AICE Media Studies

    Creative Critical Reflection 1.                   How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups          or issues? My commercial challenges convention by using a unique approach to advertising gum. It conquers the audience’s emotions, instead of a usual logical approach, like a sale for example. It paints a heartfelt story, showing that our product can lead to wholesome moments. Consumers will connect Extra gum to wholesomeness, inclining them to buy it. It doesn’t particularly represent any social groups or issues. How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text? My product connects engages with the audience by associating itself with a common, pleasant thing that humans relate to: sharing. Everyone can relate to sharing something with a loved one to show affection. Gum is common thing to be share...

This is the final result of my groups hard work! I am so proud of what we accomplished and excited to see the feedback. I am specifically proud of my group for conquering struggles like conflicts with other groups, staying serious, and reducing the time length. My favorite part of this project was when I was editing because I liked seeing the vision come together. My least favorite part of the commercial was when we had to film the first day because Adrian and I couldn't stop laughing, which delayed the filming. Although it was my least favorite part, I still enjoyed filming because it is a new experience for me. I have never had to film a movie on my phone for a class assignment! This project was a cool way for me to peek inside the filming process and made me feel like a real director. It makes me excited for the next film project we will be assigned. I hope I can learn from this first experience and improve on the next activity.

 Today was the second and last day to edit my commercial. I was very excited to put the final touches and finally get this project completed. The last two issues to conquer in our editing process was the time and the slogan. First, my partner and I had to find a way to trim 17 seconds off. I began by trimming the unnecessary seconds in the beginning and end of some takes. There was so much excess because we wanted to make sure nothing was cut out, so we started the shot about 2 seconds earlier and ended the shot 2 seconds later. This, however, did not suffice and we were down to only about 38 seconds. Then, I suggested taking out certain scenes that were not necessary to the story. For instance, I took an extra scene of the boy walking to his seat. I decided this wasn't needed because we have a close-up shot and tracking shot that also shows the boy walking to his seat. I also suggested to Adrian that we take out some footage of the boy making the paper airplane. We just made sure ...

Now onto my favorite part of making a film: editing! I love this part so much because it's when you can really see your work come together. The film was edited on my partner's phone because he had the resources to do so. I started off with discussing about which shots will be used in the commercial. Adrian and I looked through a lot of footage and flagged the best shots of each scene. We probably had about 5 shots of the same part of our commercial. This was most likely because we were new to filming. It took a lot of trial and error to get comfortable and get things done efficiently. After going through dozens of snippets, we added the best shots into the editing app. My partner is handy when it comes to technology and editing. He did the messy work of making each shot was in the right place and cutting the unneeded footage. While he was doing that, I searched for the perfect background soundtrack. Extra commercials are meant to be very sappy and sentimental, so I wanted a pia...

 We are finally finished with our filming! Today didn't take as long to film because we knew what we were doing. Last time, we were experimenting with different camera angles, shots, and overall figuring out what works best for our commercial. Also, there were more obstacles we had to face, like laughing and other groups. We only had three shots to film this time because we got most of our filming completed the first day. Today was mostly about fine tuning and figuring out if we need to add more shots to our commercial or reshoot scenes. We ended up adding a scene to make the story of our commercial flow better. After the boy hand the girl her pencil, they are supposed to have a spark. However, when Adrian and I looked at the scenes together, we realized the moment felt rushed. The audience couldn't really feel the boy and girl's connection because the moment was too brief. As a result, we added a tracking shot of the boy walking to his seat and getting a glimpse of him loo...