Music Video-CCR

 

1. 1. Our music video included multiple conventions that we attempted to mimic from similar genres of music and music video production. During our research process, we took note of the different features, such as camera angles, outfits, props, lighting, and overall emotion of the video and songs. Since our song specifically was more upbeat and energetic, we compared ours with very similar upbeat songs that proved to have the same type of loud costumes, physical props, and camera movement. We tried to mirror these features as much and as accurately as possible, with the resources we were able to use. Generally, our song had a storyline to it that made it very easy for us to mimic lyric by lyric. It was about the experience of coming to Los Angeles and being surrounded by such a different and intimidating environment, but then finding comfort in music and feeling more at home. The use of emotion portrayed by the star of our video, Billi, allowed this convention to be more established and got the message across that the main character was nervous, excited, and hopeful. The lyrics gave us a general format of how to film each scene according to the characters feelings and setting, so we tried to align the camera angles with each scene that would make the most sense with the theme of each scene. Obviously, following the storyline given, when she was in the club, we used our lighting to mimic a club setting. When in the car/taxi, we used a pan to show her getting into and being inside the car. All of which were our attempt to use the conventions seen from our compared videos to match those features. 

 

2. 2. Our song exhibits the scenario of being in a new environment for the first time and having a hard time feeling comfortable at first while also being very overwhelmed with excitement. The tone of the lyrics is always positive but still have the general feeling of nervousness. This is relatable and can engage with any audiences, because it's common to feel overwhelmed or nervous in a new setting especially when moving to a new city, as made evident in the song. The main character finds her comfort in music and her favorite songs which is also relatable for people whereas music is what a lot of people turn to when feeling different emotions, especially anxiety. Our video specifically would be distributed as a sense of inspiration for anyone who can relate to feeling anxious on platforms that are widely used by the public and would gain the most traction to be able to send the message to a larger audience. Our group, having a handle on social media could use this to our advantage to be able to spread our media to an audience that can relate to it more closely. 

 

3. 3. Our production skills weren't ideal at first, but our group members were able to adapt and manage around them. Our first plan to film the airport scenes at the actual Hollywood airport fell through due to schedules not aligning, which we anticipated and were still able to be creative and use our resources to try our best to mimic the setting with things such as signs labeling the setting. We planned for things to not go perfectly because we knew there might be some issues with location and props, but we used the resources that we had at our disposal and took advantage of what we could. The filming had to be done individually by one group member, Hunter Anderson, while the editing was also done individually by myself. This was not our plan in the beginning, but our schedules were difficult to align in a way that allowed us to be able to both be there for filming. Luckily, Billi had a good time being the star of the video and portraying the exact message that was meant to get across in the filming. I edited the music with the clips, having to leave out some of my favorite parts to stay within the time limit, but using the most important pieces to put all the scenes together chronologically. We were thankfully able to both film, and edit in two days, adding finishing touched the day of submission to make sure that it was up to standard. Even though the exact idea that we agreed on originally didn’t work out, we still were able to meet credentials and add our own unique touch to the video that pulled it all together.  

 

4. 4. For our video, we used our phones' camera to record our scenes horizontally, so the majority of the shots are at a wide angle. As for editing, we used the editing app CapCut which provided us with templates and overlays to align all of our scenes. We came across the difficulty of our music being copyrighted, as most is, but thankfully CapCut had an option to import a piece of audio that we had previously saved with our song on it, to overlay onto our scenes. We used the cut tool to either shorten or lengthen our individual scenes to perfectly match up with the lyrics for the storyline. As much as we’d like to be in Hollywood ourselves, the lyrics called for famous landmarks that we physically couldn’t include, but we used YouTube to find video clips of those landmarks in the same style of recording as we were using, to ensure that it all blended in equally. Even the YouTube clips we inserted featured the camera panning over the Hollywood sign and the famous stars, because that’s what the lyrics called for, and we thought they were important aspects that we wanted to include in our video. Our iPhones had different filming features that we considered using also, but in the end decided that it wouldn’t fit with the genre of a pop song because it wouldn’t have been as accurate or up-beat as the ones we used during our research. In the end, the use of technology and apps we used was a big help to the production and the overall result of our video and we're all happy with how it came out.