Critical Relfection

Now that I have finished up his project and working with my artist (at least for the time being) it is time to reflect on my work and dive deeper into how it all went and what it all means.

        For my AICE Media, A Level portfolio project I chose to create a music promotion package. I featured a friend of mine who is an active artist by the name of Tired in Pink and created a music video along with other marketing aspects to advertise her latest album called “come back to me when you’re ready.” The artist, whose real name is Mckensy, is an old friend of mine whom I had recently reconnected with. When it came time to begin our portfolio projects, I immediately thought of her. I adore her music and felt super excited about creating a music video and marketing for her. I was then even more excited when she said she’d love to work with me, and I had no regrets. Throughout the duration of working on this project, she was super flexible and up for everything I asked of her. It made the whole process so much more enjoyable. I got to learn so much about how social media can be used in marketing and also how to promote music, and it really planted a deeper interest in music promotion in me.

        My products represent the social issues of mental health. This is one of the main themes of much of my subject’s music and so the music video I created also highlighted this. The song from her album that we chose to produce a video for was titled “talk to me,” and in the words of the artist, it was written comparing talking with friends who are distant to talking with aliens in other galaxies. Many people suffering from mental health issues often feel this loneliness, when friends become distant so much that they may as well be existing in a whole other galaxy. I wanted to highlight the theme of loneliness but also in a creative and colorful way to match this song and that is what I did with the video. She is seen in a large open field, with no one around except her, feeling her nature and singing the lyrics at times. I felt like this really represented being alone with your own thoughts and reflecting on things. When I began the editing process, I came up with so many more ideas for the video and was frustrated that I had not allocated time to film with her again. However, we have been talking about creating another music video so even though it will not be for my portfolio project, I may get another chance to work with her and her music.

        The elements in my production all tie in together to create a sense of branding. With her name being Tired In Pink, we of course highlighted the color pink. From my research, I really wanted to use bright and bold coloring to represent her. So we agreed to have a photoshoot day so I could get some content for the Instagram as well as her album cover and Instagram profile picture. By doing this I was able to keep everything cohesive and on brand. For the branding itself, the album cover is also featured all over Instagram, as well as other similar colored and composed images as the profile picture and featured in other places around her social media.  All the pictures have a distinct editing style and pop with the color pink. This consistency associates the artist and bright coloring with her new album to create a brand. Additionally, the music video also incorporates bold colors and grassy backgrounds. It is a little less similar as it is specific to one song story however, I feel as though it still fits in with the overall branding. She is featured wearing a sort of orange-brown top and green pants, and the saturation is slightly elevated throughout the footage. Lastly, the digipack also features the same images, the album covers on the front, and other pictures from the same shoot on the back and spine of the digipack. I also kept the font consistent, in other promotional Instagram posts I used this font and would plan to use that font anywhere else that I typed or wrote about this album such as posters or concert flyers.

        My products engage with the audience by being relatable and approachable. The postings on her Instagram are very casual and present her to audiences as a real and down-to-earth person. Captions include emojis, lack of grammar, and other teenage and young adult-specific language. Her target audience is young adults between the ages of 15 and 25, who are suffering from varying mental health problems or feelings of isolation, so this relatability is very important. In today’s world of TikTok, social media, and a growing awareness of marketing, being seen as authentic and real is something that can do wonders for becoming popular within this target audience. By sharing a sense of openness on social media, the target audience can relate to the music and feel a sense of support and community therefore generating loyal fans and dedicated audiences for the artist. The music video engages with audiences similarly by representing a relatable feeling of loneliness. The creative style of the music video also fits in well with the common interests of the target audience. The bold and deep colors, as well as the depressing but artsy feel of the video, is very on-brand for the artist and audiences of music like hers.

        My research helped me use the marketing conventions of similar artists and styles of music in my marketing. One artist I took a lot of notes from was Billie Eilish. When I first tried to find out what genre of music my subject created, as well as who was similar, Billie Eilish was one I found to be the most similar. My subject creates a similar style of sad pop music and shares an online presence of being very casual with fans and open about her life experiences. I took a lot from how she advertised her music releases on her own Instagram for how I marketed this album release on my own. One example I pulled from was her postings announcing her song and music video release for a song she wrote for the Barbie movie that came out last year. She had a few postings with different aspects of the release. The song cover picture, stills from the music video, and behind-the-scenes filming and costuming were all included in her postings. On the professional account I created for my subject I followed a similar structure. I first posted behind the scenes of filming, followed by a few posts featuring the album cover, as well as stills and teasers from the music video itself. Reflecting back on it, I would have created more of a presence for my subject on her professional account before jumping into the postings about the album release.

