Critical Reflection
Critical Reflection
What an incredible way to end my two year course in the Media studies subject! Producing directing and editing a music video was beyond amazing. Learning about the whole process behind the creation of such a brief media text definitely helped me understand the importance of previous research, time management and planning in order to convey and emit a specific meaning through the screen, to the audience. I never thought it would be as intense and as challenging as the movie opening from last year’s coursework.
I decided to work with my classmate Irina Klisarova, as we both had the same idea in mind, and get along quite well. We both pitched in different concepts and listened to each other, which is why we managed to finish everything in time even if all odds were against us (more to be explained later.) The main focus of our music video was redefining masculinity and its depiction in the media. Since this theme is quite complex and hard to portray, we carried out an extensive research on it and tried to subvert all of the possible elements of ‘traditional’ masculinity in our music video. Firstly, I began by researching the general codes and conventions of every music video, and analysed the three different types being: performance, narrative or concept based. The main purpose of a music video is to give the audience the tools to associate a song with its artist, and from the artist’s point of view, to use it as a medium of representation. We were sure we didn’t want our music video to be purely aesthetic and focused on the character, but to tell a story in an entertaining way, so we decided to dig deeper into concept based music videos. Since we had already established a vision for our video, all we did was adapt it so that the main character would both act and lipsync. After that, we explored the different genres available in order to choose the correct song, and for the first two months, we just created a playlist on Spotify with all the different songs we liked and thought could match the conventions of our music video. Finally, we decided that the best genre would be something along the lines of Alternative pop/rock indie music, so we went through the songs in our playlist that fitted into this genre. It was an extensive process because we really wanted to be unique and different, and use a song that was not as popular now, so we pictured the narrative we had in mind in every song, until 🧱Breezeblocks x Take a Slice🍕 came on. We saw it as an opportunity to change not only the meaning of the song, but its original music video too, which was quite disturbing🥴 if I may add.
In terms of genre conventions, after researching on the common mise-en-scene and colour palettes used, and the recurring themes of alt pop/rock music videos, we decided to use the following conventions to appeal to the genre: High saturation, vibrant colour palette, turbulent shots (handheld camera, pans and whip pans and 360° shots) for misplaced hallucinatory purposes. Our music video narrates the story of a man watching what his ‘ideal’ self would look like in multiple worlds on different TV channels if it wasn't for the fact that he was trapped in an endless loop where he cannot be himself. The glowing in the dark drink is the kaleidoscopic element that frees him into his full, best version of himself. This was one of the intertextual elements found in our video. Amalgamating what we were learning in class, we decided to include subtle pastiche segments referring to Alice in Wonderland, such as the glowing in the dark drink, which served as a bridge between the TV scene and the rest of locations. One of my favourite scenes is the tilt shot with the graffiti of the rapper🧢 spraying fire🔥 on Sammy as it unintentionally connoted society's view on what masculinity should be, frowning😈 upon him.
Digipak💿 designing was definitely the hardest part to design for me. As Irina has the artistic skills in our team, she was in charge of drawing our character for the album cover. I then went ahead and added the text focusing on how the typography matched the style of the rest of the digipak💿. We did not however include a list of the album’s songs since it was a remix between Alt J and Glass Animals. During our research and planning, I analysed the album covers of both bands in order to maintain the essence of them present in our design. Although they follow a specific style, I came to the conclusion that they try to adapt the designs to the theme or genre of their music, so we decided to do the same thing by creating a digipak that represented the delicate and more feminine side of masculinity on the outside and on the inside a chaotic🌪 and rebellious portrayal of it turning it ‘inside out’. This can be seen by the drastic change in tones (from pastel light to dark and potent) and the choice of pictures. The clouds☁️ are also representative of the 'psychedelic🔮' vibe that represented both of our record labels. Creating the social media page was probably the easiest part, as we spend most of our day on social media anyways. We opened an account on instagram and gave an insight of what was happening ‘behind the scenes’ as well as giveaways with the band’s perspective. We tried to mimic both band’s in their style and mix them to create our own style for our project with Sammy. Posting goofy pictures of the artists and post-production scenes appealed to the general trend of their feed, making it realistic towards the audience.
