This blog post contains the final product of our music video and promotional package containing a digipak and social media. Written by me (Timothy).
Use this link in case the video is removed from YouTube: LINK
 |
| Front Cover |
.png) |
| (Inside) - Tracklist & CD Page |
 |
| Back Cover |
 |
| Mockup |
 |
| social media username and home page |
 |
| overall layout |
 | ||
interactions with fans (1)
|
This blogpost contains my critical self-reflection for Component 3, written by Timo.
In this essay, I will be looking more closely into the pre-production, production, and post-production process of the creation of our component 3 where we, as a group of 4, were tasked to create a music video, as well as a promotional package, including a digipak and a social media page.
In order to accurately target the correct audience we had to consider various factors during the process of our pre-production, we had to choose a song along with its genre, and with this, we decided to choose a song titled “Feather” by Sabrina Carpenter, an upbeat pop song that talks about a post-breakup life, where after cutting ties, she feels much lighter and freer without her ex-lover. This can be seen as a current social issue that we want to shine a light on with our project, as society nowadays faces issues where they are attached to past lovers and develop problematic obsessive issues. We wanted to focus on specific social groups, such as teenage girls and Asians, which we can enforce by using the proper representations in our music video. This was done by using an entirely Asian cast, as our lead actors are of the same social group as the demographic we are targeting, it allows the audience to empathize more with the actors as they feel represented, another aim is to raise awareness and popularize the representation of Asians in the media industry. With this we decided on a general theme and mood both our music video and promotional package will follow, we chose a more bright and fun theme creating a lighthearted mood. After conducting research, we decided that a performance-based music video would be more suitable for our project as we want to show the actor’s expression and emotion through the enjoyment of music. Furthermore, our digipak research helped us develop the right typeface and layout, deciding that a handwritten typeface would be more suitable as it will seem more personal, this will allow for the audience to feel a connection with the artist.
During the process of production of our music video and promotional package, there are plenty of things that we considered to further improve our project. In our music video, there are various uses of media language that emphasize the different stereotypes, mainly stereotypes of girlhood and players or womanizers. The mise-en-scene we used played a big role in the portrayal of our male lead, who represented a player, we did this by using the proper costume design, as we conformed to general conventions of womanizers, dressing them up in leather jackets, chains, and gelled hair. Furthermore, our male lead was carrying a bouquet of red roses which connotes love, this helps the audience understand the intent of the male lead. Additionally, we also conformed to stereotypes of girlhood, where we used props that were generally beauty products, such as makeup, straighteners, and hair dryers to depict scenes of them getting ready. On the other hand, the use of camera angles proved to be very useful in portraying representations in the project, the most prominent camera angles used in the music video were close-ups and wide angles; the use of close-ups makes the audience feel more connected with the media as they can analyze their expressions, whereas, wide angles were used to connote freedom to further emphasize the representations of girlhood. The actors’ performance was vital in setting the right tone which is why while directing this music video I always emphasized happiness and energy. All of these aspects of mise-en-scene create the perfect representation of what we want to portray in the music video. As both the writing and directing were done by men, this video could also be said to be produced through the male gaze and it in fact does follow conventions of this, where our video uses slow motion of the girls and close-ups of their features. With our social media page, we created posts that would engage with the audience, according to Richard Dyer’s theory of stardom, an audience engages with an artist’s ordinariness and consumption, with this we created an interview video of our star KIARA enjoying regular, everyday tasks such as drinking a matcha latte to post on our social media. We created this post whilst still following the theme and mood of our product, using bright colours, an open location with a scenic view. Consistently using and following the right theme and mood across all our products creates a sense of branding, this allows for the audience to feel a sense of loyalty and familiarity, which keeps the audience engaged. All the images used for the digipak were all taken in the set of our shoot, this can give the audience a more immersive experience, giving them a deeper look into our artist’s world. All of her posts on social media paint her as the perfect radiant girl, which is exactly how we imagined KIARA from the start.
