Here is my Critical Self-Reflection post. Please note that the usage of references to figures throughout the reflection may have impacted the word count, so please disregard them from the word count! The word count should be 1500.
Our team chose indie-pop song, “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish for our music video, creating a fictional, teenage star named Jasmine, and her feature in the song, Viola. Sharing the experiences and struggles of growing up, this project is dedicated to target an audience of teenage girls aged 16 to 24 who value and receive a dominant reading of creativity, relatability and friendship. This essay discusses our use of technical elements to create branding, use and challenge conventions, represent social groups and engage audiences throughout our media products.
Branding is important as it creates connections through themes, building an image that audiences can associate with the artist through all forms of media, receiving the star’s preferred reading (Reception theory by Hall). Our project’s branding is consistent, with common features like the star’s art interest being highlighted throughout our media products. From the music video (MV), the digipak and social media, respectively (Fig. 1), the common theme is hand-drawn illustrations on lined paper. This encodes our star as creative, fun and full of personality, conforming to conventions of the indie-pop genre.
We’ve also cultivated our star’s image to seem relatable and down-to-earth. This was done by selectively constructing, posting personal pictures between “professional” shoots in her social media (Fig. 2). Additionally, to support our preferred reading, we consistently used captions that were friendly and directly addressed the audience. Emojis are used (Fig. 3), connoting youth and showing her media literacy, making her relatable to other teenagers. In our MV, this image is constructed when Jasmine apologises to Viola at the end, admitting her mistakes. This act of humility connotes her level of humanity, as everyone makes mistakes and must take responsibility.
Our digipak conforms to the usual conventions of indie-pop, utilising mixed media and being hand-crafted with a lower budget helps to further construct this image. The home-made aspect conveys that the star is hardworking, working on her project instead of hiring others to make it. It uses inexpensive materials (stickers and paper), showing the audience that anything can be done on their own, connoting her humbleness. However, we also subverted conventions, mostly using handwriting instead of fonts, showing her personality and humanity through this form of expression.
Themes, such as Jasmine’s friendliness, are also shown in social media, using candid pictures of Jasmine and Viola having fun, suggesting that Jasmine’s REAL persona is also kind (Fig. 4), further supported by interactions between the stars in the music video, conveying intimacy (Fig. 5). The digipak background, showing multiple feet (Fig. 15), also connotes friendship as pictures like that are usually taken during hang-outs, resulting in our star’s branding being a friendly and relatable artist.
Our media products conform and subvert genre conventions as Neale’s genre theory states that to be entertaining, the MV must subvert some conventions, yet stay recognisable to the genre. The indie-pop convention of lip-syncing towards the camera was subverted, instead focusing mainly on narrative by making our MV acting-dominant, similar to Laufey’s “Goddess” MV. This was because if the video was lip-sync dominant, there would be no time to convey the plot. Additionally, we subverted the genre convention of not following a detailed storyline as the lyrics of the song heavily contributed to the contents of our MV since it was difficult to convey our preferred reading using only symbolic codes (Barthes). Therefore, the clips were recorded with the intention of the MV connoting the preferred reading we would like for each lyric of the song. We also decided to subvert the convention of having a direct mode of address, instead having our star sing towards her friend. This was done so that our MV would be more immersive, having the audience step into the shoes of both “characters”, allowing them to understand the feelings of each character better, showing the importance of both characters as they only view each other in this MV.
However, we conformed to other conventions such as having lower budget settings, nostalgic colors, and minimal makeup for the mise-en-scene (MES) of the MV, thus making the star seem more “human” and youthful instead of unreachable. We were also inspired by Beabadoobea’s “Glue Song” MV for Jasmine’s acting (Fig. 6), making the clips feel more intimate as she acts sweeter, resulting in her semiotic fans (Theory of Fandom by Jenkins) maintaining their reading of Jasmine being bright and loveable while appealing our target audience who value friendship and happiness. For the coloring, the desaturated but lighter colors mimic the washed-out effect of film, resulting in a nostalgic effect (Fig. 7). We made sure to use a fade-in to introduce our MV, as that eases in the MV slowly, while following the genre convention, using and challenging conventions.
