Commercial and it's reflection

Creative Critical Reflection for commercial 

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

My product uses and challenges conventions by, the vans company is a very big company on not only the shoe business but also in apparel as well. This means that they have to include everyone’s opinions and ideas being this big company. It uses conventions because it uses many people’s opinions in their campaigns. They are never offending anyone, and everyone loves them. Recently vans were on the internet a lot because people were finding out that they always land upright when you throw them up into any direction. This got them a lot of publicity because people could not believe a shoe could do that.

Vans represents many social groups and issues because, since Vans is such a big company, they have to be considerate of everyone’s opinions, race, and beliefs. This is a very big deal because most of the van’s audience are teens, so they want to put out good products while being a good company at the same time. Vans is mostly represented by social groups that skate. The shoes are practical for these people because they wear them to help them skate, but also look good while doing it. Also, many body-builders wear vans in the gym because vans are all flat shoes, so it helps them maintain a leveled foot at all times so that they are straight when lifting. But many other people wear vans for the fashion of it. But the social group vans mostly portray is the skater/surfer type. In their stores vans sells skateboards and accessories for skateboards, so that’s one big reason their audience is skater types. Also, the shoe is very good for skating because the all rubber bottom helps with friction while pushing and stopping. On their websites and apps, they always post surf competitions that they are a part of, or competitions they want their audience to join into. Some issues it represents is that there was a stamina many years ago that vans could only be worn by skaters or that if you wear vans you are a skater. That is completely untrue because in our day in age everybody owns vans. Vans has so many different styles of shoes, in many colors and they are all affordable for everyone to buy.

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

My product/commercial Engages with audiences because it tells a story from where two completely different people are drawn to each other just because of the similarity of their shoes. one of them is the skater, which is something Vans is very big and the other is just a normal average teen sitting on bleachers. Another reason our product vans engages with audiences is because it's on trend. the shoes Vans come in many colors and styles; this is a very big reason many people shop at Vans because the merchandise is really nice.  Another way my product engages with audiences is that vans are comfortable and stylish shoes it fits into anyone's lifestyle no matter what they're doing, whether it's active or just casual shoes. The Company Vans also engages With Their audience. there's an app they have created called “vans family” this app helps them gain points so that they can end up winning free items and it also engages them into joining competitions and watching videos about skating and surfing. It also helps artists and photographers enter themselves into competitions to win money or free merchandise. Vans has particular ways they engage with their audience in advertisements. They use known events that the youth know of.  For example, Vans will use music festivals, sports events and many more. Vans are also featured in many magazines that young teens and adults read. Vans also uses very eye-popping art in magazines and on posters and also use very well-known music so that the audience's watching can engage and relate to the commercial/product.

             The Ways my product would be distributed as a real media text is if it were to play on advertisements for vans or if it was posted within their app for everyone to see. I believe our commercial would come across as a real Vans commercial only because the editing is very good, and the music choice is very similar to commercials Vans have previously done. Other ways it could be distributed is on YouTube ads, Instagram ads that pop up on timelines, or even Snapchat ads. these apps are very well known and used by young adults and teens so it would Target them and show them something they can relate to making them want to buy the shoes even more.

3.     How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

My production skills develop throughout this project because from the beginning I knew I was going to learn a lot of things while creating this commercial. my group mates and I had to be very organized from the beginning. we had to know what we wanted exactly and write it in our storyboard so that when we filmed, we knew what we wanted to do right away instead of sitting around not knowing what we are going to film. The camera skills is one of the biggest things that was developed throughout this project because the camera was the main source of taking shots. my group mates and I were all new to the video camera and we all gradually learned to use it. we also have now learned how to use an SD card from a camera and how we plug it into a computer and now dump. One of the biggest production skills that was developed was using blogger. blogger has been one of the most important pieces in production, we all know we have to post everything on Blogger that we do to our project. Blogger is not at all hard to use and it is very easy to keep everything organized. Another really good thing about blogger is that if I want to know how to do something again, I can just go back to the blog I wrote and re-read it almost like it's notes I have taken. But planning was one of the things that was most expanded throughout this project, we had to plan everything in advance so that later on our project could move as smoothly as possible. I've also learned how different roles work together and how we can be very creative in the editing process even if we don't like something we have recorded, and we want to cover it up a bit. I've also learned that you want to take as many shots as you can while you are filming one scene so that later on you have many options to choose from and so you don't feel limited on your options later on. I've learned that communication within your group mates is key or else you will not have a good project / commercial. I was very lucky because my group mates are very helpful and always had ideas to express so because we worked so good together our commercial has come out very good as well. It was Very hard learning Pinnacle Studios so my group and I decided that using iMovie would be completely better. we decided on using iMovie and it was the best decision we could have made. We are now very familiar in using iMovie and our commercial came out very well too because we could all decide on little editing decisions because iMovie was an app on our phones, so it was very accessible at any time.

4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

I integrated Technologies in this project because there was a lot of new software, we had to learn in order to complete this project accordingly. The first thing we had to learn was blogger. Org creating the Blog was probably the most difficult thing that was assigned everything else that we do on Blogger. Org is very easy because all we're doing is recording what we've been doing already. so pretty much bloggers are like notes on what we've done and need to do. Blogger is easily accessible from our phones, so uploading is very easy. the next thing we had to learn was Pinnacle Studios. this for me was the hardest thing to do I could not edit very easy on Pinnacle Studios for me it was very difficult because we were using School computers and I felt rushed because everything we did had to be in our class period. Pinnacle Studios also wasn't accessible anywhere else but School computers oh, this was another reason I did not like using this software. my group mates came up with the idea to use iMovie, this saved us because I movie is very accessible because each one of us could download it for free in the app store on our phones. we also we're all familiar with how to use iMovie and the how to put our footage onto the app and edit. using iMovie also helped us feel less rushed because we could work on it at home as well. another software we had to learn how to use was Google drive because when we filmed we found out that we couldn't just put our footage onto a computer desktop we had to either put it on a thumb drive or email it to each other or uploaded to Google Drive. at the moment we did not have a thumb drive so we had to learn how we could use Google Drive to save our footage. Google Drive was easy to use because bloggers use Gmail and so did Google Drive of course. Google drive though was not as accessible for our group mates all to use because it was on one person's account, which was their Gmail account so we couldn't just sign on any time we'd like. Another thing me and my group mates used which I'm not sure if it's considered to be a software, we used text message for this project because we made a group chat so that we could all talk to each other and send footage Within. Having this group chat was especially helpful in the finalizing steps in our project. we would text each other ideas and suggestions which made the project even easier to do.

Overall all the hardware and Technology online we learned and had to use for our project was very easy and I feel like I will be using all of the hardware I used for the commercial for the up-and-coming music video. I felt like iMovie especially was the most helpful in editing because it was very accessible and easy to use. unfortunately, I do not think I will be using Google Drive for anything else other than media studies just because it's not as easy to use. Blogger. Org I will be using throughout this whole year so that Cambridge can see what I am doing and what I've done throughout the year.