Final Critical Self Reflection

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!

Our team decided to choose an indie-pop song called “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish for our music video, creating a fictional star named Jasmine, as well as her feature in the song, Viola. These two stars have similar genres and target audiences, making their collaboration beneficial for both. The dominant reading of our music video is the bittersweet separation of friends through graduation and accepting to let each other go. 

Branding is important, creating connections through themes, building an image that audiences can associate with the artist through all forms of media, receiving the star’s preferred meaning (Reception theory by Hall). Branding is consistent, with common features like the star’s art interest being littered throughout all three of our media products. Fig. 1.0 from the music video (MV),  Fig. 1.1 from the digipak and Fig. 1.2 from the social media. 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, Jasmine’s, REEL or star persona (Dyer’s Theory Of Stardom), to be relatable. This was done by selectively constructing, posting personal, mid-quality pictures between “professional” shoots in her social media, like in Fig. 1.3. However, this isn’t enough to define Jasmine’s brand because if elements of the social media posts contrast, the audience could oppose the text’s reading, rejecting it. Therefore, we consistently used text (captions) that were informal and friendly. This can be seen in Fig. 1.4 where emojis are used, connoting youth. 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. 1.5), further supported by interactions between the stars in the music video, conveying intimacy (Fig. 1.6). Resulting in our star’s branding being a friendly and relatable artist.

Our initial genre research suggested that lip-syncing would be the main performance of the MV, however, we have decided to subvert this indie-pop convention, instead focusing mainly on narrative, similar to Laufey’s “Goddess” MV (2024). This was because we felt as if the video was lip-sync dominant; there would be no time to convey the plot of the narrative, deciding to make our MV acting dominant instead. In addition, we also subverted from the genre convention of not following a detailed storyline as the lyrics of the song, heavily contributed to the contents of our MV as we found it difficult to convey our preferred reading using only symbolic codes (Barthes), therefore the clips we recorded for the MV would convey and connote the preferred reading we would like for each lyric of the song to have. 

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 towards the audience instead of being unreachable. We decided to follow yet subvert some genre conventions due to Neale’s genre theory stating that to be entertaining, the MV must subvert some conventions, yet stay recognisable to the genre. We were also inspired by Beabadoobea’s “Glue Song” MV (2023) for Jasmine’s acting (Fig. 2.0), making the clips feel more intimate as she acts sweeter, resulting in her textual fans (Theory of Fandom by Jenkins) being able to maintain their reading of Jasmine being bright and loveable, also appealing our target audience who value friendship and happiness. For the coloring, although we didn’t colorgrade too much, the desaturated but lighter colors mimic the washed-out effect of film, resulting in a nostalgic or vintage effect (Fig. 2.1). We also made sure to use a fade-in to introduce our MV as that makes the start of the MV ease in slowly, while following the genre convention. This meant that we both used and challenged conventions.

Representation theory by Hall states that representation is created through media. Social groups in the MV included high-school students typically, represented as rebellious. Through MES of Jasmine and Viola’s acting, they are represented as energetic, connoted by the constant laughing and movement, as seen in Fig. 3.0. Additionally, the digipak cover also had Jasmine make a silly face to connote the playfulness of youth (Fig. 3.3). Therefore, subverting the usual representation of teenagers.

During the separation fight (issue) the colorgrading (DaVinci Resolve) is blue, connoting sadness, typical for most representations, for camera, Jasmine is recorded from a high-angle, connoting her lack of power over the situation, while she cries (Fig. 3.1). Viola, is recorded from a lower-angle connoting her power to leave (Fig. 3.2). 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 to the subjects, as mentioned in my classwork.

Audience engagement was shown through the social media comments (Fig. 3.4), and it was crucial as it is how fanbases are created, as those who interact due to diversion reasons at first, may start to like the star, Jasmine as her replies are nice and friendly, eventually making them consume the content for personal identity reasons (Uses and Gratification by Blumler and Katz). These comments were encouraged by Jasmine, who asked questions, seeking to form a connection with her audience, making them feel valued and socially connected (Fig. 3.6). Engagement could also be in the form of teasers like the one for the interview posted on our social media (Fig. 3.5) which uses the Hermeneutic code (Barthes) to pique the audience’s interest, raising suspense about the REAL identity of Jasmine. 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. 

In conclusion, these media products were meant to work together to send the dominant reading of nostalgia, reliving experiences from our youth. However, we didn't expand on that much, 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 if I could change, I would make the theme youth or school-centric, inducing feelings of nostalgia.

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Self-Reflection:

Making this post was actually very time consuming and I actually found myself getting stuck in thought at times as I wasn't able to come up with an answer to the four points. I think that initially, we had planned to add content such as QR codes to the digipak cover in order to be able to discuss about audience engagement, but due to the tight deadline, my teammates weren't able to do it. However, I had made sure that I had references when coming up with points in this reflection, so I hope I'll do at least decently well because I did try!