A Level Media Studies Component 3 : Final Project

This blog post, written by me (Beatrice), features the music video, digipak, and social media page.

Music Video

Here is the *LINK* incase the video is removed from YouTube

Digipak

FRONT COVER

INSIDE

BACK COVER

Mock-up. Here is the *LINK* incase the images doesn't load 

Social Media

Here is the link to our live social media page. https://www.instagram.com/tunesofaflower/

Interaction with fans/audience (1) on this post.

Interaction with fans/audience (2) on this post

(The interaction indicates that while she frequently likes fans' comments, she only occasionally replies. This can suggests that she acknowledges and appreciates her fans but may not always have the time to engage in deeper conversations.)

Comp 3 : Critical Self Reflection

 Here is my critical self reflection for this music video project. This blog post is written by me (Beatrice).

The Music Promotion brief set by Cambridge required the creation of  a music video, social media page, and digipak. Our team decided to cover Billie Eilish's song "Birds of a Feather", which falls under the indie-pop genre. We created a fictional indie pop artist named Jasmine, alongside a featured artist, Viola. Our target audience are teenage girls aged 16 to 24 who value creativity, and we aimed to emphasize a dominant reading centred on friendships and relatability. This essay discusses how we use technical elements to create consistent branding, conform and subvert conventions, represents social groups, and engage the audience throughout all of our media products. 

Branding in the media refers to the way media products establish a clear and recognizable identity across different platforms by using consistent themes, aesthetics, and messages to create a strong connection with the audience. According to Stuart Hall's Reception theory, branding helps encode meaning that audiences can associate with the artist through all forms of media, being able to receive the star's preferred meaning. Our branding remains consistent by featuring Jasmine's artwork across all of our products (Fig 1.1 - 1.3). This encodes our star as creative and fun. Moreover, posting these on her social media page gives the impression that our star is still just an ordinary person, making her feel more relatable, which conforms to the convention of indie pop artist's personality. Richard Dyer's Stardom theory states that stars are constructed by the media, rather than real people, so we've carefully constructed Jasmine's REEL persona by prioritizing personal over promotional contents in Jasmine's social media to make her appear more down-to-earth. Even in professional posts, our tone remains consistent in maintaining Jasmine’s youthful and relatable brand identity. This is achieved by using informal language, emojis, direct mode of address, and a lowercase writing style, mirroring how teenagers typically communicate online.

To make sure that we understand the conventions of the genre that we are working with, I have conducted in-depth research on indie and pop music videos, which helped us make decisions on whether to conform or subvert these expectations. We conformed to the representations of social groups of teenage girls by including activities they typically engage in, such as hanging out while collecting shells at the beach and having matching bracelets (Fig 2). According to Barthes' Semiotics theory, these elements act as symbolic codes, as the bracelets signify the strength of their friendship. This is revealed at the end of the video with the use of a medium shot to reveal that Viola is still wearing the bracelet, a symbol of their friendship. The medium shot shows the bracelet, but is also able to include the embrace that the friends are sharing. 

Another feature of modern indie-pop music we conformed to was collaboration between artists. This can be labelled as synergy (when media companies collaborate for mutual benefit.) Our music video follows this by featuring Viola, another star from a different genre. This conforms to indie pop conventions, where artists often collaborate to gain more audience (e.g, Clairo and Beabadoobee's Glue Song remix in 2023). Since Viola is a more popular star compared to Jasmine, this collaboration allows Jasmine to expand her reach and attract Viola’s existing audience. Similarly, Viola benefits by gaining exposure to Jasmine’s genre, allowing her to diversify her connections and broaden her presence across genres.

Our digipak mostly conforms to the conventions of indie pop digipak design, which often features minimalistic and hand-crafted elements to create an authentic feel. To align with this aesthetic, we used a collage technique that gives the design an abstract and personal quality. Additionally, we included handwritten words to reinforce the unpolished aesthetic that is typical of the indie pop genre (Taylor Swift's 1989 album.) We also applied visible paper textures, which added depth and a tactile quality to the design to make it feel more handcrafted. (Fig 3) However, we also chose to subvert certain expectations by using an expressive handwriting style instead of the delicate cursive fonts that are commonly used in indie pop album covers, since we believe that these decisions gives the design a more contemporary touch, while maintaining its handmade feel.

