Creative critical reflection

By: Nida Asim

How do your products use or

challenge conventions and

how do they represent social

groups or issues?

As I have made a music video, I looked out for the conventions that are there in a music video and tried to get them in my music

video as well. There is always a narrative hidden behind any media text that the producer/director wants his/her audience to

decode. Similarly I also had my own narrative but the narrative is not constant/ continuous as my both the actors are seen

performing in the whole video differently.

This music video is classified as ‘Ballad’ i.e., a sweet, romantic, slow song. Mostly the targeted audience for my video is

teenagers and young adults and both my actors are also shown as young teenagers who are enjoying the sweetness and

bitterness of young love, with slow dance steps that they enjoy doing no matter wherever they are.

As I had it already in my mind that many of my friends and teacher who like these type of slow romantic songs so I asked the to hear a bit of my song and tell whether they like it or not, and almost all of them liked it including my media teacher. So I got more confidant that majority of young adults would like it too..

Just in the start of my music video, I have shown both my main actors in a room and girl comes in and starts arguing. I have taken both their close ups to show their expressions. During this conversation the background music is in the beginning but that is only instrumental, to show my audience what is the background of the song. This fight is shown in the past and now the guy is singing this whole song for this girl.

I have not taken this shot by getting inspired By some other songs but I lately realized that A similar/not so similar shot is in many other songs such as a Pakistani song, ‘12 saal’. That shot is something like this;

In my music video I have followed some conventions that are in such Ballad songs, like for example a Pakistani song ‘Bachana’ sung by Bilal Khan. This guys also sings in a park type place and singing with a guitar, even my actor is shown in the beginning of the scene laying down in a park with his guitar.

(This is an image from the Song Bachana).

This image is from my video, when the song starts. Camera work is very expressive, by showing close ups we can deeply see the expressions of the actor and can narrate his/her feelings, by looking at their eyes, smile, laughter, tears, etc..

Many other inspirations taken are, ‘Main agar kahoon’ in which the guy is singing for his lover, just like in my video.

Other than this my inspirations were songs like, ‘O re piya’ …

In my video too I have some shots resembling those shots above in which the girl (leading actress) is dancing..

The mise-en-scene in these shots show a beautiful weather of day and night and slight rain as well, which is also a convention of a romantic ballad. The scene in which both my actors are holding kittens and adoring them was my own idea but this also resembles one shot from the movie ‘Jane tu ya jaane na’.

This shot is from my video:

In my music video I have used simple camera shots and angles throughout.. In the beginning of my video when the song starts I have shown the guy laying down in the grass with his eyes closed and then starts singing. The guys is shown in a close-up but before that during the instrumental music I have shown some natural scenes of the sky, greenery, birds etc., in a wide shot which is my establishing shot.

Just like many other singers start their songs with a close up of their face e.g., Rihanna in the song ‘Love the way you lie’.

This is a close up of the actor in my video.

Usually Ballad music revolves around a girl and a boy who are in love with each other and the main emphasis is on love. Same with my music video, I have shown majority of the elements of love and followed the conventions used in romantic ballads.In my video I have shown both the actors arguing in the first few seconds and then in the rest of the video I have shown them sharing beautiful time with each other.

Before making my music video, I made a complete storyboard not in the form of picture, instead I wrote everything in my diary. According to the lyrics I planned every scene. Some evidence of storyboard is;

Above is the storyboard and this is the Translation that I did in my rough handwri-ghting, as my song is in Urdu language so I Had to translate it in English language.

There were so many different ideas that were coming in my mind and I wanted to put them all in my video

but that could not be done and some scenes were not exactly taken/done the way I was imagining. This

project was one difficult yet an interesting task for me. We as students definitely face problems in shooting

and editing and same with me. Majority of the scenes shot are of the park near my house. As I expected and imagined, I could not go to many different places for

shooting different scenes as I had to even consider my both actor’s comfort and satisfaction, so I tried to

shoot majority of the scenes in this park. This was hard as there were so many people around who were

continuously looking at us and my actors were not so comfortable doing some scenes but yet we somehow

managed to shoot despite so many distractions.

