MEDIA STUDIES ADVANCED PORTFOLIO CIE'18

1. CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION
Music Video
(Media Studies Advanced Portfolio CIE)
Hafsa Hasan

2. How do your products used or challenged conventions
and how do they represent social groups or issues?
My A2 portfolio is a Music Video. The song I've chosen for it is
“Reggaeton Lento-remix”.
The genre of my music video “reggaeton lento” is mainly latin
pop- reggaeton which means dancing and there’s lost of dancing
in my video if you see as I wanted my music to connect with the
youth so that they could also feel the music that I'm trying to
provide. My music video contains many conventions of pop
music as in the video, theres a link between the lyrics and the
visuals. There is usually some link between lyrics and visuals. If it
did not, then the video would be pretty irrelevant and people
wouldn’t care about it.

3. And Ive perfectly made sure of it. To engage people ive thoroughly
used this convention like here you can see
The lady artist turned and addressed the guy saying,
“Boy, I can see you're looking at
me like you want it”
There're few scenes more which favors this convention for example
here both the artist girl and boy are dancing doing having their
time when girl the says ,

4. “Boy, I wish that this could last forever , Cause every second by
your side is heaven”
the artist is in mainstream outfit he is portrayed happy and is
enjoying what he’s doing and he is dancing along with the tune.
There’s usually bright lighting and some form of bright
object/costume in pop videos. I kind of challenged this convention
regarding the costumes because the artists in my videos are
casually dressed not in any party attire but the lighting and the
environment I arranged totally focuses and quickly clicks the club
or party scenario.

5. This makes the video stands out more and also appeals to
youth- my target audience, as it appears vibrant and
lively, something young people are attracted to. It also
makes it more upbeat, so it fits the beat and general
message of the song.
Most pop videos feature some element of love in their
narratives.
This is because most of the lyrics are about love. And
that’s what my music video also depicts, love and
affection, two girls trying to chase one boy.
It also appeals to the target
audience, as young teenagers
Are often obsessed with the
concept.

6. There’s usually a lot of performance in pop music videos. This is
because a video can’t be full of narrative, otherwise
It would be boring. And the people in my video also wanted to be
taken seriously as artists, so they
could show themselves performing.
My video has synchronized
dancing just like in pop music videos.
I wanted to show some professionalism
In my video by showing them to be
all-round performers, not
just singers.

7. My music video gives out a dancing vibe as it has a catchy tune
and the actors in the video are dancing with such energy that the
audience would also want to dance with the beat that is why I
have used bright and bold colors which is associated with a
positive vibe.
According to the conventions artist in a pop music are expressed
in a very sexual and seductive way, trying to lure the audience in;
very show/staged like. However current artist choose to dress in
provocative ways portraying a sexual atmosphere. Women
wearing revealing cloths while men are shown shirtless. These
conventions are not used by me instead I have shown the ideal
fun filled side of teenage in a very proper manner.

8. I have created a webpage for the audience to get involved
and find more about the album, about the singer and
about the music video. Purpose of a website is to engage
with the target audience and give them information about
the artist/band. And give the audience the latest
information about the artist, e.g. tour dates and upcoming
music singles and albums. The Homepage of the website
typically features things like: The artist’s logo, A menu bar/
Form of website navigation, A picture of the artist, An auto-
playing music video (the most recent or popular one).
However the full information on my website is not given, if
the audience wants to read about it they will click on read
more and they would be taken to the respected pages
where they can read the whole story.

9. How do the elements of your production work
together to create a sense of “BRANDING”?
A BRAND is sum of all the feelings, thoughts and recognition
(positive or negative), that people in the targeted audience,
associates with a company, or a product or service.
'Branding' is considered an important element in success of a
media product. To start with the music video, a synopsis was
written along with a proper storyboard and list of scenes for our
video. Audience survey took place, which helped to decide what
genre to choose and who’ll be the target audience and what
should be the concept of the album/songs. Although there were
a lot more new and interesting ideas I had regarding the the
music video and was changing every minute, mostly when I
listens to any new and good music.

10. The story was reviewed couple of times, took a lot of time to
decide the location and the mise-se-scene and everything was
arranged with planning in order to make the video look more
realistic.
Different camera angles and shots have been used which were
pre planned. My video has numerous cut shots, which is easily
identifiable because of the fast beat and the editing done.
Various shots were taken on different days and dispose off a lot
of them to create one good product. After completing all my
shooting, it took a long time to edit the video from first rough
cut to the final cut on adobe Premiere CC 2015.

11. Choice of color for digipak and website is extremely
important when it comes to creating a sense of branding
because it needs to be attractive and to distinguish to the
audience. Yellow and Black has been. The reason behind
this is because it will not only stand out the most but it also
has a deeper meaning to it. The Yellow colour, the color of
sunshine, hope, and happiness, has conflicting
associations. On one hand yellow stands for
confidence, freshness, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy,
optimism, enlightenment, remembrance, intellect, honor,
loyalty, and joy, but on the other, it represents shyness and
deceit. While the color Black is a very powerful color that
symbolizes class, elegance and wealth. Stylish clothing is
often designed in black, everything from suits, to sexy black
dresses, to formal black tie outfits. Black combined with
other colors can have a very strong impact.

