AICE Media Studies

  1.       How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?  It uses conventions by showing the variety of bookbags and using different locations which are common in bookbag commercials. It challenged conventions by not having the bookbag thrown around since I didn't want to damage anyone's real bookbag. There also wasn't any skateboarding since the commercial was filmed on campus during school and students aren't allowed to skateboard on campus. While kids were shown there also wasn't a large group of them like typical JanSport commercials because only kids in my class at the time could be in the video and everyone else was filming. The commercial represents social groups like teenagers. It does this by being shot on a campus, showing Lili running upstairs at the end, and having a bell ring in the beginning. The scene where Lili drops all her textbooks also represents teenagers because they usuall...

       Today is the last day of the commercial. Overall this experience was very unique. It was fun, but also stressful and tiring. I'm very happy to see the finished product though and be able to share it with everyone. I learned many things from this project such as better teamwork skills and time management. Lili and Angie were great partners and made this project much easier. Together as a group we all worked hard to reach our achieved goal. We had great communication and split the project fairly with everyone doing their part. To summarize, this was a very interesting project that taught me many things and helped me grow as a person. I couldn't have asked for a better group to work with on this project.

        This is the second day of editing. As stated in the previous blog, the editing was done progressively. The last thing to do was voiceovers. At first, there was confusion on how to do the audio for the commercial. I first thought about using the original audio from each clip. This turned out to be too choppy when editing. You could also hear a lot of background noise and the change in setting from scene to scene. My group and I then found out that there is a voiceover feature in the editing program we used. The first voiceover needed was mine. This was for the beginning of the video after the bell rung and my passing scene. It took a few tries to get right because I had to time my voice with my mouth opening in the video. I also had to try and figure out a good volume to speak at because I sounded far away the first few times. Then it was Lili's and Angie's turn. It took more take to get their scenes right because they had a longer dialogue. This scene was the...

     Throughout this project the editing has been doing gradually. This is because when brainstorming the process it made more sense to edit as the film progresses than to wait until the end and rush it. The first thing that was edited was the clips filmed on the first day. These clips were me and Lili swinging on the ledge then her running up the stairs which is actually the last shot in the entire commercial. The song was also chosen really early on in the process. The video was supposed to have a retro vibe so we needed an older song to match. At first this was hard because as a 15 year old I don't know many older songs but once there was a time era set for the music it became easier. The first choice was a song called " These boots are made for walking." It then switched to an 80s song called "Bad Reputation." The final song ended up being "Take me on." This song plays in the background of the entire video. Since the video was supposed to have a re...

      Today was our second day of filming. It was also our first complete day of filming, too. We were able to complete our entire video today. Since we had both the beginning and end clips from the last half film day we didn't have as much to work on. First, we filmed the second to last scene in front of Building 17. This is where the last scene in the commercial was shot. In this scene, I was the director, while Lili and Angie were the actors. Lili was supposed to drop the contents in her arms, then Angie handed her the bookbag and walked off while Lili packed up. This took a couple of shots but turned out pretty good in the end. After this, we went in front of the media center stairs to film the second shot. It was a little hard to get done at first because we had to find some people who could be extras in our bookbag as well as extra JanSport bookbags to use. We used mine for the first "pass it to Leila" and Sara. Another girl in our class was the one I passed it to. ...