How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
The genre we chose for our final video was bedroom pop. Our product challenges the conventions as the narrative behind our music video is about a friendship that has fell apart where two friends had gotten a distance between them as they grew up they had started to have their own strong personalities and identity which often causes clashes among each other which leads to a distance. As these days the only content we get to see is mainly related to love, so to bring a change we decided to make the video based on the topic which isn't really noticed and showed on screen but exists everywhere.I wanted to highlight this topic which has been always ignored that how not just a love heartbreak hurts and there's alot more to heartbreaks which could be because of many other reasons. As many childhood friendships end due to conflicts and left unresolved. As we showed in our mv that how losing a friend hurts we also wanted to give out the message that no matter what happens we have to get over it one day and let go and move on in our lives. where some people think of it as a phase many other suffer.
How does the element of your production work together to create a sense of branding?
The elements of our production work together complimenting each other which creates a sense of branding as the topic we highlighted was based on friendship ( a topic which isn't really shown on screens). The dressing of both the characters were a genz style to show that its the current time, we ensured the settings had the modern touch to them to not look anything like old school. this branding is important as it leaves a impression on the audience which could either be positive or negative. In the mv the girl sits in a corner and zones out which is a very common practice and happens to everyone which reminds them of their memories whether they were happy or sad this could give them a sense of comfort, they can find it relatable as majority people grow out of friendships but do get over them one and start accepting the reality. In the last scene of the video the girl throws the necklace which represents that the past that had held her back she has finally decided to let go and move on in her life.
How does your product engage with the audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Our product engages with the audience as we wanted to show relatable content where the audience will be able to relate to the content and through reviews of our mv we did figure out that it was a important message give out to the audience. As the lyrics are "In the back of my mind..." theres alot of things that comes to your minds when u listen to the part of the lyric which also shows that we all do have that friendship that ended. Our product would be distributed through streaming platforms online which mainly includes instagram and youtube we uploaded our posters on instagram along with that attached video link in the bio. we are distributing our product in pakistan on soundet studios through cd which are available on instagram post where you can get the product details, along with that we uploaded the video on youtube.
How did your production skills develop throughout the project?
My production skills have developed over the 2 years of making my alevel projects. As in first year i had to make the project entirely on my own and this year it was just my partner ayesha and I. we did have a lot more workload which we divided. I had practiced for weeks for stabilising shots on camera and had learned camera techniques to get cinematic stable shots as those were one of my main goal. My main work was in pre production as i was mainly managing the project where i wrote initial drafts and got them approved by my partner, through this project i was able to improve my screenplay writing skills as I was the type who used to hate writing stories but when it came to my project I gave in all my efforts. I was able to improve overall managing skills since i was in contact with the actor i had to remain professional with her and during shoot days i had to ensure all the scenes have been shot with the required angles which was quite a task for me as i had to act in the project, this project also helped me improve my acting skills as we had to do many retakes for serious scenes which led to getting serious expressions out of me. Overall this project mainly helped me get good camera shot skills since i practiced before hand and shot scenes in which i didn't have to act, along with that i was able to learn new editing techniques such as smooth and quick transitions, mainly colour grading which i learned through youtube as it was important part for our video and a new feature i learned was using keys on capcut to create moving effects as in the credits part i added a key in the start and end of that part. Overall i learned multiple production skills which would help me in future media practices and even motivated me to continue in the field.
How did you integrate technologies software, hardware and online in this project?
I was familiar with the editing software as i edited my AS project on capcut's pc version, however this project required double the effort than the previous project which helped me learn colour grading, fast transitions and more.Through the editing software we were able to bring our vision to life as we were able to find the right transition we had thought of and through transitions we were able to show that the girl is having flashbacks and through colour grading there was differentiation between scenes as they had different time zones and different mood and settings.
The hardware was all the equipment we had used to create our project we used and LED light for the class room scene which we reflected on the front white board so that the light spreads. we wanted to shoot on the camera but due to lack of camera equipment we used the phone to shoot the project and we only shot flashback in camera as the phone did not give the shaky camera effect. we did require any light for other scenes as they were shot in day time.
We promoted our product through online platforms (instagram,youtube)as they are majorly used these days