Critical Reflection.

Q1. How does your project represent social groups or issues?

The song we picked for our music video “0% Angel” by Mr. Kitty, circles a theme of how heartbreak can bring a person down to its worst, and make them do things they usually would not do. The social group setting we picked for our music video, falls under late teens, and early adulthood. As I add up to this, some of the issues we highlighted were, how depression and sadness can lead to a person feeling emotional and physical pain, to portray this, in the end of our music video, the main character’s heart is shown bleeding. Moreover, what we shed light upon is how, despite being stereotyped as, “strong”, “masculine”, “nonchalant”, even men have a hard time coming to terms with their emotions, and how betrayal, heartbreak and disappointment can eat them from the inside. Our actor is seen in a constant state of sadness throughout the video, but when we zoom into his memories, he is seen with his lover, where he is shown happy, euphoric and at peace. To bring our concept more to life, we used different sort of lighting in every scene, from the beginning to the end; when he is alone, the light dims down and he is surrounded by an aura of sadness. However, when we go into his memories with his lover, the light changes to a dream-like effect, portraying, how he felt at ease, calm and tranquil with her.   

Q2. How do elements of your production work together to make a sense of "branding"?

We had a variety of elements to go with to create a sense of branding. There were internal and external factors involved throughout the whole process.

Regarding the internal factors, which circle around camera angles, editing, poses, color-scheme, all integrated together to provide us with a sense of branding. This was delivered by keeping different yet the similar color scheme throughout our product and the conventions to maintain the look in it, for instance, different hues of red and blue mixed together in the beginning, to the filter-type green shade in the forest and the dreamy, pink shade in the memories. Moving on, the setting and vibe we went for was inspired by Mr. Kitty’s album cover, and we gave it the element of thrill and set an atypical vibe for it. Our team put a lot of effort to give it our own identity and recognition, something that showcases our vision clearly, and to give it a sense of element that stands out from regular media. 

Concerning the external factors, we promoted our music video through our social media page, we dropped teasers and snippets of our music video, and shared a bunch of photos to build up to the release of our final product, this helped in gaining attention and a lot of eager responses waiting for the video. We maintained our theme of red in our promotion, to match with our final cut. Our product was circled around social media platforms and received a lot of engagement which boosted our own identity of our project and its production. 

Q3. How do your products engage with the audience?

The targeted audience for our product was late teens and early adults, but it has no specific  age limit, we highlighted how heartbreak can lead to depression. It was made to not only be enjoyed by the ‘relatable audience’ but also by the youth to enhance the essence of bittersweet love. Regarding the psychographic and demographics factor, it holds no specific limitation or any set criteria for our audience despite the portrayal of how a man can go through various stages of grief after a hefty breakup, or issues regarding depression. The theme of heartbreak cannot be generalized since everyone at one point in their life faces the dark side of love. Moreover, the conventions of our product stand out as an aesthetically pleasing video, we used different lights and settings to show a storyline and to keep the audience’s attention on it. We added an element of suspense, build up and the result, in the end the main character’s heart bleeding used as a metaphor to show how heartbreak can lead to all sorts of distress. The color-scheme was set to catch attention, not too light and not too bright on the eyes, something that keeps the watcher engaged and interested. We implemented Stuart Hall’s theory about ‘Audience Reception’, to cater to all sorts of audience. Our social media platform served as a huge factor in keeping our viewers engaged, it kept the watchers on their tiptoes for the release of the final video and a lot of thrill was build up for it. 

Q4. How did your research form your products and the way the use or challenge conventions?

For our project, we were inspired by Mr. Kitty’s aesthetic and took inspiration from a lot of social media platforms. We wanted our theme to maintain the dark yet subtle look. We did not want the project to be too over-whelming or too under-whelming, and to achieve that we had to make sure all our research added up properly. The theme of our music video falls under the category of alternative/indie, and to get to that we looked at different clips and music videos to get a good gist of it. For our color-grading scheme in the start of the video we took inspiration from, ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd, the themes of red and orange that he showcased in his video was something that we had been looking for. For our digipak, we looked at Mr. Kitty’s album cover, where he is seen hugging a skeleton and the background is red, we tried to portray our digipak in a similar way like him. To give it the dark look we wanted, we used different editing techniques. We, also used different font styles and keep it in the same aura of our music video, to provide a sense of coherence.