A2 Advanced Production Music Video Critical Reflection Essay

Q1) How do your products represent social groups or issues?

What defines a youth culture? Each generations youth cultures have different ways of Dressing and speaking along with different values, beliefs, music styles and forms of leisure.

In our music video we dressed Olivia in costumes that have more of a vintage aesthetic and myself in a much more modern take on fashion while also including references to the 80s and 90s. The mixture of aesthetics helps to enforce diversity into the video and to reinforce that our generation are much more open to alternative representations. The colour pallet for each of the artist was also chosen to subvert stereotypes. For example Olivia wears a blue jumper ( a colour that is considered to be masculine) and I wear a pink jacket (a colour that is considered to be much more feminine).

Within our music video we tap into the ideas of teenagers being self obsessed as the song represents someone who is extremely confident and claims to be loved by everyone. Following this stereotype allows for us to reduce complexity for the audience (Dyer- Stereotypes theory) however we also get to look at stereotypes that change over time ( Perkins). For example having myself in the music video wearing makeup subverts stereotypes of masculinity and what it is to be a man. Even though men in makeup has been rather common (especially in the 1980s), older generations still find it a new concept they are getting used to where as younger generations consider it to be normalized.

The values and beliefs of our artists are focused on three main aspects. Self confidence, self expression and diversity. Our generation are constantly surrounded by social media telling us how to look or feel and this can affect the audience's self esteem. Therefore we wanted our video and artists to inspire people to be confident. This works in hand with our artists being very focused on diversity and self expression. Our artists are also subverting themes of trying to fit in a group as they want to be individual and stand out from the crowd. We chose to do this as we noticed in our research that popular artist personas all have very specific and unique qualities.

While the costumes used are on trend (for example the puffer jackets). Following trends is an extremely common thing to do in youth culture today.

Q2) How do the element of your production work together to crate a sense of branding?

Looking at the production we fulfill Dyer’s Star Theory. The theory looks into a paradox where the star is represented as both ordinary and extraordinary. This means that we see the artist being relatable to the audience and it also means the audience can inhabit aspects of the artist persona into their lives but also there are aspects of the artist persona that are just out of reach of the audience.

In the music video we keep some things obtainable for the audience such as being in London and many other locations. This is obtainable for the audience as they can visit these places. However, the things we keep unobtainable for the audience is the high fashion aesthetic our artists have as well as their high level of confidence they exude. A key example of this is that my artist persona will go out wearing makeup confidently and some members of the audience won’t be able to do this.

The star theory also brings up three other key points. The star we see is a construction , the star is a commodity and the star is an ideology. Overall this tells us that the star is built for the audience and are models around the target audience to overall just make money.

Now looking at the three E’s. The E’s stand for Enabling Elevating and Enriching. Enabling means the content is accessible for anyone who is attracted to the brand either visually or through music. The artists’ content is shared on every social media platform, this is key for an artist as it encourages audience engagement as it is free. Elevating focuses on creating an experience for the audience. The experience I created is based on confidence, and standing out from the crowd. I used bright colours of blue and pink to achieve this while creating a strong brand identity.

On social media there also was a story being told to the audience. Rather than showing just the final product and promoting the artists, i wanted to show the journey of the production by showing some teaser images as-well as behind the scenes videos. This helps the audience to have a much more intimate relationship with the artists and become more interested and excited in what they are producing. Enriching focuses on making the audience feel as though they are part of a community. Using social media helps to achieve this as it allows for the audience to talk amongst each other about their love for the artists and their music. Social media also allows the audience to interact with the artists’ posts and therefore feel as though they are part of a group who idolizes these artists. A sense of community is further created by the tour advertisement posters. As I’ve said before, the artist is made to make money. The most profit is accumulated through tours additionally when the audience attend a tour it makes them feel part of a community as they are surroudned by people of the same ideology. This community if further created by the sales of merchandise that give the fans their own brand identity whilst further advertising the artist/s.

When creating an artist persona it is important to have a unique brand identity. Your brand identity should be part of your unique selling point. When producing the artists’ brand identities it was important for it to be very stylistic and eye catching. The name of the duo is ‘GENERATION’. The word generation signifies the artists personas that wear costumes based on different generations. It also makes the duo sound as though they are as powerful as an entire generation, further fulfilling Dyers ideas of being extraordinary. The use of a bold text with all the letters being in capitals helps to grab peoples attention as they walk past the CD or poster on display. This is further aided by the brand identity colours of blue and pink being dry bold and at constant use. The two colours are frequently used throughout the entire promotional material of the artists. I did this as having two colours (each one relating to one of the artists) stand out help to create a strong brand identity. This brand identity is strongly visible on the artists social media, digi pack, website and merchandise.

