Component 3 - Final Piece

 This Blog is written by me (Theo)

Music Video:

In case the video got any copyright issue here is the link to the music video

Digipack:

Front Cover

Inside Left

Inside Right

Back Cover

Social Media:

here is the link to the social media and some screenshots

                                    

Here are some of our artist interaction

Component 3 - Self Reflection

This Blog is written by Theo

Word count: 1121 (including intro)

The brief given to me said that I needed to create music video. I decided to choose the genre indie/alternative because me and my teammate share similar genres in music taste. In this project I worked as a group of 4. My partners were Nadine and Satria You can find links to their blogs in my blog.

To begin with the project, deciding the song is the most crucial thing because I personally wanted to produce the visual expression form with the song that I personally love to hear so it would be easier for me to exhibit my thoughts. Since I live on an island the song Oceans & Engine comes across my intuitive thought where the song really matches the resources that we have. The song itself revolves around the world-shattering heartbreak from her lover who is moving away physically. In the genre convention of romantic relationship is the girl who leaves the guy but in my music video is the guy who leaves the girl as the guy had to move away from her because of the situation and she still can’t believe that her boyfriend has to move away for eternity. We aimed for our visuals to represent the vivid imagiantion that filled our minds each time we listened to the song. Our goal was to let the emotional depth of the music lead viewers on a personal journey, allowing them to experience their own unique interpretation of the song.The video started with the flashback of a teenage couple who is in the highest stage of love bombing in a dream setting with a dreamy glowing look (fig 1). As the dream started to end with a blink of her eyes from the singer's point of view. When she blinks again her lover is already gone and she has to go back to her normal boring daily routine. Alongside with her daily life she started to imagine delusionally that his presence is still with her even in the crowds (fig 2) she still feels lonely until she imagines her boyfriend's existence in her own mind. After that there will be a moment where she realises that her boyfriend figure is just her own imagination and this will be shown by a her boyfriend shadow doesn't exist. This will align with the lyric “I'm givin’ up the ghost” . For highlighting the lyric “My great lost love” we used a static close up to draw attention to the polaroid, then included slow motion as she discards the image. This makes the scene last longer for the audience and appear more dramatic. The use of the static camera emphasises the main character moving away, and moving on. her polaroid of her romantic moment with her boyfriend back in the past. We decided to subvert the narrative from the original to challenge ourselves. Before starting the production process I did some pre production research on various music videos and even some TV shows to finalise and gain some fresh concepts. My media text represents teenage lovers in today’s society. It reflects the rising couple culture and increasing awareness of how important relationships are typical representation of young love to the audience is that there will always be problems in relationships where not everything can have a happy ending. We also wanted to bring awareness that mental health issues such as hallucination are a common step of the break process and should not be stigmatised.

Branding is a very important aspect for promotion and increasing awareness in the media market. In detail all three elements Music Video, Digipack and Social Media should have a similar colour scheme and mood. We wanted our brand to be melancholy and soulful but at the same time fun and entertaining where the melancholy part will be distributed through music video and digipak while the humorous will be the social media. Following the stardom theory proposed by Richard Dyer our star will be appealing to the audience as the teenage heartbreak theme song allows the audience to relate with our star and the social media will show her daily life (ordinariness) where audiences are able to experience the sense of close friends between our star and the artist. We decided to make the social media quietly different from the music video as this has become a trend in late 2020’s. I used my artist picture on the digipack to grab the attention of the audience towards them and for branding such as creativity, humurous, positivity and women empowerment as we can see from the social media page, digipak and music video it centers around Luna. In the production phases the shots, angles, and camera technique I try to keep the professional look to the music video as it is released by an established company also with digipack. The digipak is also can be a way to give the hints for what will be the music video about as we used the red balloon to represent the love has gone away as red represents loving and flying balloon means letting go. In the social media we used polaroid for giving clue where this will creates the audience speculating of what is the connection of polaroid used in promoting the music video.

The product will engage the audience as the product is very accessible through Youtube where it's one of the most popular sites for artists to release their music video. Moreover, the algorithm of Youtube by recommending our music video that is similar to their taste will help in engaging with the audience. Tiktok will also be one of the platforms to promote our music video as Tiktok has huge global users and increasing awareness through Tiktok will be the most effective way to promote our product because our audience is young peaple aged 16-25 and are heavy users of these social media apps. Another technique that can be used will be by speeding up the song where in TikTok the trend where speed up version will grab attention more than the original song where teenagers to young adults can use the sound. Moreover, we will also have our artist to make a second account where it will be a private account where we will only have the first batch for the fans to follow the second account to get exclusive teasers and contents. Also during the promotional phase we can engage with the audiences by using hashtags such as #oceansandengines where the audience may express their relatedness and their own similar experiences to the song. According to Identity Theory by David Gauntlet, the audience created their identity through media and the audience can interpret the music video creating their own identity after consuming our music video.

