CCR- MV

 Reflection- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3SpcU6i8XcLT0DIJAhx9Nwm1qx3TOtH88qIMO7ascg/edit?usp=sharing 

In the creation of our music video for the song “7 years” by: Luke Graham. We used many conventions. For example when recording our scenes at a local park we used camera angles to create inspiration and show hard work being done. For example when we were recording Nate run and having Alex D time him doing it, the over the shoulder shot that Showed the hard work happening and brought in a sense of inspiration to the scene through that angle. We also employed the use of our acting to showcase each individual scene, which allowed us to get the full message of each scene across to the audience watching as the song played. 

The social issue that we were aiming to approach with this song choice is an issue that has been a commonality of time among people but specifically in today's generation, and this social issue is the loss of confidence and the coping mechanism of our whole generation hiding behind screens and not living there life, causing them to have a poor and uneventful childhood because of the limitations our society allows them to put on themselves. The Song “7 years” is about the fast pace of life and the loss of fun filled time and dedication to a person as they are growing up. We communicated this through the scenes where Nate was wasting away his life in front of a television and sleeping instead of experiencing the real world and the experiences that it has to offer for young people that they can never have while limiting their scope of the world to a room with screens in it. 

What makes video fun and makes people want to watch it compared to other music videos is the simple lesson and evolution that was shown compared to something that was generated with pictures off of the internet with flashy lights and interjections, ours was quite a lesson. When listening to a song that communicates the message that “7 years” does and at the pace that the song moves by was really emphasized by our video compared to others as it deepened the emotion that the lyrics were bringing in through its simplicity. 

If our group did decide to release this as a real music video for this song we would release it on youtube. The reason for this is because youtube is generally the first place people go when they want to watch the music videos of songs because of the lack of being able to upload these videos to regular music streaming apps, making youtube the perfect choice. On top of this if people looked up our video on the internet, rather than youtube it would still be available rather than being exclusive to people who have Youtube downloaded as an app, allowing more publicity to be reached through the multiple outlets that uploading to youtube would allow us to have accessed. 

In the beginning of this project I was actually quite nervous, even though I already had a group of friends picked out that I was confident with, I had no idea how to edit, which made me very nervous in my ability to contribute to the productions of the music video. I am also a student athlete that plays for the school and had practice after everyday and this project really helped me develop my time management skills. Time management is something that I was poor at before entering this project and by doing this project and needing to coordinate time and places with my group, it helped me develop a trait that will be very crucial to my future in academics, sports, and my future in this class. The same goes for editing, as doing this project forced me to learn how to edit clips together and cut them to the  times that I want as well as put the song over what particular scenes I want too. 

On top of learning these things I also learned how to communicate better with my groupmates throughout the production of our music video. Instead of taking control of a project and trying to micromanage everyone to  get everything organized and done, I stepped back and learned to collaborate with my group and it ended up being really good for our overall production as it hel;ped us work better as a team.

We used a large variety of technology to film and communicate, as well as edit and organize our music video. First, in order to film our scenes we used our phones to do so. We used our phones because they were easy to transport and all of us already had one and we all already knew how to operate and use them effectively while filming. We also decided to use our phones compared to high quality camera equipment because it is very expensive and a lot of equipment to lug around from the different places we went to film at. We Also used CapCut in order to edit our music video together. CapCut is a very easy to use editing software that was free and allowed us easy access to use and create our video. The reason we needed a software that fit this description was like i said earlier, especially myself and my tramates, were not confident in our ability to edit. By getting an app that is free, allows us to not use our money,  and that is very easy to learn how to use, helps us be able to put our music video in an organized manner. CapCut compared to other more complex editing softwares was an easy choice for us that helped us to be more productive. 

In addition to our phones helping us effectively film they also allowed us to communicate with each other wherever and whenever we wanted to. We decided to create a group chat over iMessage which we specifically used over a social media platform because not only did some of us not have an account on some social media. We figured that if we used iMessage as a way of communication, it would keep us more focused and less likely to get distracted. We Also decided to use Blogger to show our journey because it was an easy to use platform that allowed us to blog and share our journey with people who are looking to read about our story. It was very easy to use and we picked Blogger because it helped us access our objective better than social media would, as people usually do jot post about blogs on common social media websites.