Seeing that the process of pre-production and production can create a large impact on our product, I realized that it can be further enhanced through post-production. After getting all the necessary shots needed for our music video, editing played a big role in targeting the correct audience. Firstly, shooting at outdoor locations resulted in a variety of different lighting conditions, and color grading, provided consistency throughout the whole video; color grading improves the product visually to make it seem more appealing. Secondly, we used a few different cut techniques, which include, jump cuts, and punch-in cuts. Jump cuts were used to show a long action in a short amount of time, this seemed to be a running issue in this project because the song is quite short, whereas, punch-in cuts were used to direct the audience’s attention toward a certain action, as this is a performance-based music video, putting emphasis on their expressions and dance moves can help the audience understand our product with ease. Lastly, slow motion editing was arguably the most used in this product, this is because slow motion makes an ordinary task seem more graceful, it can be directly correlated to the lyrics, “lighter like a feather”, the slow motion video makes the audience feel lighter because of the surreal and dreamlike effect it creates. Our social media engages with the intended audience through various different methods. Nowadays, songs become famous overnight because of dance trends, seeing this we made a dance challenge that the audience could keep up with, whilst promoting the song. Furthermore, we included direct artist-to-audience interaction, such as replying to fans’ comments and hosting Q&A sessions.
This blog post contains the post-production process of our music video. Written by me (Timothy)
To begin, I opted for Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2020, a timeline-based and non-linear video editing software application, as my primary tool for video editing due to its comprehensive features and interface I was already familiar with as I have used it for over 3 years. After each day of filming, I established a habit of managing my files by transferring the necessary clips and images from the SD card to my desktop, ensuring a streamlined editing workflow. Once imported into Premiere Pro, I filtered the shots, eliminating any footage deemed irrelevant. The software's intuitive design facilitated the synchronization of clips, with the marking feature being very useful. This feature allowed me to label specific points in the timeline, enhancing precision and efficiency in the editing process.
Shown below is the overall timeline of the project:
Colour Grading (Lumetri Color)
 | ||
before colour grade
|
 |
| color wheels in premiere pro |
 |
| example of a clip that uses speed ramping (2:43-2:47) |
 |
| speed ramping keyframes |
 |
| scene that uses jumpcuts (1:12-1:18) |
 |
| jumpcuts in timeline |
This blog post contains the details of our production or filming process of Component 3, written by me (Timothy)
Pictures taken behind the scenes were mostly taken by Nayana and Sharon, compiled by myself. During the filming process, we initially planned to shoot for only 3 days, however, we then added a day due to unforeseen issues that will be detailed in this post.
 |
| Me (Timothy) directing the cast |
 |
| Outdoor scene with reflector |
 |
| Shooting the performance scene |
 |
| Shooting scene with practical effects |
 |
| Setting up gimbal (stabilizer) |
 |
| Shooting intro performance scene |
 |
| Shooting POV car scenes |
 |
| Shooting follow car shots |
 |
| Experimenting with follow-shots |
 |
| Shooting a follow scene |
 |
| Shooting a transition |
 |
| Shooting a close-up |
This blogpost contains the research and development of our social media page, written by me (Timothy).
Research
 |
| Tate McRae |
 |
| Dua Lipa |
Layout Planning
Before creating any digital designs for our social media posts, Nayana sketched out a rough draft of our social media page layout after discussing it with our entire group. The draft is in the image shown below:
'Feather Dance Challenge'
We then created a TikTok dance challenge for our song, which was inspired by an existing dance challenge. We did this because TikTok dance challenges are a powerful and fun way for artists to leverage the platform's features to promote their music. By tapping into the viral and interactive nature of TikTok, artists can create a buzz around their songs, engage with fans, and potentially propel their music to the top of charts and playlists.
Shown below is an image of me recording their TikTok dance challenge, using the TikTok app:
'10 Questions with KIARA'
This social media post was heavily inspired by Vogue's interview video concept, which is the '73 Questions' series usually done with large celebrities.
