How do your products represent social groups or issues?
We sculpted her star image to be represented as emotionless, reserved and taciturn. This ties into the alternative genre I was trying to represent. I was able to achieve this in the Digipak through mise-en-scene, which helps evidence Dyer’s star image theory. Inadvertently I was evidencing the extraordinary side of the paradox of the star by doing a monotonous colour palette and contemporary shapes helping connote the deep meaning. I also aimed to represent the star as mysterious; through posing and lighting I was able to achieve this.Using symbolic codes (Barthes), we also used paint to add a deeper meaning into our star image. It hinted into the darker side of the alternative genre as we present women as barcodes. I wanted to create a sense of incarceration as my two main characters in the music video had shots where they were barcodes and captivated. I tried to portray a deeper meaning as to how women feel in society. The barcode is a physical object but it can be represented as such things. Our product is slightly unconventional to turn the heads of our audience. This can give a sense of overcoming issues and gives the artist a sense of normality which unfortunately the audience feel related to this. The audience would have decoded this pose as one that has connotations of power and enigma. Due to the use of lighting the star seemed to be staring at her own shadow which helps show the star’s ideology and connotes the symbolic code (as proposed by Barthes) of introspection; conveying the idea that the star is in her own mind. It conveys the general convention of my genre, indie, where people feel outside of society and don’t feel the need to dress to impress, he is portrayed as ordinary which is conventional for indie music. The star is also represented as both ordinary and extraordinary. The star is shown being extraordinary through editing and effects which make him look unearthly and cartoon-like. In order to connect with audiences and be desirable, his caregiving attitude is shown through his choice of pose; the audience will then decode this message and see him as a relaxed, welcoming personality. He’s reaching out to the audience to create a sense of personal connection, this would be what Barthes would call a symbolic code as the symbolism signifies darkness inside the objects on the two inside panes.
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
The mission statement of our artist features descriptors of youthfulness, controversy, mystery and authenticity; the products in our package create a cohesive representation of these descriptions of our artist; Dyer’s Paradox of the Star is shown through the artist’s features as it shows both sides of being ordinary and extraordinary. Our brand needed to be recognisable to the audience so I needed to blend the three products; Digipak, social media page and music video so that they are easily distinguishable in the same campaign. This was evident in the music video; the artist sat in the setting a blank background with a net tights in the head again reinforcing the idea of a captivated persona. However this was juxtaposed by using the symbolic reference of the road with spedding cars which can represent freedom. The semic code of relatability and young expression and the cultural code of the setting are all clear examples of what Barthes would term the narrative code. Our audience will be able to decode the idea that although the star has an extraordinary side of uniqueness and out of the box creativity, the star also has the ordinary side of being young and authentic with flaws. The music video and digipak were vastly promoted on the social media page also helping create a brand. Fans would expect to be excited and teased over future releases and future projects whilst also consuming the star’s ordinary credible teenage self. The social media page also created a sense of involvement for the fans with them being able to actively absorb the descriptors of the artist on a more personal level. Having a clear and understandable mission statement allowed me to easily create and assign a brand to the star whilst projecting this through the three products; it also helped me send out the same message throughout all the products by using integrated advertising. For example, having a similar colour theme throughout the music video and digipak with monotonous colours which were used from a projection of meaning to allow my type of audience to have a preferred reading; this was also evidenced by the use of different camera angles used throughout the three products. The goal was achieved as Hall says having a clear preferred reading allowed me to encode the same message throughout the three products for the audience to decode and understand the same narrative and ideology; these stemmed from the descriptors in the mission statement. My music video aimed to create an integrated advertising campaign that sells all types of objects. I release songs that can help people by relating to them and then feeling heard. I set about conveying that through different platforms and using appropriate media language depending on the platform to represent and or communicate that. For example, live videos conducted with fans as well as interactive polls on my social media page to gain as much of a connection to their fans as possible. This narrative is also carried through to my social media page whereby I created merchandise that illustrates the type of genre I wanted to be presented as.
How do your products engage with the audience?
Engaging the audience is important for any social media page to allow for marketing, social interactions and a good release of the product, ensuring a good reception from the target audience. Indie rock demographic usually ranges from 16-22. To allow the social media page to have maximum audience engagement one of our main aims was to ask questions to the fans in order to get their responses and therefore promote social interaction. This is explained by Blumler and Katz who say social interaction, personal identity, entertainment and information are essential for every media text. For example when engaging with our audience we created promotions for our album release by getting fans to send us a photo using a hashtag. I did this so our target audience felt they were involved with the release of the album and were connected to the star as possibleAn example that provides social interaction for the audience are highlights/stories. I used highlights named ‘Q&A’ to allow the audience to have a more personal relationship with the star allowing them to ask questions directly to the artist. This provided social interaction for the audience whilst also supplying information to the audience as the star could reply to any question asked about future releases, merchandise and more. It was also important that our target audience were able to receive relevant information and entertainment by promoting our stars’ new tour dates and performances. This showed our audience that they have opportunities to come join our star on tours in the future and allow for our fans to feel part of the journey. It also makes him more present in fans’ lives, something Dyer argues is important in any metanarrative of an artist. We also included quick snippets of the music video and teasers of the release of the album to allow for maximum views, likes and comments from our specific fans. When captioning our posts I also made sure to include questions to encourage social interaction and allow fans to feel as if they were speaking to our star directly. This encourages the idea that he is present and ordinary, something that Dyer said was important in any star’s metanarrative. Furthermore to help reinforce the audience’s personal identity we also included stories including charities our star supports and important politics at the current time.
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
Before creating the music video we as lacey would say, researched the genre’s repertoire of elements, I decided to use and develop some of the indie genre conventions . For example we developed conventions by having performance and hidden narrative when usually indie songs are mainly performance, secondly we used the band in both the performance and narrative when usually they would be different people. However this would have allowed the audience to decode the performance and see them as more ordinary and relatable and less iconic which is unconventional but builds a connection between the star and audience. We followed generic conventions of a general music video by lip syncing and editing to the beat, use of film rules such as the 180 degree wall.
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