Our music video represents teenagers as complex while they are experiencing the transition from adolescence to adulthood. While media typically idealizes this period by presenting a singular emotion (such as pure happiness or sadness), we decided to subvert this using technical elements to blend both the happiness and conflict that comes with growing up. Idealized memories of youth are shown through happy moments during high school, using medium two-shot shots to reinforce both actresses in the same scene (Fig 4). However these contrasted with the fight scene using close-up shots to reveal the range of emoutions Jasmine is experiencing (Fig 5). We use cooler tones in the fight scene (Fig 6.1), as it connotes sadness and emotional distance, whereas the happier scenes are presented with a warmer tone (Fig 6.2), connoting joy and comfort. This reinforces Barthes' idea that colours can function as symbolic code. Additionally, a high-angle shot of Jasmine crying (Fig 7) emphasizes her loss of control over the friendship breakup, making her appear vulnerable and powerless. By blending these contrasting emotions rather than depicting youth as purely carefree, our music video presents a more nuanced representation of adolescence. This dominant reading challenges the more common positive representation of youth by acknowledging the cherished moments and inevitable change, creating a more realistic representation that allows our audience to connect with the music video personally. The use of these techniques aligns with Stuart Hall’s Reception theory, which encourages audiences to actively interpret the meaning based on their own experiences, rather than passively accepting it.

One of the main ways we engage our audience is through the star’s social media presence (Instagram). Audiences actively seek media that fulfills their need for social connections (Blumler & Katz). In this case, social media gives fans opportunities to foster their social relationships and creates a sense of community through shared interests. Instagram's comment section allows fans to engage not only with the artist but also with each other. This aligns with Clay Shirky's End of Audience theory, where he suggests that passive audiences no longer exist in the digital age. Instead of simply consuming media, audiences are now active participants who create, share, and interact with content. Moreover, our star occasionally interacts with fans by liking or responding to their comments (Fig 8). 

We have catered to the audience's needs by including interactive content in our social media. Since our stars persona centres around creativity, we included an interactive challenge on Instagram called #HeARTsforJas (Hearts for Jasmine), which encourages fans to create and share their own fan art using the hashtag (Fig 9). By creating artwork for the star, fans will be building a community of like-minded fans. This aligns with Henry Jenkins' Fandom theory, which argues that fans are active and engaged participants in media, not just passive consumers. To further increase audience engagement, our star’s social media page includes personal posts that showcase her REAL persona, such as OOTD (outfit of the day), selfies, and product she used (Fig 10). This type of content allows audiences to see aspects of themselves in the star or aspire to their lifestyle. Through this, the star strengthens parasocial relationships with their audience. Due to the constantly evolving technologies, social media allows real-time interactions and story features, which have made this level of engagement possible. These tools ensure that the audience remains consistently connected with the artist.

In conclusion, our music promotion package has conveyed our dominant reading effectively. By representing friendship as complex and nuanced, we created a relatable narrative that resonates with our target audience. Our branding also reinforced Jasmine's REEL persona, which strengthened our audience engagement. One thing I would do to improve next time is following the schedule instead of spontaneously working on this project, as our lack of time management led me to rush through our project until the very last minute. These are lessons to be learned from in my fututre endeavours. 

(Fig 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3) ; Jasmine's artwork from her music video, digipak, and social media.

(Fig 2) ; medium shot shows bracelet and their hug.

(Fig 3) ; paper texture on digipak with hand-drawn doodles.

(Fig 4) ; using medium two-shot shot to reinforce the close relationship.

(Fig 5) ; using a high angle close-up shot to show her vulnerable emotions

(Fig 6.1 and 6.2) ; cooler tone for fight scene, warmer tone for happy scene.

(Fig 7) ; high angle shot to make her appear vulnerable and powerless.

(Fig 8) ; interacting with fans through comment section.

(Fig 9) ; best fan arts showcased in Jasmine's social media as a shout-out.

(Fig 10) ; REAL persona showcased in her social media page.

Comp 3 : Media Language

This blog post, written by me (Beatrice), details the media language and visual codes we used in our music video, digipak, and social media page. The main ideas and message we wanted to convey include the star's cheerful persona and her friendship with her best friend, Viola.

Reflection : I believe that by writing these analysis of the scenes from our music video, digipak, and social media , I would be able to develop my critical self reflection more effectively, as these process helps me explore deeper meanings, media language choices, and connotations behind our decisions during the production process of our product. Overall, making this has helped me to understand how professional carefully construct meaning in their products, and allows me to explain our creative decisions clearly. 

Comp 3 : Music Video Regulation & Permission Email

 This blog post, written by me (Beatrice), will outline how our music video was regulated. It will also include a permission email we used to request the rights to use the song.