12. For the font too childish or too fancy styles were not opted
because it is aimed to target a wide audience and to make
the work for professional but creative, hence despite of
being simple font, the way it has been presented is a eye
candy. Images and logo’s have a big part in consistent
branding because they are vital to the audience to create a
visual sense of branding. For the project a lot of pictures
were used to create a visual pleasure for our audience and
little text in order to engage more with them. Record label
logo was used almost every where to give a constant
reminder to the audience and to create a sense of
branding. In my production work I made a digi-pak for my
music album, however I think that it has really created a
sense of branding as from the cover you could judge the
genre and it attracts the audience. The digipak, gives an
idea to the audience about the genre of the album.

13. A music website helps to promote the artist/band and
increase sales for their music and merchandise. A
music website promotes their multimedia and allows
the audience to keep up to date about what the artist
is doing, has done and is going to do. It makes the
audience feel closer to the artist/band. For the layout
of the website conventional music artist website was
followed because it automatically denotes what's the
website is about. Images, contact information,
quotations of music, posters, teaser, collaborations,
tour dates, the album, digipak, mp3 version.
Everything is available on the band’s site, free of cost
or for purchase with special discounts.

14. How do your products engage with the audience
and how would they be distributed on real
media products
If we mainly talk about Audience then Pop music is usually
enjoyed by the youth, starting from age 12- 25 approximately,
therefore as my genre is pop, so my targeted audience is the
youth of all around the world. As far as the music video is
concerned, it would capture the eye of the audience for several
reasons. Firstly, because of the lyrics, the lyrics are about Love
and it shows the affection towards each other in every stanza .
The music video basically is to make the audience smile. And
push them to the memory lane.

15. Bright lighting and creativity, makes the video stand out more
and also appeals to youth(the target audience), as it appears
vibrant and lively, something young people are attracted to. It
also makes it more upbeat, so it fits the beat. The costumes for
actors in music video are fashionable . This makes them
relatable and liked by their youthful target audience, as
fashion is important to them.

16. For the marketing I would promote my video on social
networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
etc because they have now become very popular among
the youth and has become really powerful as a
promotional hub. So it will be an advantage for me as my
video can go viral through Facebook pages and youtube
channels! I could also take help from twitter for
promoting my video by my creating hashtags associated
with my video such as #Reggaeton . Reggaeton is a
Spanish word which is associated with hip hop dance and
characterized by the rhythm of Latin fusion. As there's a
lot of sense of Spanish music now in our youth.

17. For the marketing and distribution, the band “HH”, will be signed to
“WARNER MUSIC GROUP”, Warner Music Group is a subsidiary
group of the parent company “Time Warner”. Being signed to a big
record label, will be great for the band for following reasons:
Warner has their own website to promote their artists as well as
the subsidiary labels of Warner. Time Warner, the parent company,
owns American TV channels such as CNN and formerly owned part
of MTV in which their artists could be interviewed and broadcast
one, also, Warner Music Group owns NME which has both a TV
channel and a Magazine on which their artists can be interviewed
on or in. They have an account YouTube to promote the songs of
their record label, they can also partner up with other youtubers, to
promote them, this will get more audience to buy their album an
increase an following, since an average person watches 5-10
youtube videos daily or even more and approximately, 2million
videos are being watched.

18. Likewise the teamed up with VEVO too. Warner
organizes a lot of gigs and performances due to the
growing popularity of them. Also the support acts for
bands often tend to be on the same label as the main act
to promote their smaller artists as well as their larger
artists. Bands are also advertised in films, for example
Muse, Paramore and Linkin Park all appeared on the
“Twilight” soundtrack, this movie was produced by
Warner Bros. This has promoted these bands to a great
extent along with the promotion of the film saga. On the
Wanermusicgroup.com website, there is a revolving
menu of artists on this label which visitors can scroll
through thus promoting other artists on their label.
Along with that on the band’s website, merchandising
items will be available too.

19. How did you integrated technologies, software,
hardware and online in this project
I have used Canon DSLR 1200D for shooting, along with the
50mm lens for the close-ups and the kit lens for the wide shots
and tripod .The matter of fact that I used only a single camera for
so many different angles was a challenge. The settings were;
movie recording size: 1280x720(frames 50), picture size: neutral,
image quality: RAW and alterations for ISO for different scenes.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 for editing, I’ve used
different effects like Fast color correction, , speeding effects,
slomos, flash effects, frame holds, crop and garbage tool and
more, along with video transitions. I've used many video
transitions, mainly with the dissolves to gain the continuation
with the jump shots. Plus using this software wasn't easy, being a
freshmen to this software I had to look for tutorials for each and
every effect even for zooming the bar.

20. So in regards of that I looked for help on Youtube which I
successfully did.
I found and download my soundtrack from YouTube. I’ve also
used other handbrake to reduce the size of my video, without
lowering the quality. Internet also played a major part in my
project. Due to the availability of internet I was able to do all the
related research and evaluate relevant information. I was able to
get all the information about Pop music and its conventions, by
looking at the YouTube videos I had a roughly idea how to do this,
survey was easily conducted, hence my targeted audience was
figured out and much more. As far as internet is concerned, it
help me to know the conventions of POP music digipak, how to
make a website and upload contents on it. And lastly, it was very
easy for me to upload all my contents on my blog ( Music Video,
Creative Critical Reflection, Evidence, Digipak and link my website
to my blog). I used vimeo to upload my video and all the other
contents on my tumblr blog.