Representation theory by Hall states that representation is created through media. In the MV, a social group we represented, included high-school students, typically represented as being rebellious and grumpy, however have a stronger sense of friendship. Through MES of Jasmine and Viola’s acting, they are represented as energetic, connoted by constant laughter and movements (Fig. 8). Additionally, the digipak cover also had Jasmine make a silly face to connote the playfulness of youth. On her social media, all pictures feature her with a smile and warm, bright colors which connote joy, subverting the representation of teenagers being grumpy.
During the separation fight (issue), the colorgrading is blue, connoting sadness, typical for most representations, for the camera, Jasmine is recorded from a high-angle, connoting her lack of power over the situation and her dismay towards Viola leaving (Fig. 9). Viola is recorded from a lower-angle, connoting her power to leave (Fig. 10). This meaning is created as high-angles make the subject look smaller while the low-angles make the subject bigger. Editing effects such as the pull-outs used throughout the MV connote the friendship between Jasmine and Viola, moving away from each other. For the audience, this effect will make them feel detached from the subjects, as mentioned in my classwork. However, through all of this, their friendship prevailed as they forgive each other at the end of the MV (Fig. 11).
This shows that the two characters’ friendship is very important to one another, as through their negative feelings, they were able to look past, connoting the strength of their friendship. This is also conveyed in our digipak, with the background as mentioned previously (Fig. 15), and our social media posts include multiple images of Jasmine and Viola hanging out on the “set”.
Audience interaction is necessary, as according to Shirky, audiences reject media that don’t allow engagement. We boosted our audience engagement through the social media platform Instagram (Fig. 12). Instagram’s interactive interface allows us to post content that gratifies the audience's need for social relationships and provides them the opportunity to interact with the star and other fans (Uses and Gratification, Blumler and Katz). Jasmine’s REEL or star persona (Dyer’s Theory Of Stardom) highlights her ordinariness (posts of selfies in the house, informal interviews etc). Our target audience relates to this and feels encouraged to reach out and comment. Jasmine asks questions to her audience through captions, seeking to form a connection, making them feel valued and socially connected (Fig. 13).
Other forms of engagement we used are teasers on the social media pages. One example is the interview (Fig. 14) which uses the Hermeneutic code (Barthes) to pique the audience’s interest, raising suspense about the REAL identity of Jasmine, as the questions asked of her in the interview are a thin line from being personal ones. This type of engagement makes the audience want to keep being updated on details of Jasmine’s personal life or activities, being active on Jasmine’s social media page, therefore resulting in constant live activity on her Instagram.
Lastly, we promoted audience engagement by hosting a drawing challenge, “#HeARTSforJas”. This engaged Jasmine’s textual fans, allowing them to prosume and create fan-art, expressing the same interests as the star, art. This creates a bond between the star and the fans, creating a community in which fans feel valued as, eventually, the star will see and acknowledge their art. This challenge draws more exposure to the star as more social media users see the art circulating online through the algorithm, boosting online engagement.
The signed poster inside the digipak would be a collectible for fans, who will engage with other fans, forming social relationships to trade for the poster they want. The signed posters will include multiple variations of the signature and image. Seeing the poster in high demand will also allow the star to see what type of content fans are interested in, which supports Shirky’s End of Audience theory, stating that media production has become more democratic because audiences have a bigger voice.
In conclusion, these media products sent the dominant reading, embracing youth and imperfections. However, we also wanted to induce feelings of nostalgia. We lost that message and didn't expand on it enough, a mistake since that removes the purpose of the products supposed to push that dominant reading forward. Instead, we started to follow a more mature and formal theme, which wasn’t very fitting. If I could fix this, I would’ve made the theme youth or school-centric.
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