Critical Self Reflection

Angelo 12A

This is my critical self reflection for our product

Critical Self Reflection 

For Component 3 of our Project, I chose the option which was ”A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music video (major task), together with an official social media page for the band or artiste(s) and a digipak for the album’s release (minor tasks).”  My group which included : Myself, Jonathan , Jason and Abizer decided to go for a Hip Hop genre where we would  make a music video based on Kanye West’s song of ‘Ghost Town’ 

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

Our music video portrays the life of an average Male young adult, who is around the age of 18 to 25 years old. Young people are often underrepresented in the media, with simple and stereotypically negative things being said about them. They are often shown as being lazy, troublemakers and isolated from the rest of the world. But we subvert this idea, By showing the idea that young people aren’t as simple and straightforward as the media portray them. They’re a lot more complex and they have problems just as serious as adults do.

We do this by showing young adults in a positive light. Our main character played by Jason, Is shown to play soccer which is done to convey the meaning of being active and healthy. He also hangs out with friends a lot, communicating and interacting like any normal person would. We do this to show that Young adults don’t just sit in their room all time playing video games or being lazy, They do activities too. Activities that benefit them and the people around them. Editing wise, Whenever it's the beach scenes or Jason playing football, the lighting would tend to be bright and vibrant and the mise en scene would be more crowded with people. This is done to create a more positive representation as we tend to associate bright colours with positive meaning of happiness and we show more people to reduce the feeling of isolation. 

After showing our character in a positive light and after establishing that He’s just your average young adult. Comes in the breakup scene, Who in the music video has a noticeably different tone than the beginning. It’s completely black and white , the shots are zoomed in slowly with minimal movement shown. This was done to create the uneasy feeling of sadness and fear, as dark colours are often represented negatively in the media as they connote meanings of death, destruction and pain. The scenes following this follow the dark theme, like during the Dinner scene, when all of His friends are having fun, He’s with them but it's clear that He’s isolated from the rest, as He barely pays attention to what they say. By decreasing the saturation, I managed to make the corridor scene  become darker with each jumpcut. This is done intentionally to show that Jason is falling deeper and deeper into madness. 

Previously, before the breakup scene happened, We had signs foreshadowing Jason’s demise. Like in the goal scene, Lyrics said “ I wanna hit the red dot “, But he didn’t hit it. This was done intentionally  to show that Jason’s life wasn’t perfect, despite trying he still fails. But by the end, when He finally realises his mistake, He hits the goal. Which we hope would convey the meaning that He’s finally moved on, He’s finally hit the target that He’s been wanting, happiness. 

Mental problems are a serious problem that plagues young adults everywhere. We follow the typical conventions by using dark  lightning , jump cuts to create a faster action and slow movement to emphasise the emotions that we hope could portray this problem as a serious problem for us all. 

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

The branding of our products ( Music video, digipak and social media )  that work together and have similarities with each other follows three main themes. Which are, Mental health awareness, dark themes such as black and white and the logos + typeface. We would use various elements of production such as colour, characters and style to hopefully have the audience see all of our products as the same brand image which could convey the same meaning. 

All three of our products talk a lot about mental health. It's the primary topic of our music video, specifically about the journey through it. To convey this message better, we used a Black and White style in all three of our products. We do this because, Black often connotes the feeling of sadness and misery which is often associated with Mental health problems. The music video used Black white extensively in all of the depressing scenes. All of our posts in social media are also done exclusively on Black and White or shades of it, both videos and photos included. In addition, the social media’s tone is largely dark, even when showing our ‘merch’ or ticket sales. There’s rarely any sort of bright colour at all, which was done on purpose to create our brand image. The digipak like our other two products is exclusively done on black and white as well. With all three of our products showing the same style , audiences who see, should be able to quickly recognize all of our products and identify it as the same brand.

To add more brand image, Throughout all three of our products. We used the same typeface and font. Such as the word ‘Ghost Town’ in the beginning of our music video where the word ‘O’ would have a slash on it. The social media followed this too by using this style of an ‘O’ with a slash in any word that includes an ‘ø’. Our digipak also does this too. We hope by doing this, it would become an icon of our artist E/GO, Who is always known for using this typeface or font in their products thus creating a brand image. Audiences by looking at the typeface can now immediately know who the artist is no matter the product. 

