Creative Critical Reflection Blog

Creative Critical Reflection 

 (1) How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?

An audience always expects to see conventions in a media studies project. It’s basically the building block of media. I include a few conventions in my commercial. The commercial begins with two people, a boy, and a girl, pulling up to the beach in their car. They walk towards the left of the screen. This is an establishing scene. They disappear into the next transition. The next few scenes take place at the actual beach. Long shots and close-ups were used in these scenes. The last scene, which spotlights the Coca-Cola bottle, represents a zoom-in. This commercial and many other Coca-Cola commercials represent all sorts of social groups. There's always a lot of diversity, which is really important. In my commercial the female was Mexican and the male was from Trinidad.        

(2) How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?

The targeted audience for this video was any individual around the world wanting to have a good, refreshing drink. People that want to share with their friends and family. Coca-Cola has always had this marketing tactic. Sharing and happiness are huge selling points in the brand. If I had to choose a place to distribute my commercial, it would be television. Everyone watches TV. Another good one would be YouTube. I know that YouTube would be a good place for distribution because ads play all the time on videos and YouTube is starting to be more used. Another form of distribution would be by posting the link on social media accounts, and asking my friends and family to check it out and share it further. This way the people that I know would be used as a source of advertisement and promotion too.

(3) How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

At first, I didn’t know how I was going to film a commercial because most commercials usually have a lot of people in them. It was going to be an issue to figure that out because of the pandemic that’s making everything in our lives difficult. I ended up asking my friend Jonathon to film with me because he's been one of the very few people that I see regularly. I was really excited when he told me he would be more than glad to help me. When it came time to film the commercial, the process was super easy. Definitely different from the genre project. I think it was more successful because of the storyboard. I did struggle a bit trying to find a good song to apply to my commercial, but I ended up being able to find one. iMovie was pretty simple in my opinion because I have made a few YouTube videos using my phone over the summer, and I would edit them on iMovie, so I already had some experience. So overall, my production and editing skills went really well during this project. 

(4) How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?

I used many different mediums to create my video. I used a combination of technology, hardware, and computer programs. It was a lot of trial and error because I’m good at taking pictures, but I’m not very experienced with filming videos, and way less with filming commercials. I used different types of equipment to film my commercial. I used a tripod to stand my camera on. Speaking of cameras, I used the Canon Rebel T6 camera with an 18-55 mm lens. I also used a SanDisk 16GB SD card. I asked my friend Jonathon to be in my commercial. He helped me to set up my tripod a few times. The technology I used to edit my video was a MacBook Air that I purchased in Mexico a few years ago. I also used my iPhone XR to look at my storyboard to know where to set up my camera for the commercial scenes. I also used my AirPods that I connected to my laptop while I edited. The software I used to edit my video was iMovie. Lastly, I used a few online websites to gather my information. I used Google Blogger to review my plans. and storyboard for my commercial. I also used numerous online articles and YouTube videos to gather the information for the planning that went in.