Figure 1

Figure 2

fig 1

Component 3 - Media Language Usage

This blog consists of deep analysis on the media language used, written by Theo

The main message in our music video is that we wanted to show our main characters journey as she moans the loss of her boyfriend. we show this by depicting the binary opposites between dream and reality. At the end we show that she finally accepts her current condition 

Featured below are screenshots of scenes from our music video, along with descriptions of the media language used, how we used them to represent our characters/story, and what we intended them to convey.

1. Music Video Intro

(head unit) (shot 0:28 - 0:32)

As the beginning we wanted to introduce the music video using the mise-en-scene of the head unit playing the song Oceans and Engines which is also a convection of music video intro even in some movies they used this to introduce the sequence

2. Dream vs Reality

(dream) (shot 2:08 - 2:11)

(Reality) (shot 4:18 - 4:22)

So we distinguish the timeline between Reality and Dream by the colour grading in post production as the dream sequence has a bright warm looking while the reality is less less colourful and gloomy as it gives the message to the audience that reality is always harsh compare to dream and expectation.

3. Outfit

(1:49 - 1:56)

(4:48 - 4:52)

More over we can see the mise-en -scene in the outfit where the difference in the outfit between the dream and reality plot where the bright colour connotates her mood such as energetic, joyful, deligthness. On the other hand the dark colour represents complexity, darkness.

4. Date Scenes

(1:42 - 1:46)

(1:58 - 2:06)

(2:43 - 2:48)

(1:17 - 1:21)

we choose a miss-en-scene with colourful background to define that the dating was fun and represent the excitement. All the dating scenes is not simulacra where we make this based on some of our own previous dating experience and we do some social observation specifically on TikTok to see the trend on dating idea such as car date and Ikea date which has become widely the bucketlist of every couple. 

5. Polaroid

(5:15 - 5:22)

(5:23 - 5:33)

The uses of polaroid is really important as it shows a time passage and time capsule concept store of memory where in the music video we intended to show that her boyfriend passed away 

6. Sun Beam

(3:09 - 3:16)

The uses of sun ray editing is used to show that she is about the wake up from her dream and going back to reality

Component 3 - Media Regulation

This blog is written by Theo and this is our assesment in how we deal with the media regulation from various institution

Cambridge provided guidelines to our teacher, Mr. Nick, specifying that students must avoid depicting any potentially harmful or dangerous activities in their films, such as violence, drug use, or other risky behaviors. We adhered to these regulations to ensure that all scenes in our music videos were in compliance. In the music video we used car for almost the entire music video where this quite opposed to the media regulation where in the music video we involve a teenager driving a car especially the production team, us is not experience in shooting a car scene where shooting a car scene is quite dangerous and risky. We measure and manage the risk by creating a risk assesement on how would we response to different situation and making sure the location is suitable and safe for sbooting the driving scene 

Reflection:

While regulations heavily influence our decisions in creating the music video, we found that the regulations we had to adhere to did not hinder our creative process in making our music video. We were able to convey our story effectively as we desired, without the need for significant alterations due to the imposed regulations. Thus, we found it relatively straightforward to comply with the regulations, likely because our video did not include elements requiring regulation in the first place

Component 3 - Post Production

This blog is written by me (Theo)

The main software that I used the Premiere Pro CC 2023 where I have been using this since I begin my editing career where I already familiar with the mechanism of this editing software. After each shot that I finished I always manage my files into folders so I have a neat and smooth work flow

Shown below is the overall timeline for the project

1. Colour Grading (Lumetri Color)

Colour grading is the most essential part of the music video editing where I wanted to make sure where the music video is likely to be visual appealing and spoil the audience. Colour Grading also important in driving the mood and the tone of the music video 

                               

(Before color grading)

(After color grading)

2. Glowing Dreamy Effect

This is done by copying the layer below into the top and putting the Gausian blur effect on top and put luma key in other to get the glowing blooming effect

(Before Gloomy Effect)

(After Gloomy Effect)

3. Music Video Title

4. Stabilizing

Since some scenes were quite shaky I need to edit the scenes to be more stable. I do this by doing some masking on the subject since the effect I used is wrap stabilizer. The masking is important for making sure the subject is not jellying.