Music Video Regulation

To create our music video for this project, we had to follow specific guidelines, which acted as a form of regulation or censorship. According to Cambridge, we were advised to select songs in English or add English subtitles to non-English songs. We were also instructed to avoid representing themes of drug use, harmful substances, or suicide, as this may be considered inappropriate or triggering. On top of that, we were encouraged not to film while driving due to safety concerns. These regulations influenced our decisions on shaping both the narrative content and visual representation in our final music video.

According to the school and our teacher, we must make sure our music video content is appropriate for a school environment. This meant avoiding bad language, explicit songs, and any form of violence. We were also required to ensure the content is age appropriate, as our school includes students around the age of 13-18 years old. 

For our guidelines, we decided to follow the British rating system as a guide for shaping the content of our music video. We decided to follow this system because the language of our chosen song is in English, and personally, I found the Indonesian media regulations a bit harder to interpret. The British rating system includes seven categories, ranging from "suitable for all ages", to "adults working for licensed premises only." Since we still wanted to target childrens and the ages above, we aimed for our music video to fit into the PG category, since the music we chose "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" by Billie Eilish, contains a little bit of swear word. 

Furthermore, no animals were harmed during the making of our music video. Although we featured birds in a few scenes, they were handled with care and consideration throughout the filming process. We purchased them responsibly, and they were transported in paper bags with breathing holes to ensure their safety. During filming, the birds were either gently held by the actress or released carefully by patting the bag softly at the end of the scene. Animal welfare was something we took seriously, and we made sure our representation of nature remained ethical and respectful.

Permission Email

We have chosen Billie Eilish's song "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" as the track for our music video. To make sure we were following copyright guidelines, I decided to research which record label she was signed to during the release of the music video. I found that Billie Eilish is signed under two labels, which are Darkroom and Interscope Records. Jasmine and I then searched online for their contact details, but we weren’t entirely sure which email would be the right one to use. In the end, we chose to send our permission request to Darkroom’s email address, which was info @thedarkroomco.com, as we were unsure whether the one listed for Interscope was only intended for their merchandise store.

Jasmine then wrote the request email as follows : 

Although we understood that we might not receive a response from Darkroom Records, we still decided to send the licensing request, as we believed it was important to use the song for the right reasons (strictly for educational purposes). We also sent the email to prevent potential copyright restrictions, especially when uploading the video to social media platforms like YouTube, where copyright detection systems can restrict or take down content. More importantly, it didn't feel right to use their music without asking for permission, as we wanted to respect the ownership rights of the original producers.

Reflection : Applying these regulations has helped us to prevent potential issues that could have affected our project as a whole. From the start of planning this project, we knew not to include any harmful objects, or any inappropriate scenes in our music video. These guidelines helped to keep our production on track and reduce the risk of complications, such as YouTube potentially removing the muic video due to the use of inappropriate content, harmful objects shown, and/or copyright issues. Furthermore, the regulations has provided a safer experience for everyone who were involved during the filming process. In terms of copyright, sending a permission email allows us to take accountability for using the song in a professional and ethical way, despite not receiving any response from them. It enforced our understanding of how regulation and copyright operate in media production, especially when distributing content on public platforms.

Screen Test : Audience Feedback

This blog post details how we presented a rough draft of our music video, album cover, and social media page to members of our target audience in order to receive constructive feedback. While my teacher provided the template for this blog post, the content and analysis have been written by me (Beatrice).

The purpose of this screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google Forms to create a survey to share with our audience because we find it convenient and easy to use. We divided the Google Forms into two. The first form is for our music video, while the second form is for our social media and digipak.

Here is the link to the Google Form incase of any technical difficulties → Music Video , Social Media & Digipak

Here are our questions that we made as a team : 

Music Video 

Social Media

Digipak

For the music video, we chose these questions because we want to make sure that our music video effectively resonates with our target audience (teenagers and young adults), and accurately represents the theme of graduating from high school. We also want to assess how well the artist’s persona come across in the music video. For the social media, we want to determine the level of engagement that our target audience prefer, such as whether "fans" want direct interactions or a more curated presence of the star. As for the digipak, we want to make sure that the album cover appeals visually to our target audience and aligns with their aesthetic preferences. Hence, we included images of the digipak's sketch. Overall, we want to make sure that our social media strategy and digipak design align with our target audience’s preferences.

We included members of our target demographic in the screen test to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was a little difficult because we were told to ask for feedbacks from people who are not taking media studies, which made it quite difficult to find some people who were willingly to respond and able to provide meaningful feedback, as we wanted to ensure that the responses were collected in an appropriate and constructive manner.

