Critical Creative Reflection

 Critical Creative Reflection

1) How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Our music video utilizes arrangements of the music vide genre, to be specific the narrative driven style. It follows a linear storyline, where the character in the story faces conflicts and struggles and in time, transformation. In the music video, We use close up shots and other sequences to highlight and signify emotional intensity. We challenge conventions by avoiding to use of the typical glossy music video style with a dark theme to portray a realistic mental health struggles. When the character stress eats and is isolated, it shows the more authentic and relatable feel. We challenge social groups and issues by representing the demographic of men who face emotional vulnerability, and shows the relevant struggles. By showing the characters journey from struggle to success, it contests the view that men should 'gulp up' or 'suppress' their emotions and teaches the audience that it is better to channelize struggles and regulate it by investing it into a more profitable result. Additionally, the music video includes montage sequences of gym training and daily routines to symbolize the character's personal growth and perseverance. The lighting and color grading feature darker tones during moments of struggle and brighter, warmer tones during transformation. This visually reinforces the emotional journey. By focusing on realistic depictions of mental health, such as stress eating, isolation, and self-reflection, the video challenges the typical portrayals of men as emotionally stoic. This representation encourages audiences to think about the importance of emotional regulation, resilience, and self-care. It shows that channeling struggles into positive actions is a constructive response to adversity and personal setbacks. 

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

Our music video piece interacts with our audience mainly through emotional storytelling and content that is relatable. By projecting the main characters struggles with a breakup, through stress eating and mental health issue, the audience can empathize with the journey which makes the narrative immersive and emotionally manipulating. Usage of close-up shots and montage sequences and a range of editing techniques communicates the character's internal struggles while maintaining the viewers attention. The transformative arc, from emotional struggle to character ascension through the gymnasium, provides the viewers a sense of hope and resolution, which keeps the viewers invested and encourages reflection. The music video targets young men and teenagers, a demographic often under represented in todays media, making the content socially relevant and thought provoking. 

When it comes to distribution as a real media text, the music video would effectivity be launched on digital platforms such as YouTube, Instagram which are widely accessible and could reach the target audience and would enable us to reach a larger population with ease which would help interaction and easy sharing. Social media campaigns, encourage a lot of the audience to relate their own personal growth stories and could further increase engagement. Additionally the video could be presented to local student film festivals  allowing us to reach audiences who are interested in a narrative driven and socially aware content. The mixture of themes that are relatable, visual techniques and digital distribution strategies ensures that the music video not only captures attention but would also spark discussion and self reflection, enhancing its overall impact on viewers 

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

Throughout this whole project, my skills in production were developed and advanced to a great extent, across major departments like planning, filming and post-production, this helped me reflect clear and visible progression in both my technical skills and creative decision making that helped make the music video as a whole. At first, my understanding of the camera was a little above basic and it mostly repeated static and still shots with no differentiation, however as I progressed through the project, I began to learn and experiment with more unique shots such as the GoPro shots to enhance the realism and match the emotional intensity of the story. This was majorly effective in the gym sequence, where movement helped me convey the characters physical and psychological transformation and progress.

My ability to make meaning through mise-en-scène had also been improved. I intentionally selected props that gave implicit meanings such as the junk food and the love letters to symbolize the heartbreak and to give the character the 'letting go of himself' feeling and meaning to the story, this helped in reinforcing the troubled teenager archetype to the audience.

In the post production process, my editing skills were significantly showing improvement. Early edits of  the music video lacked the pacing and the flow, however I learned to sync the cuts to the beat and rhythm of the music video to create a more engaging and attention grabbing final product.

Overall, throughout this whole experience, my overall skills of being able to be good at pre production, filming and post production were polished and were increased, it has helped me be more confident in my skills and would help me produce better products in the future with a better judgement on the technical side of work 

4) How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online-in this project?

Choice of Method regarding CCR.

 CRITICAL CREATIVE REFLECTION METHOD

Last year, for my Critical Creative Reflection, I had chosen to answer the questions regarding my media studies project by filming myself answering the questions. This year, I really look forward to using the same method of my CCR. However, this year, I would like to answer all my questions about the reflection through an essay. Making an essay would help me develop writing skills that could be inculcated in to my future, by polishing skills that require the use of words to write answers or reports.

Final Shoot 3- Final Gym Location

 FINAL SHOOT GYM LOCATION

Due to certain inconveniences the private gym that we had shot the first gym scene in was occupied on the day of the shoot. Rather than canceling the 2nd gym scene, we had to relocate the gym location to a local free public gym. To our advantage, that day was a Sunday and on that day, the gym is generally empty, hence we were able to extract good amount of footage of the character performing movements.

