CCR Blog

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

Our product uses conventions such as certain camera movements used when displaying a product. For example, when the product is physically small, commercials tend to use a zoom shot to focus on the brand name and the product itself. Comparisons are also included in order to display how the product of the commercial is more beneficial. My commercial incorporates both of these conventions as well as a stop-motion scene where the pens appear to be moving on their own. We didn't add any dialogue so that the audience could focus on what was being shown. It represents social groups such as writers or artists who use pens in their hobbies or jobs. Utilizing smooth pens can be very beneficial for them as well since people experience issues with pens that run out of ink quickly.

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

We added upbeat music to provide a positive view of the product and to keep them engaged. Furthermore, we had the actor in the commercial draw a picture instead of writing words to attract more viewers with art instead of words. People can find words to be boring and would most likely prefer seeing a unique drawing instead. For this commercial to be distributed, it will most likely be shown through television or frequently used devices such as laptops and phones through social media platforms. This is because those who would use pens would usually do research using the devices that they use on a daily. Since I am a writer myself, I do a lot of research in regards to information and would be shown ads from YouTube or other sites.

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

I used to edit videos casually a few years ago. So using editing software for this project, I was able to visually see my improvement when editing this commercial. My camera movement also improved since I was able to learn more about various shots and movements. Since there were things I was not taught before taking this class, I learned how to utilize timing when filming. Positioning props to stay in the same place was also something I had to take into factor. Since I recorded this outside, the wind was a bothersome variable as it kept blowing our props (paper) away which would lead it to touch the soil, dirtying it up. To prevent this, we would use an object to hold down the paper as we set up the scene and would remove it when filming. 

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

For filming, my group and I used my phone, a Samsung Galaxy A52. The camera quality was decent and allowed me to speed up some scenes when need. It also had a pause option so the third scene that required a jump shot was easier to film. For editing, we used an HP Laptop to use an editing software called Clipchamp that let us add music, transitions, and edit scenes for our commercial. Since this was a group project, we had to communicate using Whatsapp so that we were up to date with everything especially if one of our group members were absent.