Irina and I have our separate record labels, but coincidentally they seemed to match up really well, so we combined them to create a ‘collaboration’ for this project, giving it the name of ‘Trippy x Extasy records’. We really put a lot of effort into creating a memorable brand, therefore we created gifs, face masks and continuously posted on our social media page ‘responding to tweets from our fans’. On our personal accounts we promoted this account to gain a following for marketing purposes, and created a count-down of the days left until the release of the video to build on the excitement. Brand identity was key🔑 in maintaining the essence✨ of everyone in this project. We really attempted to keep the same colour schemes, and designed an eye as our logo to make it easier for the target audience to identify us. Nowadays, people look for media texts that they can identify with, so through the use of a recurring theme and following the previously mentioned codes and conventions, we made it clear to the audience what the genre and intention of the music video was (marketing and distributing with digipak💿 and social media page).
When released and shared with the world, we received very positive feedback📈, in fact we made our teacher cry🥺. She was very proud of what we had done despite the fact that I had personally been affected by COVID😷a nd other personal reasons, and my partner could not film without me. Through a focus group I received feedback from my classmates who are the most experienced people that I know of in this field. They were also very impressed with our work, and mentioned ‘It is very easy to understand the story you are trying to tell’, or thought that the idea we had of subverting the stereotypical gender representation and the genre itself was very unique, as well as they complimented my work on colour grading and green screening which as you may have seen in my blog, really was a challenge. My teacher did give us a point for improvement; to maybe change the ‘please don't go’ scene with the green screen as it did not match well with the rest of the video, however due to the lack of time, unfortunately we could not re-film. From the general public, the response was better than we expected, and we even made it on the 🔝 ten Indie Pop music videos on Youtube for a day!
Our classmates were generally very happy with what we produced, and really didn’t give us much to improve on, but I, being the perfectionist that I am, know exactly what I wish I could have improved. The camera📹 really didn’t work in our favour, so next time it would be better to rent one for a few days (with a budget). In addition, I would like to learn more about colour grading, and how to fix the brightness🌟on some shots (it was complicated to lower the exposure without lowering the intensity of some clips), and finally, research more on typography in order to make it as accurate as possible in relation to the digipak💿. Despite these significant mistakes (to me), I learned that people can easily be entertained with a splash💦 of colour and a peculiar main character in a video, and that the setting plays an essential role in maintaining engagement of the general public. They really loved our rare and uncommon filming locations as it made the video really seem out of this world (and we were very pleased with having found them as they were all free unlike in Ikono where we would have paid 800€ for 3 hours on set).
When we were building the story and bringing it to life, we put our main focus on not losing the meaning behind all those crazy props and framework, but reproducing society’s biggest issue, ⚠️toxic masculinity⚠️, and its effects on male individuals. Often, people associate men who wear makeup or ‘feminine’ clothes as homosexuals, but we wanted to show that it is not always the case. Makeup and clothes have no gender, and it most certainly has nothing to do with someone’s sexuality, which is why we chose Sammy as our actor. Not only did he get involved in the role, but he knew when to seem small🌻and delicate, and dominant and powerful, definitely with an easy going personality and up for everything we asked him to do. He was easy for young teenagers to relate to, regardless of their gender, sexuality or even age, and that was seen through the positive reaction we got from the audience.
Overall, it was definitely a rollercoaster🎢 of emotions, but I enjoyed the whole process and I would love❤️ to do it again, which is why I am continuing in this field for university. I relished causing an effect and bringing out reactions of an engaged public. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey and see you 🔜 on the BIG screen❗️
🍄 STAY TRIPPY WITH TRIPPY 🍋 RECORDS©️
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