Critical Self-Reflection Component 3

 

Self-Reflection link

The brief set by Cambridge was to create: “A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music video (major task), together with an official social media page for the band or artiste(s) and a digipak for the album’s release (minor tasks).”. 

 As a group of four, Me, Angelo, Jason And Jonathan, we chose “Ghost Town” a song by Kanye West to use as the basis of our music video

How does your product represent social groups or issues?

One of the many social groups we are discussing in this video is young adults around the ages of 18-25+ (University students). We represent this by having our friend Jason play as the Main Character of the music video in which he will proceed to act like the stereotypical university student, by playing a lot of sports, mainly football (his passion) and hanging out with friends to represent the daily life of most young adults in university. In this music video we represent them in a positive light by having them act like normal law-abiding citizens who do not cause harm to the environment or people around them and instead just minding their own business. Stereotypes of teens and young adults in mass media often portray them as hooligans, criminals, and destructive people. We wanted to subvert this because we know this stereotype to be very misleading, being the same age ourselves. We would like people to see us in a newer light, a person and not a menace to society.  

Our music video mainly touches content of the more sensitive side of the spectrum such as depression, loneliness, mental health, drug abuse and self harm. When the video first started our artist, Ego, was shown to be a happy, normal guy, but it all changed when he received a heartbreaking break up text which eventually led him to consume substances, this can be shown as the scenes after the break-up text gradually get darker and less saturated as it went on until at some point (When he chugged some “pills”) it became fully black and white, the loss of color was to reflect his emotional state, black and white often having connotations of emptiness. He went from a person who was “One of the Boys” to a depressed man who is lost and has started to harm himself and taking “supplements'' which makes him more distant from the people that actually cared about him this stereotype is being shown under some negative impressions as Jason would continue to distant himself from his friends and loved ones and would encourage himself to consume more “supplements” and cause harm to himself and others, which ultimately led him to give up on his passion which soccer.

Our music video also consists of a few black and white scenes which are typically associated with sadness and depression, which is used to portray our character (Jason) in the lowest points of his life. Speaking of the scenes Jason was in let’s talk about it, for starters, the use of camera angles such as a high shot to make Jason seem weak, pathetic and wanting to be left alone, the close-up shots to show more emotions on E/GO’s face, or the zooming on E/GO’s (artist) phone as the text messages kept coming in the camera gets closer and closer to not only make it easier for the audience to see it but to also create a sense of negative impact as every text creates an emotional blow for E/GO which is exemplified by the zooming.

nother thing that was a selling factor is the choice of clothing we used, typically a black hoodie as hoodies (especially black ones) are associated with depressed people which further emphasizes the feeling of loneliness and depression, and finally is the actions we asked Jason (kindly) to act out, for example we take long shots of him being alone and we also took shot of him taking substances (NO THEY ARE NOT REAL SUBSTANCES). the close-up shots to show more emotions on E/GO’s face, or a 

Now our music has a third act revolving around recovery where Jason’s character would try to recover from his depressed and drug addict self, by having it so that his friends help him to get out of the dark spiral that he is in. The way we portray him getting better is by slowly adding colors into the scenes as he becomes more like his old happy self, we also used a bunch of low angle shots to portray that he is better than he was before.

How do the elements of your production work together  to create a sense of ‘branding’?

Isolation, depression and drug usage are some of the defining points of our music video and can be shown in our other products such as the digipak and social media page constantly.

For example our digipak also matches the theme as it is again made with a black and white setting which matches with the theme of the music video which is the lack of saturation, the text is also either white or black whilst using the “Debray Franklin” font for the title of the song and artist name on the digipak, the background is also in black and white usually a picture or our artist E/GO doing a depressing pose while wearing a black hoodie, which is also the selling point of the video as the hoodie can be seen everywhere in the video so why not incorporate it into the digipak for consistency.

Following the trend by using black and white themes is the social media page which is again mostly black and white and uses the same typeface that is in the music video, logo, and digipak. The hoodie is also featured in the social media, as well as Jason doing depressing poses whilst wearing the hoodie.

How do your products engage with the audience

Our products can interact with the audience in many different ways, for example is the medical proscription that contains the name of the song “Ghost town” and the artist “Ego” along with a national suicide hotlines from the US and UK. Below that we have a QR code that when scanned will send the audience to the sponsor of the video BetterHelp, BetterHelp is a online mental health awareness site that offers customers access to online mental health services which we think will help our audience cope better with their mental health problems such as depression, self-harm, loneliness.

Our social media page also interacts with the audience to a great extent not only can they comment on the posts and share their opinions on it live but we have also included links from the previously mentioned BetterHelp and another link to our GoFundMe page where the audience, out of their own free will can donate to our cause so that we fund more future projects. We also promote merchandise on our social media page, mainly the stapled hoodie that we used a lot in the music video which is advertised by our actor Jason along with the pricing and size specification. This would make it so that our social media page would actively engage with the audience which in turn makes them more inclined to buy our products. We also made a hashtag #LongWayDownGhostTown, in which we asked the audience to take pictures of themselves doing Jason’s poses while wearing our merch as this is another great way to engage with our audiences. In addition to that we also engaged our audience by asking them to contact us directly via DMs, so that we can announce our upcoming world tour, where we would have concerts held in various cities. The tickets and seating arrangements are also shown to be “sold out” to further increase the hype for the up and coming concert. BY doing so, we can attract a larger number of audience to join which again would help us engage with them more.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions? 

Our product typically challenges the typical conventions by actually showing that mental problems & suicide are a serious thing and that it is something that should not be ignored by society as a whole. Our Main Character Jason is a 18-20 year old male university student who is currently dealing with his break-up with his girl friend which led to major mental health trauma, drug abuse, loneliness, and potentially suicide. Male character’s are usually portrayed to be brave, strong, strong minded, and among many manly things, but our Main Character is written differently instead of being what I just listed above, he is weak, absent minded and somewhat sensitive, which most people wouldn’t expect from a male character, which is how Jason is portrayed in the music video. We challenged this stereotype because we feel that it is important for us to show that everyone can have mental problems and that it’s not just limited to a specific group or gender.

We also again subverted the representation of young adults, as instead of portraying them to be a menace to society, we portray them to be more conservative, less destructive, to be like every normal person, we did this to raise awareness to the fact that young adults are also people as we are young adults ourselves, we think that the western media is wrong about younger adults as we are not destructive and we would like people to see us in a newer light, as person and not a menace to society. Along with that we have also subverted the typical rap video (to a certain extent), as it does not contain any sex, women, big parties, and gangsters. We did this because we believe that we must use a much more serious tone, as we needed to also raise awareness for people going through depression and drugs, as if we did do it with the stereotypical