Reflection: 3/3/11

Reflection
Today, there was not much going on but rather a continuation of the previous lesson as well as the subtle beginning of the next topic following the completion of the warm up film. The goal is to make a music video, thus my new group and I continued to explore the dimensions of what music videos were made up of, namely their camera techniques, angles, video effects, cuts etc. Also, in order to gain a wide variety of culture surrounding various country music video styles, we explored several culture's music videos. It was found that in every single type of culture, there were unique properties that made that country's style unique to another, however, there were always similar elements that made the music videos a unique genre as well. For example, Western music videos tend to flashy and had rapid-transitions between short cuts of film. Japanese ones tended to focus extensively on the band and had longer shots that tend to move around the band in, focusing on them from below. In order to garner accurate representations of a music video, keen observations were made to collect data not only on the uniqueness of each culture, but the classical key concepts of the genre, such as a progressive story that intertwined with the band or singer singing or the singer or band performing the song.
Evaluation
Though we were all working to find information, the group splintered in order to collect information for themselves on their own blog. However, while this method emphasized independence, it allowed all of us to understand deeply about the various aspects of a music video, which could not be simply found listed on the internet. Instead, it had to sampled and noted down from music videos that were watched on YouTube. Despite this splintering, it is vital that we all collect and share this information as we will have to work together later to pool all information together and utilize it in the actual making if the music video.
Outside of the classroom, I have to continue to research the music videos to further increase and deepen the pool of information, as it will be vital and essential for the future. In order to further increase my knowledge, I must also diversify the cultures of music videos in order to collect more unique techniques.