Critical Reflection
Q1. How does your products represent social groups or issues?
The music video that we chose is A country-pop duet that serves as a compelling bit of storytelling around a couple at a certain stage of their relationship. Despite the downbeat lyrics, it ends up being quite the enjoyably upbeat bop! It’s about a couple who are arguing about how each of them is wrong in the relationship and are fighting and explaining each other how each of them worked hard to have a good and healthy relationship. They sit around a table and just argue about how they didn’t work this hard to get this far to leave it so soon.
The social issue that we have tried to cover in this song is ‘relationship problems’ that take place these days. and how it ends up leading to the couple getting toxic for each other and aren’t able to fix things even after working hard and giving time to the relationship.
We chose this topic because it has become a common issue and we daily get to hear that a couple has broken up or divorced which leaves them heartbroken eventually leading to depression.
In terms of idea and story build-up I am truly inspired from NFrealmusic. He makes songs on social issues and presents them beautifully. His narrative structure is amazing. He is more into Hip-Hop so his lyrics are quite complex. We had to make a video on a song which is easily understandable by the audience so we chose the pop genre and took inspiration from a song ‘Love to lose’ by Sandro Cavazza and Georgia Ku.
The lyrics of this song are very easy to understand and they clearly convey the social issue as the couple is clearly talking about all the issues that they are facing in the relationship. The narrative is also explained in the lyrics. The ambience of the song is created in such a way that it gives a homey look where the couple lives together that can be relatable by many people as couples do eventually after a few months’ start living together.
The codes and conventions explain that the lyrics and the story of a music video must try to show how the victim is suffering from that particular issue. Some facts and figures can also be shown to display that the issue is happening on a larger scale. A story can be made and shown so that a sense of empathy can be created.
There were certain places where we had to follow or challenge conventions. For casting we had to ask two of our friend’s who we knew would be perfect for the video. The shooting was done in our own college as it was an easier option then finding an actual hotel room. We converted a classroom in to a bedroom by borrowing and buying props from the junior section in our college like a bed, lamp, side table rack etc. For make-up, we watched some tutorials on YouTube. Videography was done by renting a camera. The editing process was done in adobe premiere pro. we followed all the conventions and didn't challenge it at any place
Q2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
Personal branding, is a method of communicating your identity and values — the things that makes you unique — through everything that your followers can see, hear and experience; whether that's your album artwork, your social media posts, your videos or the clothes that you wear on stage. AS soon as we were done with our music video we instantly decided to make the social media pages such as Instagram and facebook to promote the video and gain more foolowers anf create a large fan base by keeping them updated and regularlry about all the diifernt activites that are singers did to complete the final video. To make our fan base even stronger merchandise was released which included diifernt products such as hoodies, shirts, phone cases, etc.. Lastly concerts were also arranged and tickets were solf at reasonable prices so that we could get as much publicity as possible
If I talk about my music video, the delivered production was far more than what was planned. The audience's expectations were fulfilled and as soon as the social media pages the website and the merchandise was released the audience response just boosted up and we could see a fan base rising and getting stronger
We created an online shop on wix with the help of some tutorialsthat we found on youtube . The products that were added in the merchandise were mugs, T-shirts, wall clocks, mobile covers and much more. We made the products really affordable and also announced sales on our products which raised the hype of the products and the singers.
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We created our social media pages on facebook and Instagram. That first thing we did was announce that a new song was going to be released on this date so stay tuned to get the audience exited. The song was premiered and later we interacted with the fans for example ‘Drop your favourite line from the song in the comments’. Displayed stories of fans promoting our song, to keep the fans connected with the entire production
Q3. How do your products engage with the audience?
It was now our time to start selecting a perfect genre for our music video but it was difficult for me said to choose in it on our own so we decided to ask our friends and take their opinions through polls and google forms.
Here is a rough draft of the questions we wanted to ask
I wrote the questions down on MS word document and sent it to get printed so we can personally go to our friends and school mates and ask them to fil the forms
after getting them printed we asked our friends to fill them for us which was unexpectedly hard as everyone was running late for class or was busy eating or playing some kind of sport
we also put up polls on our insta stories to get as my opinions as possible
last but not the list we made google forms and sent to a bunch of or class and family group
and finally after taking everyone's opinion we decided to have out music video related to a break up between a couple
so finally this is how we selected our genre and took help from our audience. Talking about audience there are several different audience theories they offer explanations of how people encounter media, how they use it, and how it affects them.
The bullet theory or hypodermic needle theory postulates that the media (needle) injects the message into audience mind hence causes changes in audience behavior and psyche towards the message. This theory therefore refers to mass media audience members as passive and hence at the mercy of mass media contents.
Just like our music video the different types of relationships and how it ends up leading to the couple getting toxic for each other and aren’t able to fix things even after working hard and giving time to the relationship was injected in our audience’s mind and they could relate to it instantly as young generation goes through this experience once or more than once in their life’s
Secondly we also followed the two step theory which says that most people are not directly influenced by mass media, and instead form their opinions based on opinion leaders who interpret media messages and put them into context. Opinion leaders are those initially exposed to a specific media content, and who interpret it based on their own opinion.
We wanted to show our final music video to as many people as we could to keep them aware of the social issues that young generation face while they are in relationships and usually in the end get their hearts broken and end up in depression as they lose someone they love or were really close to. We posted our music video on different social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube just because young generation is always online on these apps and are always looking for new content to read and get entertained from.
we also tried to personally show our video to our friends and family and captured their live reactions to get a better idea of how well the audience received our final video
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Q4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
The first thing we had to do was decide our genre which we did with the help of our audience by making them fill forms and answer polls and questionnaires, here is our complete research and planning on different ways we got our audience input
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After our genre was selected we wanted to get all the information we could related to that, researched about its history and how it was first taken into consideration and how it is different from other genres. Here is my blog post that includes all of my research
Moving forward I also researched about different music video of the pop genre to get a better idea of the dynamic of a pop music video is, here are all the different music videos I looked into
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I also researched on the cinematography of music video which helped me understand the camera techniques and angles more accurately
Also did a little research on lighting in a music video and how it is the most important recipe to create a perfect video
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I used google chrome to do all of my research as it is the fastest and easiest way to get all the information in the world, all of my research also led me to understand that the codes and conventions were followed everywhere and that’s when I realized that it’s important to follow them to get a smooth and perfect output.