Here are the drafts that we showed audiences for the screen test:

MV Draft Link (Music Video Draft)

(Digipak Sketch)

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

Music Video

Social Media 

Digipak 

From the feedback we learned that while most aspects were well-received, there are still areas that need improvement, particularly in the music video. According to Steve Neale's Genre theory, a media text must conform to the conventions enough to be recognizable, yet subvert enough to be different and interesting. However, after reviewing the feedback, we realized that our music video largely adheres to conventions without challenging them, which made it feel monotonous or less engaging for our target audience. Despite this, the responses suggest that we were successful in representing the star’s persona, as the three words used to describe them aligned with our intended portrayal. Furthermore, we gained insights into how to refine the social media and digipak to better appeal to our target audience, and what elements we need to include in it.

While we can't really incorporate certain suggested elements from the responses (such as graduation caps, gowns, or younger actresses resembling our stars) due to accessibility constraints, the audience feedback remains invaluable in refining our music video. Specifically, we can still use the feedback to improve some areas, such as enhancing the authenticity of performance, ensuring that the lip-syncing and acting feel more natural, and adding more emotional scenes to strengthen the narrative reinforcing the idea that "the stars are graduating and truly leaving this time." This adjustment not only enhances audience relatability but also prevents the video from feeling visually repetitive and monotone, as it adds emotional depth. The screen test has been an important part of our production process, because it allows us to identify areas for improvement and gain insight into what resonates with our target demographic. By implementing these suggestions, we can create a more engaging and compelling final product. 

Reflection : This screen test has helped us a lot, as it provides us with valuable insights that we hadn’t fully considered at the start of the project. Certain elements that we initially overlooked turned out to be significant to our target audience, which shows the importance of being more critical and observant in how we construct meaning within our media product. This experience has reinforced the necessity of considering audience reception and how our work is interpreted from different perspectives. I'm really glad that we conducted this audience feedback, as it has allowed us to refine our music video and product based on real audience responses before finalizing the project, ensuring that it resonates more effectively with our target audience.

Post Production : Editing

 This blog post, written by my teammate, Jasmine, details the post production and/or editing process of our music video project.

Editing and post production:

Editing and post production:

Filming Hardware:

I decided to film the music video entirely using my Fujifilm Xt30ii camera as that would give us the best quality of video, also making it more cinematic. However, one of the biggest issues was that I had to be there all the time as the camera was mine and every time we filmed, I had to be there and bringing the equipment to school was also very heavy and was a bit hassling when some of my teammates would cancel the filming session suddenly. My battery would also run out quite quickly, which is why I initially bought a spare battery, however, I got scammed and the battery did not work when it arrived to me. It also took a long time to export the pictures and videos to my iPad at times. In hindsight, it might’ve been easier to record using our phones instead.

Editing Software:

To begin with, I decided to use DaVinci Resolve as my editing program as I had heard many good reviews about it, being new to the editing scene! I had also learned that this program had a clip-stabilizing feature which was what I really needed since at some points of the filming process, I didn’t use a tripod which meant that most of my clips were shaky to some degree, the stabilizer would help me with that issue. I had also heard that it was more user friendly compared to some of the other famous editing softwares such as Adobe. In addition, it was actually my second choice as I had initially planned to use CapCut, however, referencing my Multicam media mini-project, that software was very laggy and impacted the final product, therefore, to avoid that I decided to choose a different software. I had also researched and saw that DaVinci’s color grading feature was also top-notch and most of its tools were available for free, which is just what I needed for this project!

Editing Hardware:

I decided to use my iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (6th generation)! The reason why I decided to use this hardware instead of my laptop was dependent on some factors. The first factor was that the clips from all the filming we did were exported to my iPad via the Fujifilm app, therefore, it would be easiest to edit on my iPad since I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of exporting the clips a second time to my laptop. Secondly, I use my iPad on a day-to-day basis and it is very easily transportable. Therefore, it would give me as much access to video editing as possible every day, and it would be quick to check on my progress on editing often for my fellow teammates. I was also able to bring my iPad to most of the filming sessions, which meant that I could work on the editing right after we finished filming, making it more efficient.

Post-production:

Here is the overall interface and timeline of our music video in DaVinci Resolve.