Doing a similar concept will allow the audience to learn more about KIARA, whilst feeling a more personal connection with their star. With this, Nayana and Maxi came up with questions that aim to highlight the KIARA's personality, which include:
Reflection: Creating the content for this social media page helped me understand how to create a sense of branding in our artist. When I was editing the teaser for the music video I struggled to find the perfect clips that display the perfect balance between creating anticipation and showcasing performance without spoiling the song. Furthermore, taking photographs for social media was quite difficult as it shouldn't look too professional as we are aiming to target the audience through our star's 'ordinariness', I overcame this by either taking pictures without a professional camera or using other methods of composition. In future projects, I would like to create a social media page with a more professional layout, to challenge myself.
This blog post contains my research along with the groups development of our digipak, written by Timo
.png)
.png)
Before digitally developing our digipak, Nayana sketched a rough plan on paper creating a 4-page layout of a:
Below is the sketch/draft Nayana created for the layout
Using Canva, we (Timo, Nayana, and Sharon) created a large variety of different mockups, utilizing different typefaces, compositions, sizing, and colours, using the same picture. After further discussion, we all agreed on one typeface called "Moontime" (circled in green), which was used as our main digipak cover font as well as our title card in the music video. It encapsulates the perfect amount of elegance, whilst still being personal as it looks like a handwritten font. Shown below, is the compilation of mockups, compiled by Sharon.
With the first image, we finalized our layout with the title text being at the bottom, this is because this is the most optimal position for the text to stand out, as other positions would make the colour pop out less. However, we made a lot of trials of placing different writings on top of the cover, this is because the composition would feel imbalanced without anything on the top part, therefore, we experimented with adding her name "KIARA" in a bold font, testing different colours, such as different shades of blue and even green. Furthermore, we added "The 1st Mini Album" as writing to emphasize our artist's debut album, however, our media teacher disliked the font we used as the text saying the "1st" was easily misread as "ist", we then finalized a font which eliminates this problem. Below it we also placed a copyright text which was used to further balance the layout, to not make the space feel too empty.
Final:
Below is the tracklist Nayana created, in which she combined the actual artist's, Sabrina Carpenter's, songs as well. Short song titles are seen to be more popular with modern artist's which is why we chose this as our tracklist.
Final:
Shown above is a compilation of mockups for the CD page made by Sharon. Using different pictures of scenic backgrounds from our set, including the sea, and the sky. However, the colour tone was not satisfactory as it didn't give much detail to the clouds.
Final:
Shown above is the finalized CD page, using a photograph I took at the park of bubbles floating at the park. I think this image is the perfect choice bubbles float effortlessly, carried by the air. This lightness can represent the feeling of freedom, as they are not weighed down by gravity or constraints. The carefree movement of bubbles through the air can evoke a sense of liberation. The bubbles weren't placed in the middle to make it seem as if the bubbles were carrying the CD, whilst making it seem natural.
Anecdote:
"After rising into the limelight of public attention at the age of just 13, 17-year-old Indonesian singer-songwriter KIARA continues to push the boundaries of what the music industry considers feasible. Feather - her newest album - debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 32 different countries. Hailed by both the public and the industry alike as one of the most creative and inspirational talents of her generation, the end of KIARA's rise to stardom is seemingly nowhere in sight."
Final:
Reflection: When creating this digipak, I was not really supposed to work that much on it, however, as we began to develop the different pages, I couldn't help but to put effort into it. Working together with Nayana and Sharon helped me improve my designs as their feedback was really helpful. I learnt how to make different fonts of different typeface families work well with each other. I learnt how to compose different layouts to make the perfect balance of dividing attention between the title and our star. Using canva was also really helpful as we could collaborate on a design in real time. Following this project, I need to do more research on digipaks to broaden my style because I feel like I followed a certain style as I was afraid to try something new.