        In an overall reflection, I am so happy with how this project enabled me to experiment with the promotion of an album release using a music video and other components. I feel as though my skills in these aspects have been able to grow and I am grateful for what I have learned and what I would do differently in the future. The products of my portfolio project do a good job of representing my subject and advertising her new album as well as creating a brand for her. I cannot wait to work with her more in the future. Furthermore, I am thankful to Cambridge and my AICE Media Studies teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa for the opportunity of completing this project and receiving feedback on my products.

As for now blog… I am signing off!

Music Video!

 Here is the music video! So excited that it's finally done. I am pretty happy with how it turned out however it definitely could be better. 

To begin with the issues...

As I mentioned my schedule was crazy over these past 2 months so we filmed the first day outside with shots for the aesthetic and her singing. As I tried to plan something else for the story of the video I was totally blanking. Another big issue I had was that I am currently in the process of moving house so I could not offer my own house as a location to film, even for a bedroom scene, as mine has no bed or other furniture at the moment. I also did not want to infringe on her family by asking to film at hers so I was limited to outdoor locations. Furthermore, with my limited availability, she was only going to be available during the day so I could not ask anyone else for their help or to act in it as they would be in school. 

With all of this, I ended up canceling my second filming day due to being overwhelmed and having no real plan, but as soon as I began editing I could picture all the shots I wished I had. I just really think that in order to not get boring and get my story across better I needed what I filmed the first day to be primarily aesthetic and singing shots and there to be an actual story going on with other shots.

With that being said, I still think the video gives the message I wanted, and here are some of the adaptions I made. Firstly, I used a couple clips with a galaxy background. As I mentioned before, the artist described this song as comparing distant friends to aliens, so it's sort of a metaphor and sort of an easter egg. I also played a lot with coloring to show an empty grey world when it is being compared to the galaxy. It shows her reality of being alone. Throughout the video, however, I stuck with very bold and saturated coloring to stay on brand and with the vibe I felt the video needed.

Additionally, toward the end, I reused many shots, now although this was an adaption due to wanting more footage, it was not an accident. Realistically I had enough footage to fill the video however then it would have felt repetitive for no reason. I instead, used repeating shots becoming more and more frequent toward the end to show a disconnect from the world and everyday life. Lastly, it ends with the opening sequence and title cards but plays backward. This adds to this trippy and disconnected from society feeling I tried to instill in the audiences. 

Anyways, I think that is enough said, and here is the video!

"talk to me" Music Video

Social Media Postings... EXPLAINED

 Over the past couple of weeks, I worked on the social media portion of this project. I created a professional Instagram for my subject in order to market her new album release and the music video to go with the song from it. We first met up and did a photoshoot for her album cover as well as content for the page, I talked about this in an earlier blog post too and you can see some of the pictures we took! 

I added to her bio her Spotify and also created a highlight for her story posts. Here is what her page looks like.

As you can see, the branding is all very cohesive with her album release. The picture that is seen all over is the album cover. This is something I wanted to be stuck in people's minds so it is posted a lot. 

Here are examples of some of the posts I made hinting at and then announcing and teasing the music video.

I also made various story posts as a more personal and engaging way to connect with viewers. Stories are often viewed as less formal than posts so it really ties in to to the authenticity in her branding. See examples below.

The last image here shows the music video is officially out, with two stills featuring the title cards in the video. This was the last story post I made in regard to the marketing for this.

In the final hours before releasing the music video, I also released 2 mini teasers that were posted on Instagram. The first features a random part of the song, and the second is the opening sequence with the name of the song. They are here. I found this a super engaging and exciting way to market for the music video as it gives audiences and viewers something to talk about and look forward too as they are already receiving snippets.

The last thing I wanted to go into detail about was one specific posting that was posted as an Instagram reel. Similar to TikTok, on Instagram reels, you can scroll through short videos. The reel was the artist singing along to one of the songs on her album with the text "new songs new album," and it was captioned, "This one is called selling me ❤️ the whole album will be up on all platforms in the next few days." I got this idea from the artist herself on her personal TikTok but have also seen ti very often on the platform as a way for small artists to get big. Many times this leads to a trend that gives the song and artist instant and major popularity online. Additionally, it again goes back to that authenticity factor that today's youth crave in influencers and that my artist's brand focuses on. Its just her sitting in her room singing to her song and letting the audience know she is a person just the same. See the video below. 

Instagram reel video

(for some reason the other videos went in fine but this one wouldn't so the link takes you to the video on google drive)

Anyway sorry for the lengthy posting but I wanted to make sure to cover and explain ALLLLLL of the what's, when's, why's, and how's of the social media page and how I used this tool in the marketing process of her album release and music video release. If you want to check out the instargam page it is @tiredinpinkmusics

Digipack design!