Initially, I did have a bunch of issues while using the software since I was a complete beginner at using it. One of the main issues was that when I was adjusting the length of the clips in the program, it kept on deleting or readjusting the duration of other clips, which confused me a lot because I didn’t understand why it was happening. At many points during editing, I had to keep readjusting the clips to the song again and again because I kept making this mistake. Eventually, I learned from my mistakes and made sure to look at the mini-timeline on top of the main timeline to make sure that I was only adjusting one clip. This is the mini-timeline I’m referring to: 

As you can see, I didn’t use anything special like markers because I didn’t know they existed until the end of the project, so it was a bit too late to implement them. I did wish I’d used them earlier because I did have a hard time matching the cuts and clips to the beat of the song. I also wasn’t able to use a clapperboard because we didn’t have one, in addition I was acting so I forgot to clap to signify the start of the lipsync since I was so focused on trying to act for the music video, so I did also make a bunch of mistakes which did make it harder for me to edit, and I think it did take longer to edit than I thought it would. 

Significant editing tools, skills and processes during post-production:

Fade-in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzvNlGXXX5c

I used this video as a tutorial on how to add a fade-in edit to the start of my music video, which my media teacher suggested as in the indie pop genre, fade-ins are very common for the start of a music video. It also eases into the video, so the audience isn’t immediately shocked by the contents of the video.

This is what the timeline looked like once I added the transition, fade-in effect to my video clip. It was very easy to do so I’m glad!

Clip Stabilizing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1WG5jc5SU0

I used the video tutorial above to learn how to stabilize a video in DaVinci Resolve. I only found out about this feature halfway through making the music video. Previously, I had always brought my super heavy tripod, making it a hassle. Using this tool removed that issue as I wouldn’t need a tripod for every scene since I could just stabilize it in post-production while recording the scenes hand-held. One issue with stabilising a clip, though, was that it would make the clips more zoomed in as the software had to compensate for stabilizing the movement by shaking the video the opposite way to reduce the movement. It is a bit complicated to explain, but you can see the effect in these two images:

The first image is before stabilizing the video, and the second is after stabilizing, in addition to the pull-out edit that I will also talk about in this post.

Pull-out:

For the pull-out, I actually learned how to do it after playing around with the software a bit. All I had to do was click this button:

Which would pull out the tools view:

Then I selected the icon highlighted above. After doing so, a smaller green box would appear on top of the video clip.

All I had to do was make the green box smaller by dragging the edges inside, which resulted in the pull-out effect shown often throughout the video.

However, there were quite a few issues I encountered while trying to use this effect. The first one being that sometimes, the pull-out would make the clip super zoomed in at the start so that sometimes, parts of the artists body were cut off, therefore I had to often adjust the intensity of the effect to avoid this issue. In addition, sometimes the pull-out effect was way too quick which made it unnatural looking so I also had to adjust that often to make sure that the music video felt “real”.

I think that utilizing the pull-out often throughout the music video helped to convey towards the audience, connoting the separation between the two friends, eventually leading to both Jasmine and Viola studying in different countries. The pull-out effect takes the audience further away from the artists in the music video, conveying the same emotions stated earlier.

Color-grading:

I had initially planned to color grade very professionally using all the tools available in DaVinci Resolve, however due to the nature of our filming being done only so close to the deadline, I was unable to do that and ended up only simply colorgrading a small part of the music video to adjust the lighting or the mood of the scene by tweaking some of the colors. 

This is an example of one of the clips I color graded, the left before the colorgrading and the right, after. Although just a slight tweak, I made the scene more cool-toned to contrast the warm tone of the previous scene, a match cut to this one to symbolize that a fight was occurring between the two characters, Jasmine and Viola. This symbolic code (Barthes) would help to give the audience context to the fight occurring as blue or cool toned scenes are often associated with sadness, or unfortunate events while warm tones in the scene earlier would symbolize happiness and love (Binary opposites by Levi Strauss, in this case being happiness vs. sadness). Here is the clip, with warm lighting before this scene to show the contrast between the coloring. 

Additionally, for some scenes, the lighting was way too dark, so the audience wouldn’t be able to see what was happening on screen. Here is an example of what I did to fix that issue:

The first image is before the edits, and the second is after the lighting edits. I increased the exposure of the dark setting, making the dark areas of the video brighter. However, in doing so, I made the grain and the bad video quality very noticeable. Even though I already used a ring light, it was still very dark so the clip came out to be very bad quality, which means we will need to record the scene again.

Reflection : Although I wasn’t heavily involved in the editing process, I contributed by consistently checking in on the progress, providing feedback, and offering ideas regarding scene coordination and the visual effects used in the music video. I believe Jasmine did an excellent job with the editing, as she successfully enhance the video’s overall impact. I’m satisfied with the final result.