Critical Self Reflection (Music Video)

This blog post features my critical self reflection for my component 3 project. The word count for this is 1,110 words, excluding figures.

The music video brief provided said that I needed to create a music video, social media page, and digipak. I chose the genre R&B for its emphasis on emotions and personal expression. I chose the song “Out of Time” by The Weeknd because of the emotional touch from R&B with a hint of city pop to keep the song fun and youthful. Here, I worked as a group of 4, partners were Jason, Niki, and Baron. Their blogs can be found in a post under component 3 titled “My Team”. In this essay I will explore details of our music video, social media and digipak

We used of social media to help connect with our young adult audience. Choosing to target this young adult demographic we can tap into themes of nostalgia, being appealing to the general masses, through the relatability aspect of our star. Stardom theory by Richard Dyer suggests that audiences are fascinated by five aspects of a star (love, ordinariness, success, downfall and consumption). These themes are essential in creating popularity and increase engagement between the artist and his fans. Visual content is highly shareable and attention-grabbing. Social media platforms allow artists to visually tell the story of the album through images, graphics, and videos. His instagram includes promotional posts to indicate his star power. Alongside posting his daily life on instagram we also slipped in some promotional posts to encourage streaming. Countdown and release dates are ways our artist generates urgency, by counting down the album's release date, builds anticipation among fans and encourages them to note it on their calendars, this increase allows the artist to anticipate the success of the album which can be essential when dropping merchandise for fans as seen in figure 1.1 and 1.2. As our star is relatively new we enhanced his visibility and awareness by advertising the album on different sites, using a link tree that teleports audiences to different platforms the artist wants to direct them to such as a merch shop or other sites to stream their song and get frequent updates. On our star’s instagram page, I used dark in color in his posts to portray him as a depressed, heartbroken artist that is trendy within the R&B genre, we made sure to create a set branding so that our star is more recognizable by the general public even outside his audience as seen in figure 2. Based on my research, this aspect is popular with the growing trend of young artists going viral on tiktok, this story establishes his reach. We also offer interactive hashtags, such as branded hashtags. This encourages fans to utilize the hashtag in their posts and create a community around the album.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 2

In the music video we chose to represent social issues like love and heartbreak in the target demographic of teenagers. In the first scene, we portrayed maturity, a theme explored further with the display of wealth through the car. We established branding through neon purple/blue lights used as seen in figure 3.1 and 3.2. With the availability of new editing softwares, we created a subtle vibrant sheen throughout the music video which establishes the Jun in the r&b genre. We also employed the use of day and night with day representing light, happiness and direction and night representing hurt, anguish and misdirection/blindness. Then, establishing the couple through dates that they go on such as the mall, we used natural lighting and familiar scenery as a way to be more relatable to audiences facing the teenage love trope and conforms to other products in this genre convention We showcased fragmented reality, indicating him as a spectator of his past, as he is stuck in rumination and portrays sadness/regret over his past lover. I played as the supporting roles of the couple, the car scene in particular when the couple was seen together is conveyed as happy and comfortable with warm tones, which is supported by the lighting and outfits used being bright. As compared to the opening sequence, the car is cheaper and less lavish which represents the sacrifice of material wealth for love. However, the descent into night time portrays how the relationship is rotting away as the scenery is darker and may represent the relationship slipping away. Our research not only looks at those from music videos alone but, we also looked at how the theme is portrayed in films which can be used to display the couple as more natural, this included those of 90’s romcoms, portrayed in the mood board below. Pre-wedding videos on YouTube and tiktok also helped us to get a better sense of connection to displaying couples visually. Research done from popular romcoms such as “The Notebook” when creating the storyboard and the narrative portrayed on screen.

Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2

The final component we designed was the digipak. The packaging acts as an extension of the album's themes, allowing him to communicate with fans deeper. We can see this on the cover of the digipak, maintaining the color scheme of blue and purple tones that match our song video as seen in figure 4. We selected these hues because they're associated with a strong association with sadness as an emotion, as portrayed in the music video. The glitch effect found on the cover (see figure 4) reflects the artist, which has traveled through time and is now lost. To further create branding, we designed our digipak with a palette that was identical to the key tints in the music video, which were purple and blue as seen in the neon lights. Branding is critical to the design being identifiable as our star's product. We prepared limited edition digipaks with exclusive features, such as signatures. Uses and Gratification theory by Blumler and Katz suggest that diversion is an essential part of creating a strong bond due to fans looking at artists to divert from the real world, which was taken into consideration. The sense of exclusivity and collectibility encourages interaction with the product and purchase, which can generate a significant amount of income for our artist. Our research showed the use of QR codes, these on the back cover of the digipak to allow fans to access this special content and stay up to date on our artist's future releases. The rise of digital music platforms and online distribution has had a significant impact on physical music distribution, specifically digipak. While actual copies are still produced, we know that nowadays many listeners prefer digital versions, hence changing the way they are distributed. Online retailers and direct-to-fan sales are becoming increasingly popular as technology advances with other artists in this genre. Artists and record labels can sell digipaks directly to fans through their websites, bypassing traditional retail channels and reaching them more efficiently, as promoted on the social media page.

Figure 4