How do your products represent social groups or issues?
The representation of social groups in our products is shown by representing women and their feelings when it comes to sacrificing and compromising themselves for the sake of other people. Although it might appear stereotypical on the surface level, we try to not stigmatize men by having a creative decision of not centering our male protagonist in the music video. This is due to the fact that as a society we have internalized that when women are suffering it is equated to men being everything to put the blame on... and this is something we didn't want to represent, we wanted to focus our music video, digipak, and socials on a journey of our artist's transformation, healing, and rediscovering her power as she let go of her struggles in the past through music and releasing her products. This intertwines with van Zoonen's feminist theory wherein we are reading against the grain; going against and fighting off the internalization of the male gaze and objectification. Representation is shown through the heavy utilization of symbolism in the scenes of our music video. For example, we carefully did our research with the meanings of snake, and butterfly, body language, and the progression of how the flowers went from blooming to being dry and bloody, and this ties in with the theory of Barthes about semiotics wherein meaning is created with the five codes of symphony (Hermeutic, Semantic, Proairetic, Symbolic, and Cultural)... Additionally, the color scheme also had significance, as when all are put together, they collectively show the message we wanted to convey which is hurting is a tough process but as long as we go at our own pace and really learn from these pains. Our social media page also resonates with our representation because we share content about our artist's opinions on socio-political movements which shows that she cares about these issues and she wants to use her platform to show and spread awareness (ex. #womenlifefreedom as support with the Iran protests). Additionally, our casting for our characters is both of different races, with this we unconsciously represented the possible dynamics of interracial relationships and creates a binary (character) opposition that can be linked to Levi-Strauss.
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
Our branding started with intensive research of different artists, and from there we decided on the name of our artist "Myriad". This is from her real alias when she featured on a friend's song. Myriad conveniently means immeasurable wherein we interpreted this as our artist being a believer in countless opportunities and chances in life. I decided to use Myrrh as her "real name" as it's close to Myriad, I consciously didn't want to make her stage name and "real" name far from each other, as I have observed many real artists also practice this. These create a layer of different realities and can be tied with Baudrillard's Postmodernity Theory; audiences crave for authenticity and our branding aims to satisfy this yearning for reality. Our social media page contradicts Dyer's Star Theory as she brands herself as someone who has a voice and isn't a commodity. We made her someone who is caring and vocal about her opinions on issues and this makes her a persona of a proactive person rather than a money-making artist. Her "work-related" posts can also be distinguished from her everyday post through the careful usage of colors as a theme of her posted content. Apart from the music video and socials, our digipak is also reflective of her branding, for example, she shows her gratitude and sincerity to her penned letter in the digipak where she talks about her struggles and how she is immensely grateful and appreciative to her fans and team for making the album possible.
How do your products engage with the audience?
Our target audience is from 18 and above as we believe that it takes a sense of maturity and age to interpret and uncover the layers of symbolism that our brand offers. We really take advantage of social media to promote our artist and to also create organic interaction with her audience and loyal fans. For example, we applied Clay Shirky's End of the Audience Theory wherein our artist is a prosumer, she post content of other artists that she admires and she gets a reply from another artist; from here a widening of the audience happens as two fan bases can have interaction as they see that the two artists are at ease and supportive of each other. Furthermore, posting sneak peeks of her new album helps to hype up the audience, through building up anticipation from the audience we can get more engagement such as likes/views and comments on her social media page. As mentioned on the SOCIALS blog, we also intend to use TikTok as we have noticed that music companies are now using this social media platform to widen fan interaction and engagement. The social media page also engages the audience by posting her support for women-related movements (activism and other songs that are of the same theme). This leads the audience/ fans to have an involvement with patronizing her craft if they have the same beliefs as her... they can also support and engage with her content if they resonate with the message and the identity she presents (Gauntlett's Pick & Mix Theory).
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
The research I have put in this coursework allowed me to understand the complexity and range of elements I could apply to my music video, socials, and digipak. Since we did a conceptual music video, we had more freedom with creativity cause we had an option of using the lyrics as a theme that we can match our imagery or to completely go against the meaning of the song and put on very happy imagery despite the song conveying a message of unequal treatment. Concept MVs have two types: Symbolic & Thematic and what we did is we fused these two to create more meanings, and I this creative decision help us have layers of meaning that can be interpreted by the audience in many ways. We used semiotics to illustrate and amplify our lyrics (e.g. "I've never been the one in your eyes"). We also followed the convention of concept music videos by being vague by not showing our male protagonist's face...conveniently this also becomes an enigma for the audience as they will wonder who he is, what he looks like, etc. For the digipak, we didn't really consciously think of challenging or using conventions for the musical genre; we just followed the color scheme that we presented in our final pitch and also followed our preference for design and aesthetics. However, I largely conformed to the digipak style convention of having titles, tracklist, and design continuity... with this, I believe that I showed a conventional-looking album that is visually pleasing. For social media, I have challenged some conventions, for example, the posted content of our artist tackles relevant socio-political, which is often a sensitive thing to do for artists as this can potentially damage their image and their reach to audiences especially if the posts are about the artist voicing their stance and opinions.