AICE Media Studies

1.      How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues? My music video for the song Material Girl by Madonna uses a lot of the conventions that can be found in pop song music videos. For instance, a common convention of pop videos is a bright and colorful background. My video utilizes this with the sunny background of sawgrass mall, and the pop of colors in the actresses’ dresses. The surrounding stores that I filmed in also had a wide range of colors and bright fluorescent lights that brightened up the video. Another popular convention for this genre is references to wealth and fame. My music video followed this convention, mainly with props. I ordered prop money that was utilized by the actors throughout the video. Other props such as shiny jewelry and sunglasses also played a part in my music video’s use of pop culture. When it came to challenging the conventions, I mainly did this with the ending of my mus...

Hello and welcome back to my blog! After much hard work, I am proud to share my group's music video for the song Material Girl by Madonna. This was a really fun project to work on and I am so happy with how it turned out. I've made a lot of improvements from the first project I had and can't wait to get even better. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did. This is Kyra signing off!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! My journey through this music video process has been an interesting one, but it is now coming to an end. However, we still had one last issue. Something was missing from our editing in our music video, but we weren't sure what it was.  At first, I thought it was clip lengths. Maybe the scenes were too long and therefore making the video seem boring or uninteresting. When I rewatched the video, I realized it wasn't the length, but instead the editing. I brought this up to my group members and they agreed that we needed to add another editing technique to our video. After some deliberation, we decided to add a split screen at the beginning of the video. This split screen would allow us to show more of the getting ready process in an easy and eye-catching way. It also wouldn't add any extra time to the video.  Now that the minor issues were resolved, it was time to review the video. While reviewing the video, I counted out all the mise en sce...

Hello and welcome back to my blog! It took lots of hard and dedication, but our filming process was finally over. Now, however, it was time to start editing. Before I could send off the clips to be mashed together, I needed to choose the perfect ones first.  Since we were at the mall for a good few hours, I was able to get multiple takes of each scene. Due to this, I now had to go through and choose which ones were best. The first step was looking for the one with the best lighting. I went through each take of every scene and looked at which lighting was the best. Could I clearly see each actor's face? Were there any awkward shadows in the video? Once I picked the clips with the best lighting, It was now time to cut them down. Many of our clips started before I yelled action, or kept going past the acting for the scene. To make the video flow as smoothly as possible, I cut down the videos so that they would only include the parts that told our story and would fit well into the vide...

 Hey guys and welcome back to my blog! After much hard work, my group finished our first day of filming. All the walking around in the hot Florida weather did a number on us, so we decided to stop and eat somewhere at the mall. When we got to the restaurant, we started to discuss filming the second part of our video. I knew we couldn't film Sunday, since I would be busy that day. So, I suggested filming during the middle of the week and everyone agreed. Our location for the second day of filming was Hailey's house. Hailey's room was our main setting for the film. I thought it was the perfect mix of feminine and cutesy, which really matched the character she was playing. I started the process off by having our material girl wear a white robe to show her process of getting ready. This provided an interesting contrast between before and after she prepares for her day at the mall. The first scene I filmed was an over-the-shoulder shot of the material girl putting on her makeup....

  Hello and welcome back to my blog! After my group finished filming the scenes with the poor boy in them, it was time to do the rest.  The first scene I filmed was an over-the-shoulder shot of our material girl collecting money from the rich boys. I chose to film this at an eye-level angle to show them as being of equal socioeconomic standing. Next, I filmed the scene where the material girl walks out of a store with bags in her hands,  and the rich boys hold open the doors for her. I used a long shot to fully capture her fancy outfit, showing her expensive taste.  After I filmed that scene, we got ready to find another store to film in when I was stopped by a security guard. As he approached us, I got super nervous that he was going to tell us to stop filming. However, it turned out to be the opposite. The security instead checked in on us and just made sure that we weren't being disruptive to shoppers. Once he saw that we were being respectful and filming a school...

  Hello and welcome back to my Blog! December 10th from 2 pm to 3 pm was the new filming date that everyone agreed on. While our luck was better this time around, some things still went wrong.  For instance, we planned to have our video filmed on an actual camera instead of our phones. I was given the responsibility of taking home the camera. However, I forgot to charge it the night before. I only realize that the camera was dead once I got to the mall and it didn't turn on! Instead, I had to offer my phone to film since it had the best camera. Another mishap we faced was missing actors. An hour before we had to film, I sent out a text to everybody confirming that everyone could still make it. 20 minutes before our meeting time, our original actor for the poor boy had to pull out. I had to text everyone I knew to try and find a last-minute replacement actor. After a few minutes, I got somebody to fill in, but they would be a bit late.  Once I got to the mall, I went...

 Hello and welcome back to my blog! This past weekend I learned that Murphy's Law was no fable: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Unfortunately for me, all my group's plans to film our music video fell apart one by one.  The first thing that went wrong was our props. I ordered everything online from Party City. In a rush to get all the supplies I needed, I put a bunch of items into my cart without reading the reviews. Early morning Saturday, I went to pick them up a few hours before our film time. Once I got back to the car and opened the package, my heart sank to my stomach. The most important prop, the fake money, wasn't even half the size of my hand. I was left with no choice but to try and print prop money from home. The cherry on top of our situation was our actors. It was a long break, so everyone had nothing but vacation and Thanksgiving on their minds. It was only the day before filming that I remembered our plans. When I went to remind everyone ...