Critical Reflection Essay

 My essay of the critical reflection of my work in the Advanced Portfolio will mainly address the following compulsory questions:

1. How do my products represent social groups or issues?
2. How do the elements of my production work together to create a sense of "branding"?
3. How do my products engage with the audience?
4. How did my research inform my products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

All of my products in the artist's promotion package - music video, digipak and social media - were all constructed after meticulous planning phases in order to effectively reach the audience. This included great consideration given to the sort of message or concept, and the social group that we wanted to represent through our music video. The song that we chose, "Party Police" is pretty straightforward - the lyrics are about a couple whose relationship is gradually deteriorating, and as we hear from her perspective, one of them is striving to hold it together by any means, clearly unable to let go of her lover, whom we can safely assume is leaving the relationship. We can also see implications of it being a slightly toxic relationship, with the girl being far too attached and even resorting to finding "comfort in debauchery" in a desperate attempt to hold it together. The concept that we decided on portrays a young girl in her late teens and focuses on the aftermath of a breakup and how she handles it. 

Granted, this concept is quite cliched, but dealing with breakups is an issue that is relatable to a majority of our primary target audience on a very personal level. Also, most music videos about that show breakups tend to contain rather stereotypical representations especially of women, by either showing them as either drowning in sorrow and heartbreak or acting out hysterically. Another common way in which girls/women going through breakups are represented, especially recently, are in an optimistic and "idga*" manner which is honestly a pretty unrealistic, as well as a bit unhealthy, representation that I feel is centered around toxic positivity - it is hardly possible for someone to not go through a sad phase after a breakup, regardless of how bad the other person was. Thus, by representing a young teen who goes through various emotional stages after her breakup, we tried to bring a more realistic as well as holistic approach to the issue. Our main character isn't a saint - she is as good and as "bad" as every young adult when it comes to how well (or not) she deals with her issues - such as resorting to hedonistic tendencies, which were  straightforwardly depicted through the party scenes and implied symbolically as well, through pills and eating flowers.

Moreover, we made sure to have a healthier representation of young women in our music video by showing her going through various phases in no particular order, because it's hard put a a timeline on emotions, and eventually a transitional phase where she accepts the reality and tries to move on and let go of not just her ex, but also of the unhealthy choices she made. Thus, HALA is the embodiment of any typical young girl who goes through a flurry of emotions and thoughts, but chooses to healthily come to terms with her situation in a realistic way.

Also, HALA` representing the LGBTQI+ community in a religiously, culturally and socially conservative environment (the Islamic Regime Republic of Pakistan) is a risky yet equally necessary representation. With a growing space in Pakistan for the queer community, as seen by rising queer local indie artists such as Mystical Shayari's Zulfiqar Mannan, HALA represents a force for change by portraying a lesbian relationship as casually as one would a cis-het couple.

Artists usually have a "branding" - certain attribute associated with them, be it a very specific and identifiable music style, or a visual style, or motif that is a part of their identity as an artist. Some artists for instance Lady Gaga have a very clear physical brand image - eccentric videos and appearance have become a part of her brand identity, earning titles like "Mother of Monsters" with her fandom called "Little Monsters" - however, even lowkey indie artists who do not focus much on their image have their own way of branding themselves such as Cigarettes After Sex with their distinctive echo-fused music style and minimalist black and white theme. 

Since indie artists are less inclined towards having an elaborate brand image, we decided that instead of having an overall identity for HALA, she would have a brand image specific to the theme of the album, much like Taylor Swift's eras. For the first, "Metamorphosis" era, a consistent motif - flowers - was used. The flowers play a significant symbolic role in the music video, the digipak cover was an extreme close-up of HALA holding a flower to her mouth, and in the introductory post on the Instagram account the flower motif was continued, to establish it as part of her branding since the beginning. The branding was further constructed through colours. The music video doesn't stick to one specific colour scheme because there are multiple narratives running together and the character is experiencing a variety of emotions. However, in order for there to be some cohesion between the three products, the black and hot pink colour scheme was kept as a consistent element as it occurs in the music video in the party scenes that connect directly with the song's title, as well as in the entire digipak, and in several posts on the Instagram account, including the profile picture. Since HALA's branding overall is simply that of a regular young adult, I tried to emulate that vibe on her social media account as well. The inspiration for this was taken from recent young artists such as Clairo, Gracie Abrams and Billie Eilish, whose Instagram posts are often very casual. This added to HALA's overall branding as an artist whom people can relate to.

