Final Critical Reflection

 Below is the critical self-reflection that I have written.

Our music video and digipak follow a lot of indie-pop conventions where our theme is about friendship and the emotions that come with separation, especially around graduation. Friendship and separation is a common theme in indie music videos. Moreover, we followed indie-pop music video conventions by using handheld camera movements, natural settings to make the scenes feel more relatable, as well as used props such as matching bracelets to highlight the emotional connection between the two artists.

However, we also challenge conventions to make our video stand out as according to the Genre Theory by Steve Neale, which states that a media product must be similar enough to fit into a genre but different enough to stand out from other media products. Instead of the smooth, professional shots seen in mainstream pop videos, we used handheld, shaky camera work to create a more personal feel to it, as if the audiences are experiencing the events with the characters. Moreover, we used casual everyday outfits, rather than the styled and fancy looks often seen in music videos. Another convention we subverted was the balance of screen time between the main artist and the featured performer. While our main artist (Jasmine) still appears slightly more than the featured artist (Viola), the difference isn’t huge, shifting the focus from just the singer to their friendship as a whole. We chose to subvert the convention of having lyrics/thank-you notes on the inside of the digipak because we wanted the design to focus more on emotions and themes of the video rather than distracting the audiences with extra text. Additionally, we used two female characters in our video, which challenges the usual trend of male-dominated music videos.

The representations we portrayed in our product are female teenagers and young adults, primarily aged 17-22. Our theme centers around friendship, a universal topic that resonates with many people in this age group, particularly when it comes to the separation caused by graduation. Since we’re filming in an Indonesian school setting, our primary target audience will be high school students in Indonesia. Furthermore, it’s important to note that our representation of females is emphasized, as both the actresses are female, and the tone and atmosphere of the scenes that we’re planning to create are designed to reflect how the world is experienced from a female perspective.

According to the End of Audience Theory by Clay Shirky, audiences demand interactive media products; if it isn’t interactive, they will reject it. Therefore, me and my teammates have made multiple strategies in which it may help to increase audience engagement. One of these strategies is to put a link tree in the artist (Jasmines)’s social media platform bio, where her fans and audiences are able to simply click on the link, which redirects them to a link tree that gives them access to the artist’s Spotify playlist, as well as lyric sheets for her songs. This way, audiences can actively engage with our artist’s music video instead of just watching the video. By providing access to her Spotify playlist, audiences can stream her songs more easily, therefore leading to an increase in her audience. Additionally, the lyric sheets allow the audience to sing along and analyze the song’s meaning in detail, which can create a deeper bond between the audience and the artist. 

The way in which we will be distributing our product is by giving it out both online and offline. In one of the links in the link tree mentioned earlier, the audience can be led to a website where they can purchase the artist’s digipak. The digipak can also be bought through online retailers such as Amazon, Shopee (a local online shop), and Etsy. Additionally, the music video will be posted on YouTube to obtain a wide reach of audience. This online distribution allows us to maximise accessibility and engagement, ensuring that our artist is able to reach both local and international audiences. Furthermore, it’s a very simple and efficient way to obtain our product, therefore audiences can purchase the digipak or watch the music video almost anywhere as they only need an electronice (e.g. handphone). However, we would also like to distribute our product offline like in local music outlets as online distribution often relies on algorithms. Therefore, a good way to reach new audiences who may not have the algorithm that will lead them to our product online is to distribute it in stores.

In this project, I was mainly responsible for the digipak and storyboard. Creating a storyboard in Ibispaint X (a drawing app) has helped me learn how to translate a song’s emotions and theme into a visual representation. Moreover, it has also improved my illustration skills to portray compositions, camera angles, and mise-en-scenes. For digipak, I used IbispaintX and Canva where I learned more about graphic design skills. Moreover, developing a digipak has guided me to a better understanding of layout, color theory, as well as typography which I had to align to the music video’s aesthetic and the artist’s overall branding. One way in which I did this was by including pastel (mostly pink) colors into the digipak as the music video mainly consisted of bright color schemes and the artist (Jasmine)’s persona is an extroverted teenage singer with a soft aesthetic and cheerful personality. In the music video, Jasmine can often be seen wearing soft colored feminine clothes in the music video, which effectively conveys her personal branding, being the friendly, cheerful, and soft girl. 

The research I’ve done on digipak helped to create a significantly better digipak than what I’ve imagined. The digipak I made has a grainy texture and has pastel colors, as well as mixed media, which is exactly aligned to my research. The grainy texture as well as messy and colorful illustrations are aimed to create a sense of nostalgia within the audience as the theme for our product is the bittersweet feeling of separation of friendships around graduation. The back cover of the album is according to the research I’ve done where it is simple enough to not take attention away from the tracklist but not too simple that it looks bland. 

Here is the link to the google document which I wrote this on, in case the text on this blog is formatted oddly.