Q3) How do your products engage with the audience?

Looking at the social media of the artists its is important that they are engaging for the audience. The social media content doesn’t have to show the artist persona alone. It can also show the artist as a more relatable person. This is done quite often with artists and helps for the audience to engage with them more. Social media is the best way to interact with an audience as it is free to use and also it allows of the audience to talk to each other and with he artists. Social media also allows for the audience to produce their own content which helps to promote the artists to a wider audience. Social media is helpful to keep an audience interested. Having an audience of digital natives means its much harder to gain their loyalty because if you don’t have a strong social media presence or keep them interested in between launch dates of music or music videos they will forget about you as they are constantly bombarded with new content every single day. Therefore having a social media presence is key as you can keep uploading content which keeps the audiences active and interested. A great example of this that I researched is Ariana Grande. Ariana hasn’t released any new music content since October of 2020 (As of Jan 2023), however ,due to her strong social media presence and fan loyalty that has been built up over many years, she is still one of the most successful and popular pop artists across the globe.

Websites are also extremely helpful with audience engagement. Even though the audience engagement of a website will be less than on social media it is still very useful. Websites are a great place to promote or sell exclusive content such as merchandise.

Audience engagement is imperative for a successful artists and also leads to fandoms. A fandom is a word to describe a large community of fans. Fandoms will also be given their own name based on the artist they are supporting. For example Ariana Grande fans are call the ‘Arianators’ or Justin Bieber fans are called ‘Beliebers’. This links to Henry Jenkins fandom theory that states that fans enjoy media texts so much that they create content based upon that text and from communities around it. This is all possible due to the internet. Examples of this is when fans start all using the same hashtags that have the artist name in it or even some fans creating social media accounts supporting the artist by reposting their content or even creating their own content surrounding the artist. This allows for the audience to be interactive with not only the artist but also be interactive with other fans.

Q4) How did your erase change inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions.

Researching pre-existing products was extremely helpful when creating my own products as it gave me lots of inspiration. The music video is what needed the most inspiration as I had never done it before. While I still researched into social media, I already had pre-existing knowledge of how to create professional looking platforms from my own social media usage.

Music videos are a short moving image texts that are shot for the purpose of accompanying the whole of a pre-existing music track in order to encourage sales of the music in other formats. Music videos have their own conventions that we chose to either follow or challenge.

Many music videos have a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. Even though it weren’t as constant as other music videos we did have some shots where the graphics on the screen would reinforce the lyrics. An example of this is when the lyrics say ‘I have to walk around town in a disguise’ we deed graphics of a disguises being drawn on our artist. These graphics were created in post-production using the Wacom tools and Adobe after effects. All the visual links to the lyrics in our video were done in post-production rather than during the production period as we thought this would be much more stylistic and unique. Music videos have their own style and iconography. In our video we used affects that connect to our artist personas. For example, the brand identity of blue and pink is seen frequently throughout the video. The particular style seen in our video focuses on fast moving lines that draw your attention back to the artist on screen. This links to the next convention we follow that is having lots of close ups of the artist. Not only does this further showcase their persona but it also further enforces that they are the stars. Close ups also allow for the audience to focus purely on the star rather than what is surrounding them. We did challenge the idea of voyeurism. We didn’t want the artist to be seen as being watched from a distance as this gives the audience the power. We chose for the artists to be continuously breaking the fourth wall as this makes them have the power and control over the artist. This also makes the video much more intimate as it makes the viewer feel as though they are connecting hit the artists. From my research breaking the fourth wall is very common in performance music videos and is less common (but sometimes still done) in concept/ narrative-based music videos. Our video does include an intertextual reference to a pre-existing group called ‘Wet Leg’, our reference to them was made through the vintage dress seen in the Video.

My research: Similar Music video Analysis (16slark.wixsite.com)

When researching the genre of our song we noticed that a lot of indie pop music videos contain montages of the artists not singing the lyrics. This was helpful to use as we had a lot of instrument music space to fill. Our main inspiration we found in our research was a group called ‘Wet Leg’. Wet Leg include montages of their artists doing random activities throughout the video and therefore we wanted to use this inspiration and insert it into our own work. The montages are mostly fast cut clips which means the images are difficult to grasp on first viewing but the next part of the clip would be shown later in the video. This does follow the same conventions of a narrative performance as the narrative is usually fragmented and bits of it are shown throughout the video. We fulfilled this in our video however it was still very much a performative video.

When researching the genre further I realized that the editing style and camera work is very fast and helps maintain the audience’s attention. The camera work was sued to skilfully make the artist the centre of the frame at all times. Having close ups of the artist as-well as them being centre of the frames helps to reinforce their star status on screen.