For me one more thing which was difficult to shoot was the scene in which I have shown rain, I wanted to shoot this scene in evening time but other shots took so much time that I had to shoot it at night. I tried to use a creative shot here in which I took for large

Pepsi and 7up bottles and made holes in them and made both my brothers to sit on the roof and during the shoot they had to press those bottles and sprinkle the water on the actors. This scene was one hard task for me because the water was coming only on one

side and not on the girl, so this shot gave me a hard time. As can be seen in the picture (middle one) my brothers are sitting

on the roof throwing water.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

Branding is one the most significant items not only in a music video instead in all the media products. It is just not only the logo or colour of the webpage and digipack that refers to branding, there are many other tools such as, the artist/actor, his journey and experiences..

In my case, I have shown branding as same font and size of the text on my webpage and digipack. I have used ‘kozuka mincho font’ and kept its size 48 in both these items. This is the digipack of my music video.

This is my digipack (front and back) . The font that I chose to write Manwa re which is the name of the song is, Kozuka mincho pro. And the size of this font is 48. the colour scheme that I chose is maroon and that I chose because it looked more decent and it was matching the boy’s shirt and gives a good impact. Along with maroon there is Golden colour with some whitish scheme. The colour scheme of maroon was a mixture of:Cyan (51)Marganda (78)Yellow (77)Black (77)

The names of the other songs that I wrote on the back cover are written in white and in a small size. And for those even I have used the same font.The background of the back cover was a still that I took from my music video and I blurred it so that it does look completely different than the maroon colour scheme.

How do your products engage with the audiences and how would they be distributed as real media products?

Audiences play an important role because they are the ones who will have to consume it. So it is essential to include some elements in the media text in order to engage the audience.Media product is a text, which is designed to be consumed by an audience. They rely heavily on audience demand and convenience; therefore, the requirements of target audience and the availability to the audience should be effective & efficient for a good response.

My target audience for this music video are teenagers (15 onwards.. ) Love and romance is something everybody understands and enjoys so I hope that people can feel the joy of love in my video.

As far as distribution is concerned, I would like to distribute my music video on social media. Internet has become one of the largest platforms where we can do anything and can get famous through it. There are many examples of it, like Justin Bieber who from a young age started making videos and today the world knows him.. I don’t expect to get that famous but definitely me and my video will be seen and considered by many..

I have decided to distribute my music video on sites like, Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Dailymotion, Instagram, Vimeo and any other famous site. Thousands of people on internet won’t be knowing me but maybe through internet surfing they come across my music video and watch it and might like it. This way if I get a positive response I will be more encouraged to make more videos.

How did you integrate with technology- software hardware and online in your music video?

SOFTWARE: The software that I used was videopad video editor. I always used Microsoft windows Movie maker but this time I worked on this software and it is a really good software. Editing has always been one difficult task for me but I practiced a lot to improve my self by making short videos of my family and school parties etc. and now it is not that difficult for me as it was before and this software made me do my entire editing more easily. For the making of my digipack, I used adobe cs3, I enjoyed making the covers on it, it had so many great features.

Technologies bring about fundamental shifts in the way we produce, distribute and consume entertainment media. In my coursework production I have combined practical digital media production skills with the sophisticated critical study of media forms. Since digital technology has been gaining popularity from quite a lot of years, I am already familiar with some of the technologies; hardware and software and online.

Hardware : The hardware that I have used in the making of video is my computer, my Camera (Nikon Coolpix 16.1 megapixel). This camera really helped me a lot and the best thing about this camera is that it has good a good focus.I have also used my iPhone to take some. Pictures for the evidence. With the help of SD cards and USB’s I was able to transfer the video shots and images to the laptops and computers so they could be compiled and edited. Tripod helped me in taking some of the still shots in the music video.

Online: Throughout our coursework production, we were expected to show our process of production. For that matter, I maintained a blog on a popular online blogging platform ‘Tumblr’. Tumblr has been very cooperative and I could easily upload all my projects whether school projects or CIE projects on Tumblr easily. Apart from this, I used Vimeo and with its help I could easily upload my music video which can also be accessible to the audience. I also used slideshare to present my work and it can also be easily viewed by people.