5. Slow Motion effect

Since I wanted to put some slow motion effect I do this by reducing the speed and used frame sampling in order for more fluid slow motion

6. Key frame

I used keyframe technique to make the zoom in effect or zoom our effect. Different keyframe will represent different scale and if I want to make the zoom in effect hence each keyframe will increases the scale step by step and for zoom out will be the opposite. 

Reflection:

During the editing process, I faced many issues where my files disappeared or were corrupt. The editing software itself also crashed multiple times as I threw high-resolution 4k footage for it to process. However, through this editing process, I learned many new things. Editing techniques used in other videos don't always work in music videos, this forced me to do research and learn more techniques that would be useful in this project. Lastly, spending so much time colour grading allowed me to find a colour theme that I like, whilst still applying to the style and colour scheme we planned. In future projects, I would find more ways to further streamline the process of editing, since I spent so much time experimenting during the process of editing this music video. I would hope for future projects to be edited more efficiently. Overall, this post production process has taught me patience, whilst testing my ability to quickly learn new techniques.

Component 3 - Social Media Post Production

This Blog is written by Theo

Concert Post:

Concert post is really crucial for the social media page in other for the audience to be aware about the up coming concert by out artist.

Spotify Award:

Since the songs of our artist will be released in Spotify our artist will most likely get the infographic on how much the song of our artist has been played.

                                        

(before)

(After)

Grammy Award: 

This post is also important as a part of an appreciation for the audience

Personal Picture:

Personal pictures also contributes in building the brand identity for our artist where wanted our artist to be able to express herself like selfies just like the ordinary people do.

(Personal pictures that are given by our artist)

(Pictures taken by me (Theo))

Teaser:

To increase the awareness for the audience and fans it is crucially to make a teaser. The teaser that the team decided is the mood mv where this tells the mood of what's going to be the mood of the coming soon music video. Here is the link for the Mood Teaser.

Reflection:

Overall all these main section of the social media posts helps us achieved for increasing the artist awareness and identity that we wanted such as charming, humble, sweet, delightful and beginnings. We were having a big debate on how the artist should be portray in the beginning which turns out that the Instagram page is not really looking professional like artist in usual. Even the layout is not really going as planned I learn how to organize the Instagram feeds.

Component 3 - Digipack Post Production

This blogpost contains research and development of the digipak to add it will also explain why we chose this option and design rather than the others. Written by Satria

The images above are comparison between 2 same pictures with different filters the first picture above has a darker filter to make the image warmer by adding a slight blue filter on the other hand the second picture uses a bright filter to make everything look shiny. At the end I decided to use the first picture to as the front digipak cover, because with the warmer color it connotes more to the song which in this case have the song have a sad vibe. The warmer color fits more in the digipak due to the warmth it has and a darker brightness. Beside that it also easier to fit a font color on the first option, because it is not to bright while the second option the color is way to bright which may cause difficulties to read the caption.

These two image above are comparison of fonts that we might use for our digipak album cover. The first picture has a font that is called "Just Another Hand" this font has a simple and compact design compare to the second picture with "Lumios Brush" font it has a more complex design and to add the first font its easier to read rather than the font in the second picture. We chose "Just Another Hand" for our

In the middle of the timeline I decided to change our font into Louiseville ll, I change to this font instead of the previous font because its is fit better to the background of the digipak and it also has a connotation that this font is handwritten by Luna. We the handwritten design of the font gives the vibe a bit more calming rather than the other are more leanign towards AI generated font, I want to make this digipak look like Luna's is creating it from scratch by herself with her own hand writing.

To finalise the design of the digipak i decided to use the Lousieville ll font to use for the final product of the digipak.

This section is wrriten by Theo

I revised the digipak again where I wanted to give more variety so here are some changes in the digipak post production that I made.

So first I changed the picture for the front cover. 

And I decided to distort the text so the digipak wouldn't be so bland and ordinary

Self Reflection:

Constructing the digipak was very challenging for me and Satria as we both are clueless who have the make one in the end. So we trade ideas a lot until we debate a lot for the creation of digipak since we have a different ideas on how the digipak should be portrayed and at the end we manage to combine our ideas and finish the digipak