Creative Critical Reflection Q.1

Q1. How does your product use or challenge the conventions and how does it represent social groups and issues?

Ans. The Advanced level portfolio task for us was to create a music video either following or breaking the general conventions of the existing real media texts, allowing us to explore and eventually produce what would interest the mass audience.

I believe, our product uses most of the conventions of a typical music video but also, in a few parts of the performance the rules are also challenged to an extent that it gives us an edge. Our music video is on the song “Duaa” which means “Prayer”, the overall feel of the song is about yearning and desperation to achieve something; the video is performance and narrative based. With an indie band to represent we had to make sure that there were enough references taken in order to have an accurate representation of how the production of the video is to take place.

For the performance of the music video our major references included Boyce Avenue videos, especially those when they initially started off. 

Low budget, low lighting, small studio, acoustic instruments: This was our situation as well. Hence, we followed their example and decided to go with something that would be somewhat similar to their mise- en- scene especially since it would be easier for us to pull of as well. The final cut of our music video shows how our location has warm, soft lighting with maximum consumption of natural lights, it definitely gave an amateur studio- like feel to it. It also complimented with the narrative of the video and the lyrics of the song giving it a deeper understanding and emotion to it which happens to be the convention of indie music videos. 

In our music video, one way in which we challenged the conventions was that usually, in all sorts of music videos the artists look directly into the camera, especially when the entire band is shown; for our music video, we saw that none of the band members had direct contact with the camera which gave the feel that the song “Duaa” was on a much more spiritual and emotional level. The essence of yearning and the attachment to the song could evidently be seen with the way the expressions of the members were.

The narrative of our music video seemed to be very simple but had to be understood on a deeper level relating to the social reality. The conventions for the narrative were followed and referenced from a popular Pakistani music video, “Ankahi by Overload”. Generally we see that most narrative based music videos essentially cover a very typical narrative but for our video we chose something to which the audience would have to connect with the entire society and link their interpretations to it. There are various concept based videos but those are difficult to understand by the audiences. We turned the concept of hopelessness into a narrative which gave us a chance to play around with the conventions of the music video. 

Our music video represents an entire society in terms of the performance and the narrative. According to our music video survey we had more of the teenagers targeted since we did not have a wide access to the elderly- however, we feel that it can be enjoyed and understood by everyone. Since in the narrative the protagonist is a young girl, we would have a greater audience attracted to it to find out what the music video is about. If we have a closer look at our society, in Pakistan we all are going through a stressful phase in the society with so much disruption and hence, the video allows audiences to relate to the reality through the music video; especially groups in the lower middle class, the ones who are necessarily targeted with those problems. 

One very important relation of our music video was with the different dressings of the young girl, from wearing traditional shalwar kameez, to wearing a sweater and jeans. This shows that the girl is from a well off family but she has a different outlook for society, she is not a typical girl, her concerns about the society and the needy are legit and hence walks out in search of hope. 

A major issue represented in our music video is “hopelessness” and “depression” in the society, as there is nothing positive happening in the society. There is a loss of motivation to achieve what needs to be achieved but somehow a teenager still has hope and proves that if one is motivated enough and the desire to achieve is strong then even in the darkest times, good can happen. The social issues represented in the music video are easily relatable to the reality of our traditional society giving viewers a chance to have more emotional attachment to it. 

In a society like that of Pakistan where there are so many issues, hopelessness in various situations is very common and hence, this is an extremely relatable topic for our society. With the use of the elements of the earth water, fire, land it made the narrative stronger as each element has its own representation and depth to it. For our entire music video to express a certain meaning, these elements added their own essence to it as all three elements are extremely important for human survival and aid each other as well. 

In conclusion to this, the social issues targeted are universal and the only way to counter these is to not lose motivation and continue working even if the society is going through the toughest of times- this is what the young girl was able to establish by her effort of sowing the seed and watering it in the barren land.