 

Here is the design for my digipack for her new album! The front features her album cover with her artist name as well as the album title.  The spine also shows her name and album cover but features another photo with similar coloring. On the back you can read the names of all the songs on the album and her Instagram is also displayed here. I thought this was useful because in today's modern world CDs and Vinyls are used more for marketing than distribution so by linking her Instagram we can attract more people to her page to then discover more of her music. I think that the bright colors in this digipack do a good job of catching people's attention if they see it on a shelf in a store. I also think it gives a good idea of the style of music that it is and therefore would catch the attention of the target audiences.

Here you can take a closer look of each component. See below. 

Long overdue update....

 Hey Blog! I have been away for a while so I wanted to make this post explaining what I have been doing and also how the project is going. I am now in the final few days before my deadline so it was definitely time to get back on track.

After my last posting, I traveled to a national television production competition, Student Television Network, in Long Beach California where we placed in 10 out of the 12 competitions we competed in, including receiving 1st and 3rd in our 2 main competitions and a total of 6 first-place wins. As the coordinator for this whole competition and trip, I was so proud and brought home a little of each win with me.

After that, I visited England for spring break to see my grandparents, nieces, and old friends. While I was there I was finishing up a service project to earn my Girl Scout Gold Award. I had created a school year-long curriculum of environmental science videos for 4th and 5th graders at a local elementary school. So, I spent most of my free time there editing the last of those videos.  

And finally, now that all of this and a short break are out of the way, it's time to knuckle down for my last big project of high school.

Thankfully, I stayed on track and filmed before all of this happened, so I was not too stressed. However, I had wanted to film again on one of the 2 days between my two trips to get different footage but I was so stressed out and had no real plan and I am now very much regretting that. This week and last as I am editing my video I am craving more footage, and now that I'm in that process I can envision exactly what this video needs but, I have no real time to do so, which sucks. The problem luckily isn't that I do not have enough footage to fill the song, it's just that I can picture so many things that would add to the story and theme so well and provide more of a variety in the video. But on a positive, I do love how the footage looks and it's exactly the vibe I was aiming for. 

She also just released the album yesterday so the music video is right on time to come out tomorrow. She doesn't have control as to the exact day it releases so we couldn't coordinate exactly but it'll be pretty close. If I could have done something differently I would have made sure the music video was completely ready before she uploaded it so as soon as it was released we could have posted it but anyway. 

I have also been updating the professional Instagram with album release and music video release updates to gain excitement from audiences. I'll talk more about this and show you guys later today. 

My plan for today is to finish up the music video so ill keep you guys posted!

Album cover

 So something else I did not mention in yesterday's post was that while taking pictures for a profile picture, she also asked if I would take one for her album cover, and now with all the plan changes it actually works out perfectly because I can use it for my digipak too. I edited the photos in Adobe Lightroom which I found to be a fairly easy program to use despite being not familar with it. I had a ton of fun playing with different looks. 

I was getting frustrated with some of them because I did not like the greenery and nature aesthetic that was so apparent in so many of the pictures, it did not seem super suiting to her, however with the time I have available I was not going to retake them so I did what I could with editing and many are going to show useful for the Instagram and etc. 

Here are some of my favorites from the pictures. 

We are pretty much set on using this as her album cover, she loves it, and i think it is very well suited, The pink lighting makes it super on brand since her name is Tired In Pink, and the dark background makes it fitting with the music style of being upbeat but more depressing contents.

As for the profile pic I am still deciding...

Anyways, more updates about the music video coming soon! 

Big change!

 So yesterday we took the pictures and it went super well, but I was talking with the artist about the social media posts and marketing her new album, and we both kind of talked about how it would be really cool to do a music video on one of the songs in the new album. I had not brought it up before because I just didn't know if her schedule for release ad my schedule for this project would line up, however, she told me her album is done and she would be more than happy to push the release so I can work on marketing and a music video. It is honestly just pure luck that it lined up with me doing this project on her but I could not be more excited.

Anyway, now I am sort of starting from scratch with the music video, but for the song I am now doing I have a ton of ideas. I can not really post it on here yet as its unreleased but it is a sort of different vibe. 

It has more guitar and softer sounds with less electronic music, it is much more pop but still with the sad girl indie theme just with a different vibe. 

Some of the lyrics include "Talk to me and I'll talk to you" and "Be real with me and I'll be real with you" but it also has a lot of instrumental. I am still working on this

what story to tell, but I have some really cool ideas for the instrumental parts of the song and the overall vibe. 

Here is some of the storyboarding I have been working on, please excuse my terrible drawing and handwriting, it makes sense to me LOL.

We are filming this Sunday so Ill update you with the rest of the plans tomorrow and Saturday!