Hey guys, how are you?? These past few weeks, I have been super busy with this project but my group and I finally presented our final and it went amazing! I was extremely nervous to present; One, because I really really dislike presenting as I feel I am going to mess up and two because I was really proud of what my team and I created and really wanted others to receive it well. I almost forgot, before I dive into the steps my teammates and I took to finalize our project, there's something I need to touch on. The week my team and I were supposed to go shoot our music video, I tested positive for Covid-19. It was definitely a less than ideal situation; I had various symptoms and they were all very prevalent. I inevitably missed a few classes and lost pivotal planning time with my group but we were able to push through and achieve a great final product.
My team and I researched two different record labels, being 'Columbia Records' and 'Fueled by Ramen'. And four bands, Panic! at the Disco, Vampire Weekend, AC/DC, and Twenty One Pilots. All of these artists create a certain sub-genre of rock music (Vampire Weekends with indie rock, AC/DC with hard rock) This was extremely helpful as many sub-genres of rock have different target demographics which means they inevitably have different marketing strategies. Since research was our first step we had not created our fictional band Kings & Queens yet which meant that we had no clue what our target demographic was going to be so having many examples of how rock artists use their platforms was incredibly helpful. As mentioned in my last blog posting, the brainstorming and planning process was definitely that, a process. We spent many hours pitching ideas to one another (Majority of them being scrapped once we realized they were either unachievable or just plain bad) As you may know we landed on having our music video revolve around grief and how losing someone close to you can affect your mental health. The weekend of the shoot approached and I was unable to be there but my team pushed through and was able to get all of the necessary shots! After one of our team members edited the video (Cristy you're incredible) It was ready to go and heres the final product! We then began our powerpoint presentation that went into target audience, our marketing campaign, and selling points. I focused on creating the marketing and distribution process which consisted of three main steps. I am a huge lover of music and am always waiting for my favorite artists to interact with fans or announce something so I went into this process with the fan mentality and focused on creating a marketing scheme that would make fans happy. In the marketing plan for Kings and Queens I created an exclusive album play through, a tactic to sell merchandise, and a week of events for the album release. I also created an album cover and mock-up vinyl (Shown below), these weren't necessary for any specific aspects of the assignment but its just something that I enjoy doing and knew it would add flare to the final project. The final aspect of our project was the presentation, each member wrote bullet points on the slide they had to present and while speaking would elaborate on them. We did this in order to show that we knew what we were talking about and not just reading copy and pasted material from our screens. I touched on this before but presenting was 100% what I was most nervous for during this project but honestly it went amazing! After everyone presented we were tasked with doing peer critiques and I must admit when everyone had posted theirs and it was time to read what people wrote about our project, I was terrified. When I began to read critiques and saw how much positive feedback we received I was happy beyond words. I tend to rely on praise from others as a deciding factor if I should be proud of myself, which I know, it's a terrible habit to hold but one that is hard to break. The only negative feedback that I saw multiple peers touch on was that someone in the group (comments varied from "some" to "one") was speaking too fast making what they had to say hard to understand. Overall, I was really happy with how smoothly our presentation went and proud of myself and my teammates!
I can ultimately say that his project really elevated my teamwork skills. Although I have been attending school online for many months now, this was the first time I truly felt as if I was challenged and grew from a project that had to be done virtually. My team and I held brainstorming sessions out of class which also helped us create a bond (at least with the members who would show up to these sessions) Becoming friends with the majority of my teammates was a really great experience as I felt more comfortable asking them questions and when we would collaborate on certain aspects of the assignment it didn't even feel like work. I definitely believe that once it is time to work on my Cambridge portfolio I will use what I learned from this project; One of our first steps with this project was to do research and it was a very trial and error experience as I found that many websites tend to post random information without an official source and certain information found can be extremely bias. I also now understand how important having a shot list and storyboard is when filming. Having a shot list makes the filming process much smoother as one can see exactly what clips they must shoot which is extremely helpful in my case as I get distracted and become unorganized often. A storyboard is not going to be extremely helpful to everyone but it is very important for me to have as I am a person who relies on visuals and having my shots laid out before me helps me understand which shots may be effective in certain scenes. Basically, everything I just rambled about can be summarized into one sentence that says "I am extremely grateful for this experience and what I have learned from it." There were definitely trials throughout this experience; Between me getting COVID, having to do the entire assignment virtually, and a member of the group not putting in as much effort as others. I can ultimately say that my team and I were able to push through and create something we are extremely proud of.
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