Week 2 - Reflective Blog post

This week we decided to start to work on our mash up of the song Thrift Shop my Macklemore. The class was split into groups of 3 and 4 and, each group was given a section of the song, spanning around 1 minute or so. When we were placed into our groups, our first task was to discuss what style of music video we should use for our music video. Our group decided to go for parody because we wanted to create something entertaining and comfortable for people to see. We believed that parody ticked those boxes and so came to decision to create a parody mash up of Thrift Shop. After this, we decided to create storyboards, so we knew exactly what we were doing in each specific scene. However, our group had some trouble communicating with each other, as there were some disagreements in our planning and choices. However, we managed to come to agreements and compromises and were able to productively film our scenes effectively.

Thrift Shop Mash Up Evaluation

Thrift Shop Mash Up Evaluation

Q1. What style did you choose and why? 

For our Thrift Shop mash up me and my group decided to choose a parody style for it. We thought that this would be the most entertaining and interesting, to come up with our own ideas and incorporate it into the music videos. Furthermore, a parody is rather easy to produce and film, due to the diverse and wide variety of methods we can use for the music videos. For example, me and my group came up with several ideas and ways for our mash up to be like, so we all combined our several ideas into one and went along with that.

Q2. What music video conventions did you incorporate?

The primary music video convention that we used for our mash up was the lyrics. Significant parts of the music video was us lip synching (attempting) to the song. This is because by lip synching it would seem more realistic to the audience watching our video, that we put in a lot of effort and time into it, to make it the best that we could have possibly made it. We also included a fast tempo into our music video because the tempo of the original music video was fast so we wanted to include this fast-like tempo into our music video. Changing too much of the style and conventions of the original music video wouldn't make the best parody, so that's why we didn't want to change too many conventions and things of the original.

Q3. Will you use these styles and conventions in your final production in Y13? Why? Why not?

I believe that I will use these styles and conventions in my final production in Year 13 because I find the parody style the most appealing and attractive to me to produce. I enjoy watching and seeing how they are produced, so the idea of myself producing another parody style next year is very likely. The same goes with the conventions of lyrics and tempo. Lip synching and lyrics become an important role in music videos and their appeal to the audience, so I want to make them priorities in producing my final production in year 13.

Q4. What problems did you face from pre to post-production?

The problems we faced from pre production to post production of our mash up is that there was a lack of communication at times. For example, when deciding to film certain scenes, there wasn't much preparation being done for to, so when filming the scenes there was some arguments and disputes of how to film the scenes. This lead to a lot of time being wasted as, we took a long time making sure all the scenes were filmed in a way where everyone was satisfied. In addition to this, another problem we faced when filming was that we found it rather hard to get the lip synching of the song perfectly, as either we were off the tempo or the lip synching didn't look like it fit to the lyrics. In Post production, the editing and making sure that everything was in the correct place was rather difficult. We had to make sure everything was in sync to what we had planned for.

Q5. What elements did you feel were successful?

The elements that I felt were successful was that we produced a music video that was clear enough to be called a parody. We filmed scenes that went along with the lyrics and added original, entertaining and funny scenes. Also I felt that some of the lip synching was successful, even though it may not have been of a high enough quality to the audience's wants.