How do your products engage with the audience?

Our product engages the audience in various ways. First of all, Our digipak features on the front, a doctor prescription with our song name “Ghost Town” and our artist “EGO” shown. Below that, we have a QR code that directs the audience to a website called “Better help” Which primarily focuses on mental health and therapy. Below that, we have added the suicide hotlines of the UK and the US. We plan to change these suicide hotlines based on the country where were releasing our albums so it could be relevant. By doing this, Audiences who feel like they’re going through rough stages in their lives much like how our main character is feeling could easily find help just by scanning and reading our little prescription. Meanwhile, audiences who don’t have any mental problems could access these sites too and inform their friends who have problems to check it out, which raises awareness. 

Our social media engages with our audiences in a lot of ways. Most posts encourage active audience participation. Some posts include links that direct audiences to a variety of sites, like the Better help from before and a Gofundme where audiences, if they're willing, could “fund” our future projects. Other links include our merch and our online store where audiences could buy our products. The merch we promote, which is a hoodie, is ‘made’ to be the same hoodie that is worn by Jason in the music video. Audience engagement is increased,  because now if the audience buys the hoodie, they would feel in character with Jason which fits with the uses and gratification theory by Blummer and Katz. The audiences might see Jason as a role model ( personal identity ) and therefore want to be or dress up like him or be in character. 

For the music video, We keep the audience engaged by using various narrative techniques such as Barthes five codes. We included a lot of symbolic codes ( which are two contrasting signs that create tension ) like scenes in the beach where it's bright , crowded and happy is contrasted with the dark and isolated scenes where Jason is all by himself. This creates an uneasy tension between the audiences as they don’t know whether to feel happy or sad. There are also a lot of binary opposites within our music video, Like Alone vs Friends , Dark vs Light and Depression vs Happiness which also helps create conflict and tension in our music video. There is also extensive uses of Jump cuts within the music video. I tried to make the cuts in sync with the beats which makes the video looks clean and neat as audiences who's seeing it wouldn't feel like the cuts are out of place or off beat. The usage of close ups during emotional scenes and long shots to show isolation makes the audience feel a lot closer to the character, it makes them feel more emotionally connected or attached to them which makes the audiences feel a lot more interested and engaged.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Our song Ghost Town By Kanye West is a hip hop song. But for our music video and the rest of our products. We challenged the conventions of your typical hip hop genre songs. You would expect a hip hop song to have a lot of violence, explicit content, a lot of lip syncing and choreography which is often associated with the genre. The Song BOP By DaBaby which I had done research in, follows these conventions by having choreo as their main attraction for the music video. Now we challenge this idea, by not showing the music being performed in the video at all. There are no bands, no lip syncing or any choreo. Instead our music video follows a more narrative based core that we feel would be more appropriate to show for this song as it allows us to convey a deeper message to the audience. 

My research on the Song I Don’t Love You By My Chemical Romance has influenced me in the making of this music video. The song was about a broken relationship and to show the emotions that are likely about sadness and depression, They showed the song completely in Black and White. Gaining inspiration from that, Our own music video. Confirms with what most people would expect from a sad music video. Black and white, more emotions, darker themes ( drugs , violence ) and loss from your surroundings. The reason why we confirm with the style is because according to Steve Neale's genre theory, A product have to be similar enough to the conventions for it to be recognizable but different to make it interesting. we feel like there isn’t any better way to communicate the idea of depression and mental illness problems without the use of these dark themes. Any other way, it would feel like it’s not done seriously which is what we want to avoid. 

At the end of our music video, I still included background noise from the actual scene being shown ( the beach ). This was done intentionally as I got inspiration from The Vaccines - Tiger blood, on how they ended their music video with the audience cheering. I feel like that would make the video feel more interesting, as it's not typical for videos to have background noise outside of the music itself. But instead of a crowd clapping at the end, Our music video has calming waves. This is to connote that Jason is at peace. 

This is the link for my Critical Self Reflection in Google docs

Google docs link - Critical Self Reflection