Component 3: Critical Self Reflection

 This blog post contains the critical self-reflection I made.

Critical Self Reflection

Cambridge gave many briefs I could choose from, amongst all the given options, I chose music promotion package. As media continues to cultivate, the art of visual representation of songs starts to succumb, thus this music video will be my take of appreciation to relieve its era. To achieve this, we chose the recent song Feather, originally by Sabrina Carpenter, performed by KIARA. For this, I decided to work in a group of 4. I will specifically be talking about our pre-production, production and post-production.

While planning our music promotion package, we focus on research and development. We decided to have teenage girls for our social group and target audience, shown by the actresses we chose. This would make the corresponding population find it easier to empathize though still be easily accepted by everyone. We want to highlight the social issue of love, break-ups and the process of self realization and moving onto new steps of life, instead of dwelling the past which currently is a famous concept.. We decided to use the song “Feather” originally by Sabrina Carpenter as we felt it had the mood we are looking for - upbeat, light and free. This show our representation of break-ups is in a positive light as our preferred reading is audience feeling positive, sees a break-up as nothing and to recognize the life out there even when there is no romantic love. Our artist, Kiara, has a reel persona of an achieved individual with a socialite lifestyle, with many friends, well liked but at the same time humble and down-to-earth. We also researched on music videos with similar genre or plot to see what are the conventions of pop songs with our plot. We conform with those ideas so our product easily falls to the genre. Alike other music videos we researched that sets in summer, we chose bright and refreshing colors to revolve around which highlights the lively mood we want our audience to feel. This also affected the social media and digipak design that we made as the colors used should also be eye catching for audience. We chose typical locations of a summer music video, which includes the beach and park to develop our music video to be the genre we want. My personal use of social media, also played a part on how we produced the page for our artist, as I prefer more participation when connecting with audience, I decided to apply the same method for our artist so fans would feel more appreciated and recognized - this is seen through our 10 questions interview video and the dance video challenge that we planned to make.

While producing our music promotion package, we focus on the media language we use. We had plenty of media language to represent the stereotypes we showcased - which is seen through their outfit and their actions. For our ex-lover character, we want to characterize him as a player which we show through his outfit including a leather jacket and slicked back hair. Another stereotype we mentioned was girlhood culture, which had elements of what is typically seen as for girls - including the use of props like beauty products, accessories, flowers and their actions which was flamboyant and feminine shown by how they walked or bonded. In order to achieve the brand we have decided for Kiara, we set her scenes to be the spotlight and central of her friend group and with scenes like her as the one taking the selfie for the group, we try to show that she is someone prominent of the group and her consistent outfit of a long white dress to highlight her difference and pink pajamas to give her femininity. We also paid attention to the camera angles that we used in our video such as close-ups, included to make audience feel more connected and personal to the artist as they can see clearly their expression and visual, which for fandoms, could be an important factor as existing technology enable audiences to make edits or videos of their artists which is a big trend today. Other camerawork used includes medium close-up angle shots which was used to showcase her actions while performing or when bonding with her friends - this gave more meaning to the video as we directed her movement to convey freedom and fun. All of our products of our package shares similar photos that were taken amidst our shoots, having photos from each setting to be part of either our digipak and social media as well, this is done to tie all our products together, making it more coordinated and matched.

While editing and designing our package, we focus on its interactive content. While editing our social media page, we made sure to have an element that can link to visit our music video and other medium such as a website or online album which we made with a LinkTree. We also made it available for audience to interact through our comment section in each posts and a question box which they can fill. This can be effective to develop a fandom (Henry Jenkins), specifically to be a prosumer where consumers are able to produce content that relates with the artist. We also designed our page to also include her real persona, featuring pictures of her outside of the direct promotion of her song to be more appealing (Stardom theory, Richard Dyer), highlighting her ordinariness, showing her normal life. The developing technology of smartphones and he internet allows audience to respond and interpret the product differently which may form discussions and be an application of Blumler and Katz’ Uses and Gratification theory of social relationship and even personal identity where they see her as a role model. This technological convergence is important for artists as it broadens their audience as they reach more people from different area and social media. We made sure to have similarity across mediums in terms of the color palettes, typeface and editing style used as well.