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