Creative Critical Reflections???

Disclaimer: This is not my official reflection, just my brainstorming. 

So for the Creative Critical Reflection, we are supposed to answer these 4 questions. 

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

For this blog post, I will just be answering them through a rough draft. For my final reflection, I will most likely be branching off what I'm writing here. Shall we begin?

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

- Since my film mainly features one main character, there isn't much to challenge with character stereotypes, except that she would mainly be conceived as the Artsy Antisocial. However, my product does strive to represent a few social groups as well as issues. One of the two of the main issues portrayed is the pressure and stress on LGBT teens, with the second being the Americanized assimilation struggles within traditional environments and families, mainly focusing on the religion of Islam.

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

- Recently I've noticed the trend of Polaroids and film cameras coming back and not just for the obscure, more "hipster" type of people. A lot of my target audience, being teens and young adults, are fascinated with the practice of instant photography. This film would latch onto the large hype, which would help generate popularity in audiences. As for distribution, it would mainly focus on limited release, but would heavily be promoted within the art and underground scene.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

- I am already pretty experienced with editing and the subject of media and film, have taking a class in film last year. However, to work with just a film opening rather than a short film was a tad more difficult. I had to think about the story a lot more and how to foreshadow it within two minutes. The technological aspect was also challenging for me as well. Even though I work with Windows Movie Maker, I was trained better with IMovie. I had barely used Movie Maker except in my younger years and was not really familiar with it at all. So having to basically improvise with what I knew and relearn such a simple editing system.

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

- My project was not just simply shooting and editing, even though it may seem. Working with such a simpler editing system than what I"m used to, I had to figure out ways to get around a lot of the problems I encountered. For example, when I first started editing within IMovie, I had reversed a clip, but once I started editing within Movie Maker, I did not have that option. So, I took to the internet for help, where I found a website that will reverse clips that you upload for free. Websites were mainly what I relied on for help, especially when it came to the stop motion shots. For them, I actually turned them into GIFs first, then exported them into MP4 files so I could import them into Movie Maker.

Alright, how'd that go? I know it's very wordy, but I'm just brainstroming. I think I want to do a director's commentary, since I feel like that's the easiest route, but I guess I'll have to see what my options are. I'm more a visual person and I've always liked director commentaries myself, but I might do a little more research on them to better my own.