips.

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

To me, I think it’s best to plan out your music video than to go on with the flow. For example, a storyboard is good to have and very helpful if made. Our storyboard helped us a lot with the production of our music video due to planning out the scene and what we would like to see and execute. Even though we didn’t do our music video to the tea of the storyboard, we still used many ideas that were represented on it. Another helpful resource was coming up with a planning sheet, this helped us figure out when, where, and what we were filming. We also had backup ideas and backup filming days that were useful because we didn’t film the days we planned and also had to change location a couple of times. The planning sheet helped organize us even when things weren’t going to plan. Even though we didn’t use conventions from the artist's music video, watching the artist's music videos helped us know what direction we weren’t going in. In my opinion, I believe the research we did was the most helpful in producing this music video because we got ideas on what shots to do and what we wanted the editing of the video to look like. The point of the research was to set direction and figure out the genre of the music video while studying the conventions to see what would be accessible to do for our own music video. Without doing research, our video wouldn’t have come out how it did and be as great as it was. 

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

We opted for the simplicity of our phones during our video production project, relying on the advanced features of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, specifically its cinematic mode designed for professional video recording. The familiarity of using a phone camera, especially with the impressive capabilities of the iPhone, outweighed the learning curve associated with traditional cameras. The device delivered exceptional video quality, meeting our expectations and ensuring a satisfying outcome. Our choice of editing software, Cap Cut, was driven by the expertise of one group member who had prior experience using the app for individual video editing. Because they were already familiar with Cap Cut's features, they were able to edit in a fluid and fast manner, resulting in the best potential results for our collaborative effort. We used Blogger due to its partnership with Google, which made it easy to upload our YouTube videos onto our blogs. Blogger is also one of the simpler apps to use, making it easy to document our progress.  Overall, we took the more accessible routes to make our music video, not because we were lazy but because we preferred to use tools that we were aware of. This helped us so much because making our music video was a breeze and didn’t put any stress on us at all. In the future, I will continue to use the apps that are well-known to me because they give good results without any hassle. ccr