By: Safa Shahzad

Creative Critical Reflection(CCR)

GAME

PLAN

Movie Name:

Q1- How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issue?

My media product contradicts conventions typically shown in movies, specifically in movies of the genre drama. There are quick cuts to show the tension in the scene, which is further supported with the soundtrack, which has a calm and sometimes even a mysterious tone whatever was suitable to the scene. My movie shows a very rare and unconventional story, which is normally not shown finding her prince charming or perfect guy and living happily ever after.

The movie challenges the movies with the genre of drama, as it shows a girl who is dating many guys at a time, and so challenges a a convention about a typical “chick- flick” movie.My movie also represents teenagers and it shows how teenagers are nowadays and that they don’t really take anything seriously in their life. My movie also contradicts the theme of many movies, in which the girl some how ends up with the perfect man, many movies have shown this typical theme, some of which include,

1) Just Go With It 2) Safe Haven

3) The Ugly Truth 4) The Proposal

Q2- How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

There are many ways I could attract audiences towards my movie, the main audience for my movie will be teenagers as they can easily relate to the situation in my movie from their everyday life and they will be the most interested in watching my movie, but other age groups can also be attracted towards my movie as it is not a typical teenage movie it broke some conventions of a movie with the genre of drama, which is the USP of the movie and thus my movie can attract a wider audience.

As my movie is a low budget and low quality movie, I would not approach any big distribution house to release my movie, as they will not be interested in it, and so my movie cannot be released in cinemas.So I prefer releasing my video over the internet and I can use my different websites to do that, to get more people to watch it ill make pages on different social network websites like Facebook, tumbler, etc.Which will help my movie get more views and downloads.The websites ill use for releasing my video are,

Q3- How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

The project given to me really helped me polish my skill in terms of editing, and shooting. Over the year I learned a lot of new thing and tried to learn from the mistakes I made in my previous projects. I was able to learn all these different editing software’s by watching tutorials on YouTube and I further developed my editing skills through these tutorials. This project really helped me enhance my editing skills and persuaded me to learn new software.

I was also able to learn how editing could make a difference in the video, like if there are quick cuts in the video they can be used to show chaos, I used quick cuts in my video to show the tension in the scene, and I also used normal cuts for some scenes in the beginning of the video. The fact that how different types of sound effects and music changed the overall video, sounds like opening of door and footsteps create mystery in the video. The music in my video, at one point has a very calm and subtle tone to it, but as the tension in the scene grows the music in the video changes and gives a hint of suspense and tension growing in the scene.

I also learned how to make videos from a DSLR, while doing this project and I also learned what are different types of shots and what significance they hold, like an over the shoulder shot is usually used to show a conversation between two people, which I used in my video, and that, a wide shot is usually an establishing shot for the video or the movie. Over the course of time also acknowledged the significance of camera angles, and the fact that one unique camera angle can give a whole new perspective to a video persuaded me to try as many unique angles as possible.Throughout out this project I realized I was able to take my production skills on a whole new level and even learnt and tried different thing s to further enhance my production skills.

Q4- How to integrate technologies (hardware, software and online) in this project?

To make a video a lot of different technologies have to be used like different cameras, editing software, etc. In terms of software technologies the first thing I was asked to do was to make a blog. At first I made a blog on BlogSpot but when I uploaded a video on it the quality of the video deteriorated. After which I made a blog on Wordpress but my videos could not be uploaded, after which I discovered I could easily upload videos in Vimeo and then post the link of the video on my blog. I would have never used these websites if I did not take media studies so I learnt a lot in the process.

Initially to edit my videos I decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro but I found it very difficult to edit videos on it, so I decided to edit my videos on windows move maker, but I didn’t receive the result that I wanted. So I started using another software that is iMovie, this software helped me get the results I wanted and so I continued editing all my projects on it. I also developed my skills in using adobe after effects, which helped me make the logo of the production house for this project. I was able to learn all these different editing software’s by watching tutorials on YouTube and I further developed my editing skills through these tutorials

In term of hardware I also faced issues with shooting to as I never made videos from a DSLR and it took me quite some time to learn the tactics to use DSLR for shooting, like different settings for shooting different scenes. I had to reshoot a lot in the beginning as I didn’t know how to use a tripod or shooting videos with a DSLR but over the year I was able to master all the skills required for making a video.