Fiza's Advanced Portfolio

Symbolic Codes Symbolism: Flowers These are a recurring motif throughout the music video. We will specifically be using a flower species called butterfly weed, for certain scenes in order establish a connection throughout. This flower means "let me go" or similar alternatives like "leave" and so we decided it was cohesive with our concept.  The girl picks these flowers at the beginning and then in between we see shots of her trying to water these rootless flowers in an empty vase, symbolising how she is trying to flourish and nurture something that possibly can not be. Towards the end we see her disperse these flowers in the wind. Keeping in line with the meaning of the flowers, this scene presents a closure for the protagonist. Eating flowers This symbolises various things and some of the toxic behaviours of our protagonist, which also link with the lyrics. Flower-eating is often linked to an expression of the character's desire for engaging in hedonism ("...

In order to be able to visualise our concept better and to start scouting out locations that would work well with what we had in mind, we decided to make a presentation (assigned to me) of the overall mise en scene of our music video.  Mise en Scene by Fiza Zaheer

 This we decided to assign to Hira. Click the image for the link to the storyboard on her blog.

After we were done with the synopsis and had it approved, my teammates and I started to look for images that went with the vibe of our song - a fair idea of which we had developed while working on the synopsis. We kept saving whatever relevant picture we came across to our Pinterest board and in the end, sorted them out to prevent overcrowding. This is what we finally got:

Click on the image below for the google doc.

 We had multiple different angles from which we could approach this particular song.  One idea suggested by Tehreem was similar to a previous concept that we had though of - that we could show the protagonist and her "sanity" (personified as the protagonist herself, so basically two of the same person). Even though I personally liked where we were headed with that concept, my teammates believed it would be difficult to shoot, in the case of a sudden lockdown which is something we're still anticipating. And also, we would need a protagonist who was really really brilliant at acting. So the mutual though was that even though it was a very good concept and video in our heads, it would most likely be very poorly executed, and so we decided to not go with this one. Maybe some other time :') We decided to go for a more fast-paced concept, which had a simple (pretty cliche in my opinion, but not that that's a bad thing) narrative intertwined within it, showing the story ...

 After we decided our song and had a fair idea of the concept, we took a necessary step of asking permission to use the song for our music video, since it would be published publicly on YouTube, and was the only legal way around avoiding any copyright issues that would result in our video being blocked or other legal issues that we wouldn't know about. We emailed the band's record label, Polyvinyl Records, who own the rights to the song. As for the email itself, I googled a few articles and sample emails to get an idea of how to construct it properly.

 This task was done by Hira. The link to the original thing on her blog is at the end. In my opinion, the song ‘Party Police’ is about a failed relationship, which one party is desperately trying to salvage, using whatever means she has at her disposal. The lyrics of the song ‘i never really know what’s on your mind/is it ever me or just someone you left behind?’ – this to me reflects an uncertainty, an insecurity of our narrator in the relationship. she doesn’t even know how to make sense of it, if he ever really loved her, or is she just a rebound. Moreover, the lines ‘when everyday’s a hurricane/you know there’s something wrong’ show how the relationship has clearly been troubled for a long long time now, even if unclear why – its clear that the relationship has turned sour. The narrator, while knowing all these things, is desperate to keep the relationship going: ‘you don’t have to leave, you could just stay here with me’ and that he should just ‘forget all the party police/we ...

We took the lyrics of the song into consideration while selecting it because we felt that they obviously play a big role in how the music video turns out. So these are the lyrics of the song. Read “Party Police” by Alvvays on Genius

For the two days in which we had decided to split up on the suggestion of our teacher, we all had already considered different songs for ourselves. But after further discussion when we decided to get back together, we seemed to be having doubts about our previous song and so, we chose Party Police by Alvvays as the song for our music video. Hira suggested a different song by Alvvays and from there we explored this avenue even further until we came across Party Police, which we all felt we could work with really well.  The song was released in 2014, as a track in the artist's self-titled album "Alvvays" and is alternative/indie, very much in line with the artist's overall discography.  Here's me writing down the songs we shortlisted (there were a lot more than this).