  

Final shoot 2- The Gym scene

 FINAL SHOOT 2 - THE GYM SCENE

During this final shoot, we basically just filmed the actor lifting weights. To show more depth in the shots, we used GoPro cameras attached to the barbells which was then lifted to perform a bench press by the actor. This allows us to show the intensity of the action by the actor by getting a close up on the actors face. The gym had multiple advanced equipment's so we took advantage of that and included different movements to be performed. 

Final Shoot 1- Opening scene

FINAL SHOOT 1 

 This blog provides pictures and details of our first shoot, in this scene, the teenager parks his car in a nearby parking lot, due to the his post break up depression, he ends up stress eating. Secretly eating fast food, his father catches him doing so, and proceeds to shame him for the way he responded to the events in his life. We used close up shots and wide shots to show the car parking scene and we used a wide range of close up and mid close up shots to show the boy eating. 

Call Sheet for the music video.

 For our production, we created call sheets to ensure that each filming session was organised and efficient. The call sheets included key information such as the location of the shoot, timings, roles of each team member, and the equipment required.

Since we were filming in a gym environment, it was especially important to plan ahead due to limited space and time restrictions. The call sheets helped us stay on schedule and ensured that we captured all necessary shots without wasting time.

Graphics & Sound

 GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Regarding the graphics for our music video, Lakshya and I were aiming for an extremely clean look with a clear cinematic style. At the beginning of the music video we inserted the title card of the music video, with the song, and the name of the artist to establish the tone of the overall music video. While editing our music video, we used quick cuts and fades to match the rhythm of the music video to aim for a more impactful visual for the viewer. 

Because color grading is an important role, we used a tone of dark colors to highlight the characters dark moments and as the video gradually progresses we used lighter tones to show that the transformation was taking place. 

The primary audio used in our music video was Softcore by The Neighbourhood which set the moody, heartbreak tone. We made sure the visuals were corresponding with the music, particularly during the workout sequences.

Social Media Account.

 SOCIAL MEDIA

Lakshya and I decided to create a social media page on Instagram to showcase our prowess in our field. we uploaded the pictures of us filming the gym scene and the opening scene. We have named our social media page after the overall theme of the music video, titled 'Noir Frame Media' 

We hope to grow our page to more followers and reach a wider range of viewers so we can show our hard work and skill that it took while filming the music video

https://www.instagram.com/noirframe_media?igsh=MWk0aTMxMzRsdjkwaA==

Mood, Tone & Visual Design

 MOOD AND STYLE OF THE MUSIC VIDEO

Trial shoots and our learnings.

 What did we as a team learn from the trial shoots that were taken?

When conducting the trial shoots, we were able to extract key takeaways that have helped us in our task of completing this shoot with better precision, accuracy and also being able to get a qualitative final footage that would be used in our blogs.

From our previous AS level media studies syllabus, we were taught about different types of shots, and we learnt that using close up shots, for example, when the letter burning shot was shown, it was shot using a close up shot and that close up shot allowed us to emphasize on creating an impactful and stronger visual for the audience.

While holding the cameras we also had encountered a difficulty of not being able to get still and focused shots on the character in scene. So the way we had to overcome this difficulty, was very simple. We simply used breathing techniques, such as taking deep and long breaths and holding it to make sure that the camera did not move as much as it was happening when we were not breathing properly while holding the camera

PROBLEMS FACED WHILE SHOOTING

Problems we faced while shooting

When filming in the gym, even though we were using professional equipment, we had still faced a lot of difficulties when the shots were being taken despite the advantage of having good footage with high quality. 

Thought the quality of the footage may have come out to be appealing to my partner and I, we had still faced a lot of issues. For example, we had a disadvantage of limited space in the first gym, which did not give us much room for the character to perform the movements that were intended to be performed. If we had better space, we would have gotten a wider range of shots with better angles that could have been put into the final cut of the music video. 

In the second gym, it was shot in a gym that was spacious, however, the gym was old, being 15 years old or more. Due to the circumstances of the gyms old age, we were not provided with good enough lighting to allow us to define muscles on the character. This would affect the consistency that we could have achieved with the lighting. However, though the situation was partially in our favor, we were still able to capture shots that were honestly very staggering. 

Another issue we faced while filming in the gym was that we had a lot of background disturbances in the 2nd gym location, this was because it was a public gym and we could not stop people from entering. The reason as to why the first gym was empty was because it was private and it allowed us to focus on the character without any disturbances in the background