This part of my blog will be for my CCR essay
For our music video, we decided to do Catch Me in the Air by Rina Sawayama (2022) which is part of the indie pop genre. As for our star, Vina Viani, we created her with the intention of her being an inspirational role model to our target audience of young (15-25) Indonesian women through a family-friendly, passionate and independent persona. We want to show our audience a dominant reading that encourages them to value their (familiar) relationships and to pursue their dreams regardless of difficulties. This essay will be a critical reflection that shows how my team utilised genre conventions, representations and technical elements to create a consistent brand identity as well as how we engaged with our audience.
Genre conventions are an important part of any media production. According to Steve Neale, genre conventions change over time and it is crucial for producers to conform or subvert from these conventions to properly engage their audiences. By conforming, we are able to keep audiences interested through providing them with something familiar while subverting allows our product to stay fresh and stand out from other productions in the same genre. For indie pop, common genre conventions include vibrant colours, tracking movement, retro effects and romantic narratives (Chappell Roan - Casual [2023], Beabadoobee - Glue Song [2023]). For most of our music video, we often conformed. We did this by using vibrant colours (Fig 1.0) through the use of natural lighting & using vibrant backgrounds (nature, vibrantly coloured room), using old recordings & childhood reenactments that gave the music video a nostalgic retro theme and lastly by using a tracking camera movement in performance scenes that kept focus on the star. We also agreed that we wanted to subvert from the romantic narratives convention as we felt like this may not align with our family friendly persona that targets younger audiences.
(Fig 1.0) An example of our use of vibrant colours
Our digipak mostly conformed to indie pop digipak conventions, which happen to be similar to indie pop music video conventions. Something unique about the indie pop genre is the fact that indie is a genre often associated with low-budget productions whereas pop is often associated with high-budget productions so the budget quality of the indie pop genre is left up to the producer’s own capability, budget and personal preferences. For us, we ended up leaning towards the low-budget convention of the indie genre as this would allow audiences to better connect with our content as it would appear more relatable and realistic to them. This was reflected in our digipak as we opted for a lower-budget option that used props that can easily be made and found at home (drawing, music sheets, crayons, dolls etc.) This created advantage of the digipak having a ‘homey’ feeling which strengthened our production’s brand identity of nostalgia and childhood memories. Another common convention in the indie pop genre is the use of sepia or desaturated filters to make a product appear retro (Clairo - Sling [2021], Wallows - Tell Me That It's Over [2022]). The digipak subverted this as we wanted to create a dreamy feeling that can compliment our nostalgic brand. To do this, the digipak used vibrant colours (Fig 2.0) as vibrant colours can make a product appear dreamy as it can make a product feel ‘unnatural’ or unreal.
(Fig 2.0) A lack of sepia tones & desaturated filers
Our primary representation was young women which we portrayed as ambitious and hardworking. This representation can encourage our target audience to engage with our content as audiences often use role models in the media to shape their identity (Identity - Gauntlett). We represented this group by using a young woman as our star. In the music video, we showed her growing up and changing as time passes since it allows her to become relatable to our audience, which we did by using long shots to ensure that our mise-en-scene is visible, showing the passage of time and her continued dedication to her passion despite challenges (Fig 3.1-3.2). Stuart Hall’s representation theory suggests that representations in a media product will reflect those creating products, therefore we subverted the stereotype that women are weak by showing her as a strong ambitious woman (which we emphasised through low angle shots [Fig 3.3]) since everyone in our group is a young woman themselves.
Another one of our representations is family, typically a mother-daughter relationship. This is a core theme of our narrative and was especially important for our family-friendly brand identity. We kept this representation consistent across all our products by using technical elements to tie back to this theme. The digipak featured a doodle reminiscent of child artwork that depicts a mother-daughter pair (Fig 4.2) whereas on the star’s social media she is shown sharing pictures of her from her childhood (Fig 4.1) with her mom. In the music video, this theme is most prevalent as we can see the mother grow to be a huge motivator in her life using cutaways (Fig 4.3) but the absence of her direct appearance, emphasises her absence in the star’s life (due to her illness). The constant theme of family shows that the star is compassionate and values her family. This is stereotypical of mother-daughter relationships as they are often portrayed as close and important to each other in media (Yura Yunita - Dunia Tipu Tipu [2022]).
(Fig 4.1: Left. Fig 4.2: Middle, Fig 4.3: Right) Themes of family in our star's social media page, digipak and music video.
According to Clay Shirky, audiences expect media content to be interactive which is why audience engagement is a core part of creating a media production. One way we can achieve this is through the uses & gratification of social relationships as it allows fans to interact with the star (Fig 5.1) and other fans (Fig 5.2). In social media, one of the best ways to encourage social relationships is through the ability to interact with social media posts via liking, commenting or sharing. Our star encourages this by creating posts that ask the audience a question and thus encouraging them to comment. Alongside the use of hashtags to help boost our star in social media algorithms (particularly Instagram) which allows us to gain a higher audience reach in order for our star to expand her fanbase. Additionally, audience engagement is further strengthened through our star’s social media which includes a customised webpage (Carrd) that links social media pages, merch store, tour dates etc. as this encourages her fans to explore more of our star’s products and contents.
To conclude, our products all come together to create a branding that centers around nostalgia, childhood memories, family and passion in order to attract our target audience of young passionate women to successfully promote the artist's album and encourage them to pursue their dreams to become independent. Overall, I believe that our products has delivered this message effectively as these themes are shown consistently throughout the technical elements in all our products but if I were to change anything, it would be to simply space out our production process more as a lot of things ended up rushed and so may not have been at their maximum potential during the final.
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