Remember when I said I learned how to improvise when a pandemic ruins your plans? Well guess who overestimated herself and underestimated Rona. Because here we are, the flaming hot cheetos, pondering over the two options we have: a) We continue to work in a group, for as long as we can at least, and in the case that there is a lockdown imposed, we carry on with the rest of the work individually - whether that be the remaining planning and everything after that, or just the editing that's left. b) We go on our own starting now.  We came to the consensus that it's going to be hard to manage everything on our own and so option A sounded better than compromising the quality of our work and potentially jeopardising everything. In the case of a nation-wide lockdown, which seemed improbable, we would carry out our shoots in limited space (i.e. within the compounds of our home or community). 

 We brainstormed and tried to come up with a concept (one per team member) and proposed our ideas to our teacher.  The song is about a two people in a failing relationship and the lack of communication between them, so the concept I came up with was that we could show two people, either in a romantic relationship or friends (I personally prefer the latter because I feel like it's less cliché), who seem to be in the same place at the same time (videos for references embedded below). However, they don't interact at all, which could portray how even though they're together there is no sort of real connection between them. Towards the end of the video we could show one person acknowledging the other's presence and trying to force some interaction and open up a channel of communication between them. This we could represent by deliberately breaking filming and editing rules. The concept Hira proposed was to include intertextuality throughout the video, including pastiche of v...

Here are the lyrics for our selected track, "What You Like" by Wallows. Read “What You Like” by Wallows on Genius The lyrics revolve around a relationship that seems to falling apart, perhaps because of the lack of communication and understanding between them. However, they do want to try to make it work, with the artist attempting to listen to his partner. 

From here onwards is officially where our planning for the music video begins. Through our research we've gathered sufficient insight and info about the technical aspects of music videos, and more specifically, of our genre and what target audiences expect to see (and what they don't). In this phase we would be making and finalising major decisions regarding our album and video production, and so this is where the real real work begins. A but intimidated, yes, but also looking forward to putting down all the ideas we have in a visual form and doing something I never really imagined I would do. 

We got a surprisingly large pool of 66 people to fill out our survey, so here are the responses, and our team's evaluation and conclusions drawn from them. Since our primary audience is 15-25 year-olds, we targeted them more for the survey and so 84.8% of our respondents belonged to this age group, while 15.2% were our secondary audience, 25-40 year-olds.   YouTube being the most popular response was pretty much expected when we gave the three top options, considering how big and accessible of a platform it is.  However, this certainly did not mean that we could limit the distribution of our music video and album to just a single platform, no matter how popular it is, because other platforms also tend to have a substantial number of frequent users. Apart from distribution we decided to include questions about the production of the video too so that it would give us more perspective when starting our planning section. Even though conceptual-based music videos appear to be more ...

It's important to get an idea of what our audience wants to see the most and what expectations they hold. No better way to do that than a simple sweet survey. Loading…

Since every media product has a particular market for whom it is primarily intended for, my team members and I evaluated the target audience for our album as well according to the market segmentation. Geographic Primary market: major cities of Pakistan (Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad) This is because Pakistan is the place of origin of the artist, and so the album will be primarily be promoted here, for instance through local radio and television channels. The target market in Pakistan would be a very niche audience, since this isn't the sort of music that's commonly heard here at all and so it would be a bit challenging to promote the artist here. The secondary audience would of course be international since music now, especially indie music, is released online on streaming platforms such as YouTube, SoundCloud and Spotify, which have a large global userbase.  Demographic Primary age group: 15-25 Secondary age group: 25-40 Gender: no specific gender Social class: Middle and upper c...

 Market Segmentation Every media product has a market towards which it is targeted. These are the people that will potentially avail or enjoy the product. This is why those looking to bring their product into public attention and get it enough attention need to be fully aware of the kind of people they will primarily be aiming for. Market segmentation defines the "kind of people" since it's a very broad and vague phrase.  Segmentation is done on multiple basis. The main criteria for any segment is that there should be defining attributes that make it starkly different from other segments (i.e. distinction), there should be a consistency in attributes of individuals across the segment (homogeneity), and lastly the people within the segment should have similar attitudes towards a certain product (reaction). It is on the basis of these criteria that the market is further divided into categories: 1) Geographics This is pretty direct and easy to classify because the target mar...