Critical Reflection - Music Video Project

 This is my CR for my music video project

Intro Our group chose a music promotion package brief, and we chose RnB as our genre. We created a fictional artist called Thomas Wiradharma. We made our music video theme revolving around a relatable situation, such as relationships and breakups, which happen all the time in real life, which justifies us as music video creators. We also mainly target teenagers aged 16-25. We made our digipak as simple as possible and easy to understand how the artist feels and how it portrays them in the music video (Miserable, Denial, Angry).

CR2

Branding is an important part of our music video because it makes the artist known and recognizable. The branding in our music videos and artists is based around sadness, as you can see in the music video its all blue and orange and sometimes dark. The expressions that Thomas Wiradharma makes him recognize him as a miserable guy with a messy love life. The camera angles that the music video offers also connect to our branding, such as the frequent close-ups to the artist's face, showing that he is feeling some deep emotions, and this can create a sense of personal connection with the audience that's watching. The use of the locations in our music video, which are isolated, dark, and empty, can also show loneliness and emotional heartbreak. The next product that we offered was the clothes that the artist was wearing, the black jacket suggest dark and emptiness inside him. The editing was seen as very slow-paced to create that cinematic look and focus on the characters' actions and emotions. There were also edits of drunk filters to show that he was struggling mentally and reminiscing about the past a lot, since it shows that he was having flashbacks of him and his ex-partner, which makes the brand of the artist recognizable as a heartbroken teenager, as he keeps that vibe throughout the music video, the genre of our music also has a part in the influence of making our album cover as R&B genre generally focuses on relationships, friendships, deep emotions and hidden meanings, which makes us want to use clear emotions shown in our albums. Lastly the stereotypes in our music video are completely subverted as usually the woman is shown as the vulnerable ones, the ones who need a shoulder to lay on, but in our case it subverts, the man in our music video is shown as vulnerable, expressing too many emotions and feeling deep emotional love for their partner and the woman is the one who is ignorant and strong and resilient.

CR4

My group and I researched existing artists on YouTube, Spotify, tiktok for our music video reference and digipak. There were loads of artists that we found on these platforms that matched our digipak and music video styles, for example, Daniel Caesar, Leon Thomas, Frank Ocean, they all have similar styles of making their music videos and digipak. In the music video, they all engrave deep meanings, especially Frank Ocean, as we were aiming to be exactly like him, the style and the visuals. For example, as you can see in one of Frank Oceans album called Blonde, he was shown as a depressed man covering his face which notes that he is mysterious or stressed. Another example we can take is Daniel Caesar's album called Freudian, his album shows a person standing alone on a very tall building which can note that he/she is isolating themselves and also lonely, and as you can see in the album it is also shown as a person climbing, showing that he is struggling to get to the very top or its a difficult journey. Generally, we conform to digipak artists such as Joji, as he is showing his emotions in the digipak/album cover clearly and we conform to this type of album style, because we want to show that the artist relates to their own fanbase or the audience they target. The Stuart Hall reception theory relates to this question as their audience interprets meanings from the media in different ways based on their age, experiences, beliefs. In this case our target audience are teenagers who experienced heartbreak in their early stages. 

CR3

Our music video mainly targets the audience, preferably the ages of 16-25, and specifically teenagers who enjoy music videos that relate to them and their real-life situations, or just those who are into music videos with deep meaning and emotional music. This may also target audiences who may currently experience these types of relationship problems and mental health, making the music video connect to their everyday life. One of the most important ways that this music video really attracts the audience we target is through how much they relate to the music video. As you can see in the music video, the meanings are simple. Loneliness, heartbreaks, and sadness, these feelings may reflect on the teenage audience and finally create a sense of connection to the artist. The use of close-up camera angles also makes them feel vulnerable and as if they were in that position right now, because the close-ups allow them to see the facial expressions that the artist is making. The next appeal that shows in the music video is the style of how we make the music video. it is mainly dark and lowkey lighting, keeping a sad, melancholy vibe to it. This can also keep the feeling of the music video cinematic and serious. This appeals to viewers who are more attracted to music videos that express vulnerability and meaningful, deep meaning rather than bright, fast beat and hyped music videos. This style in the music video helps the teenagers feel more understood and creates a sense of relatability. Lastly, the pace at which we edit this music video is very slow, calm, and composed, which can make the audience feel the vibe and absorb the music video and make them understand how the artist feels. The theory User & gratification can explain this all. This theory relates to how the audience feels and how they relate this to their own feelings and experiences. 

CR1

The social groups that are represented in my music video are mainly teenagers experiencing deep heartbreaks that really crush their souls. My music video shows struggles of finding themselves and being lost and mostly emotional struggle, as this shows that my dominant reading is that teenagers struggle to find their way out of heartbreaks and depression and so they use our music video to relate or find comfort in. The camera angles that were shown in this music video are mostly focused on finding the angles that focus on the characters' emotions, one example is the wide shots that were provided in the music video showing that he is isolating himself in a dark place and alone which connotates loneliness. together, looking through their old pictures which gives off a dominant reading to the audience that the artist (Thomas Wiradharma) truly loves his partner and would do anything to get back as the lyrics also say. The sounds that were used were very minimal but we used a motorcycle growling at the end showing he was angry and sad that it came to the end that way. His expressions on his face show that men do not have to be masculine and strong all the time and rather show their emotions and vulnerability to the public, as this music video subverts the entire gender stereotype. We also have the artist social media posts very relatable and simple, so it looks like he is like every average teenager out there instead of trying to show a fake persona, because the whole point of our artists and music videos is to make teenagers know that they are not alone and being a man does not always mean to be resilient all the time and deepening down emotions that they shouldn't be deep down.