Music Video - Critical Creative Reflection
Link to document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OBDvf01qB954cjyt4wOMdKxOVawnoJrfM8FqoeAr7rM/view?usp=sharing
How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social issues or groups?
In the film, the fairy does an excellent job of portraying that our society must be considerate and aware of nature and how we interact with its resources, knowing that they are scarce. She does this by helping the surrounding nature, waving her wand over bushes to bring new flowers to life, and in that way, helping accelerate the development of the natural resources of the tree trail.
The film also addresses the issue of social media obsession and misuse. Character 1 portrays how society has developed this obsession without accounting for the repercussions of posting the picture of the fairy on a social media platform. Character 1 then realizes that it is not necessarily the best idea to do so, and instead, helps the fairy by breathing new life into the tree trail. These lessons about social media and the environment not only extend from the fictional universe of the film but also extend to the real world, as it is now the norm for a great majority to post content without thinking about the consequences or only to get likes or to become viral.
Although there is no dialogue in the film, the message is transmitted through the actions and decisions of the two characters and the comments on the social media posts. In this way, the film not only addresses the social issues mentioned but also challenges conventions, as various educational films have several instances of dialogue between characters throughout it, but this film is still able to execute the concept of teaching a message to others only using the interactions in it without dialogue.
How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
While choosing what to produce, I settled on a project in which I would portray a young toddler fairy that appears on a tree trail that has lost all the flowers and restores its life by using her magical wand. The base topic is appealing to various age groups that prominently associate their interests in nature, nature conservation, fairytales, mystical creature stories, and family-focused films. The audience will be engaged by watching how nature is restored and the message of conservation. In another instance, audiences will also appreciate the striking design of the fairy’s dress and the portrayed magic of the fairy bringing life to the bushes by making them flower. Overall, the product is produced in a manner that is safe and entertaining for all audiences, including children.If this was a film where the entire production was done professionally and for profit, both the production (including the use of high-end equipment) and distribution processes would differ heavily than in this case, as this is a school project that does not fit the definition stated above. Therefore, the distribution will take place on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Blogger, and Instagram. If this was a professional film, it could be considered parallel to how Pixar (currently) releases 6–8-minute short films on parent company streaming service Disney+. The opportunity would exist to create an exclusivity deal with streaming service operators like Amazon and Netflix.
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
My production skills improved as I learned valuable lessons from positive and negative experiences during the process and gained knowledge for future productions. I realized that I had some deficiencies in skills that are important to produce a film. However, I learned from and overcame these deficiencies, and as a result, there are some lessons I learned from the production of the music video project that I believe is worth mentioning in the critical creative reflection.
Starting with the positives, I condensed the technology and demonstrated that I could create the film without needing dedicated professional gear, tripods, gimbals, or expensive DSLR cameras. Instead of professional equipment, I used an iPhone to film the entire video. Blackmagic Camera enhanced the filming process by enabling the preview of LUTs right on the camera before post-production editing takes place and the ability to manually adjust settings that would have not been adjustable if the stock iOS camera app had been used.
However, it is worth noting that I learned that I need to improve in predicting the feasibility of certain aspects of production. In the earlier stages, I had to switch the song since I realized that the one I had chosen was just because there was potential for an action film, without realizing how unrealistic the storyline would be. I then noticed how I would not be able to execute the film without needing technological and human resources that I did not count on, so instead I chose a song that allowed me to use the resources I had or was able to find and was able to produce the fairytale film. At the same time, I learned that a production requires proper planning of various aspects, including the actors needed and availability of all of them and the production team at a set time, as some scenes had to be changed because a handful of the actors in “Character Group 1” in an earlier planning iteration were unavailable to attend the production of the short music film.
Preliminary preparation was made at all stages for the use of technology before the start of the project, and all technology was used in a linear order. From planning to the finished product, the product went through various stages using different technologies.
Preliminary preparation was made at all stages for the use of technology before the start of the project, and all technology was used in a linear order. From planning to the finished product, the product went through various stages using different technologies.
These technologies helped plan, shoot, manage, transport, edit, and facilitate various aspects of the production, leading to the export of the final video.
Various blogs related to the production of the film were posted to the course blog, maintained through a cloud-based blogging service from Google called Blogger. The storyboard was digitally made on Figma, a UI/UX vector design app, to create the near-exact camera source and then screenshotted onto the storyboard blog. From there, the digitally created storyboard was used as a tool to assist with the filmmaking of the video. The video was filmed on Apple’s iPhone 13, one of the many smartphone cameras with stunning video output. Rather than using the stock iOS camera app, the software used was a third-party camera software from Blackmagic Design. The clips were then moved from the iPhone through the means of FTP into the computer used for video editing. The video was then edited on a custom-built Windows PC with state-of-the-art processing hardware from AMD and Nvidia to render the video and handle other computational tasks with editing the video. Adobe’s Premiere Pro 2024, an industry-standard video editing program, was used to edit the final video. The production process ended when the film was exported through Adobe Media Encoder.