As mentioned previously, my target audience includes a large number of people who would find relatability in the concept of the music video. Our audience falls into a niche category because of the old-school dream rock style of the music, as well the image and representation of the artist, as the video would appeal more to a more liberal audience. 

According to a feedback from a viewer (screenshots attached in previous post) the video "felt very nostalgic and had that coming of age feeling to it". The fact that it had that sort of personal impact on the audience showed that it had managed to catch their interests well enough.

A lot of aspects of the music video, such as having a mostly conceptual and symbolic style, alongside narrative, being mindful of the filming locations (which are important elements in my video), the "vibe" of the video from options of 3, right down to the platforms on which the album would be distributed, were all based on the responses we received from our target audience (a pool of 69 people, which was sufficiently large enough). This helped ensure that the audience would effectively engage with the products as a significant part of them was built around their expectations.

My products had an adequate balance in terms of the conventions that they challenged, and those they conformed to. Also, music videos mostly have a coherent storyline or a linear narrative. My product breaks that convention by having a broken narrative throughout, with multiple different appearances and locations of the main character. This decision was influenced by the responses of the target audience that we received during our research phase. People almost equally preferred conceptual music videos, revolving around themes and symbolism, or narrative videos, so based on that aspect of research, we made our music video to predominantly consist of both. Many parts of the videos are not even a part of a narrative and merely serve as symbolic fragments, such as the subliminal messages, which are rarely ever seen in music videos, especially this frequently, hence challenging conventions in music videos even in the indie genre. 

Shaky camera movements and quick non-cinematic zoom-ins, as well as camera zoom-ins are very unconventional kinds of camerawork in mainstream music videos and are often even disliked by the audience. However, apart from the latter two, shaky camera work is frequently seen in indie music videos, and in that way it may challenge mainstream conventions but not so much indie genre conventions. Quick zoom-ins and camera zoom-ins are seen in some lofi indie music videos but are still not entirely a convention even in indie music, hence challenging those conventions. Some other aspects of the video do however, follow conventions - our video clearly follows the genre characteristics (Goodwin) of alt/indie music videos - simple appearance of the artist/actor, some aspects of the imagery such as suburbs, bedroom, shots of skies, and POV shots. In some scenes, the editing is done to add a VHS effect, and faded vintage effects to clips to add the indie, nostalgic vibe. In terms of editing, Goodwin’s theory of the relationship between the music and visuals is adhered at many points where the video is edited in sync with the music, hence following this convention. Other theories by Goodwin such as close-ups of the artist and notions of looking suggested by breaking the fourth wall were also followed as per the convention in music videos.

Research into indie artists’ digipaks showed that many of them favoured minimalism and the artists themselves were not as frequently visible on digipaks as pop artists are. Another indie convention was the use of abstract art in digipaks. Also, a general convention was the coherence between all pages of the digipak in terms of the theme or colour palette. I followed all the above conventions for HALA’s digipak, except an extreme close-up of the artist was shown on the cover - not a convention in the indie genre. Another convention that was broken in the digipak was that the inlay and the CD did not have any text on them, including even the artist’s name or album title.

As for the conventions of HALA’s social media account, it also followed some and challenged some. Unlike most artists’, the account I made for my artist followed a theme, and subthemes, throughout, starting with utilising the whole first row for the artist’s introduction posts. The following 12 posts also followed a theme, with three rows containing posts relevant to the album and music video and the final one showing the artist’s “process”, which itself breaks away from the convention. Also, the captions on some posts are casual, something that is being seen increasingly in recent years even for mainstream artists, but has yet to become a convention. This challenge to the conventions helps the artist connect more with the audience. However, when it comes to overt promotion, the conventions of social media were followed: posting countdown stories, a teaser clip for the music video, and posts promoting the artist’s presence through events like virtual performance, radio appearance and listening session.