Cover Video: What I've Learned - Celia

I still remember when Dr. Saeji introduced the cover video assignment during the first ASIA 327 lecture of the year. At the time, I didn’t look forward to filming this video. Due to my lack of knowledge on Korean pop music and my inability to sing and dance, I wasn’t very confident that I would be able to contribute much to this video.

Luckily, I had a very well-rounded group that was supportive of everyone’s ideas and levels of knowledge. Just like how K-pop groups are more beneficial because they combine different strengths together, I felt that our group had become closer because we learned more about each other’s strengths and weaknesses as we progressed through this assignment.

With this assignment, I became more aware of just how small-scale our production process was compared to those produced from the Korean music industry. The time it took for us to learn the choreography and film, edit, and upload the video was about two weeks. For official music videos, that process can take up to months. Not to mention, I learned just how much work needs to be put into a video in order for it to be appealing to fans. Even though Parris Goebel mentioned in an interview, shown during a lecture, that people are too easily impressed with entertainment nowadays, there’s still a lot of pressure for the music industry to think of video concepts and choreography that are more unique, more flashy, and more outstanding than a previous video. While completing this assignment, even I felt a bit of pressure from comparing our group to others’. Despite the challenges, the whole journey of learning the dance to watching the final edited video was truly rewarding.

• Celia