AICE Media Studies

  Creative Critical Reflection 1.       1.   How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups      or issues?  My product challenges the common convention that many drinks must be artificially flavored and produced to be delicious and appealing. Snapple uses natural flavors and real ingredients to create a pure, refreshing taste. Snapple also supports ethical treatment in the workplace, fostering equal engagement and opportunity for employees. Snapple also makes sure that safety is number one priority by standardizing safety reports and creating plans for improvement.   2. How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?  My product engages with audiences by combining a persuasive ad with a simple, honest product to encourage people to consume the drink. It could be distributed online as a digital video for people to view indiv...

  Overall, I am pretty satisfied with my final commercial. Considering this is my first ever project, I am the most impressed by the editing. It took many attempts and some additional experimenting with different software. Experience is key with the editing and the digital manipulation of your footage to make it more appealing. Even some advanced hardware components are needed to render and processing videos of high resolution and framerates. I think I must work on my camera handling to produce some smoother, consistent footage. This way, editing becomes easier and does not take attention away from the main subject of the advertisement. I noticed when trying in auto-stabilizer in the editing software, it could hardly stabilize it without severely altering the borders and original clip. In other words, this project taught me that this kind of work requires great execution of every single component, without overly relying on just one step. This kind of cumulative quality will require...

      It is now the final phase of the project. I have decided to change the music I will use for the commercial. I chose another instrumental that has less bass and a more catchy melody. I have played around in Premier Pro and did some research and tools and techniques I will use. These include, split screens, stabilizers, and color adjustments. They can be somewhat confusing and difficult to find and easily use due to Premier's complicated nature. In particular, one of the high angle tilts on one of the bottles stands out for being exceptionally shaky. After adjusting this, I added a split screen to show both of the bottles side by side. Next was the extreme close-up pan from left to right. The pan was moving at an already decent pace, but I made some slight adjustments. I then kept adding all of my clips in according to my storyboard. To summarize, we start off with the medium shot of the fruit, followed by a zoom into a long with a suspense sound effect added with the...

      Today was the first day of editing. The night before, I had painstakingly uploaded all of my footage from my camera roll to the Google Drive. This took about 20 minutes and used up about 800 megabytes of  cloud storage. Anyways, when I began editing in class today, I then my footage again and started to download them from the google drive to my computer. I began with the first shots of the fruits from the storyboard. I plan to follow storyboard during editing. This way, I can manage the length of the clips to have a smooth commercial that makes sense that will satisfy the time constraints and rubrics. From here I would put them in Adobe Premier Pro, and use the features to try and make the best cinematic experience possible. Considering the factors that makes things appealing to the eye, it will have to have good timings, speed, and color to truly highlight the Snapple that is being advertised.  The best way for me to do this would to just experiment with ...

      Today was the final day for filming. I managed to bring a camera stabilizer in hopes of getting footage that was more fluid. I wanted shots with less trembling, and even movement speed of the camera. This slightly helped with the shaking, but nothing too significant. I found that the hand grip did let me achieve this, but it initially seemed difficult to tilt or change the angle of the camera in an enclosed space. However, I did not encounter this problem myself. Anyways, it was another clear, sunny day, which was good for the lighting of my commercial. However, the sun was not as bright and the footage seems slightly less vibrant. I only took shots of the Snapple bottles from the storyboard and the ending. I had reviewed the shots of the fruit introduction and decided that I was finished with recording them and did not bring them. It seemed clear, smooth, and fluid with the zooms and movement. Today. the condensation on the bottle was not as noticeable for both bot...

      Today was the first day of filming. Two days prior, I spent time creating and developing a computer generated voice over to narrate the commercial as well as downloading the music and sounds effects that I would add in editing. Anyways, I went to my planned setting, which was the courtyard outside the cafeteria. However, the sun casted a large shadow over, so I had to move west to offset the sunlight and create a clear, bright set. I started by taking my fruits, which included one nectarine, since they are larger and shine more than a peach, one kiwi, and two strawberries. I set them down for the planned medium shot and got good footage of them. This was the most straightforward and simple scene. I used automatic presets installed to zoom out with the tap of one button. It was here that I realized I did not have a stabilizer for my phone, and that it would be best to shoot in landscape mode to allow for easy automatic zooms. Regardless, I tried to keep my hand as st...

      Since September 24, I have been working on this commercial project independently. I am also currently creating a storyboard for my commercial. To do this, I would have to make a series of drawing and descriptions for every. Every picture and description would represent 6 seconds of the commercial. This means I would have to do 5 to encompass the entire video. I began by drawing an intro of the fruit resting on a table at a medium distance shot. I would make sure to include a voice over advertising the fruits before linking it to Snapple. Secondly, I thought of doing a zoom out to include all of my props (the produce and the corresponding drinks) in the shot. Maybe here is where I will add a suspenseful sound effect to bring more tension and uncertainty up until this point. Next, I will begin a cinematic compilation of different shots and angles. For this, I think it will give the best dramatic effect if it is edited in slow motion. Doing this can also highlight drop...