Critical Reflection Task

I have been part of a group that has constructed a music campaign for a band within the genre of pop-rock and have created three products from this campaign. This is exclusively an all-girl pop-rock group, and this is a huge part of the band’s identity. The most prominent representation of a social group in our video would be gender. The video is used to construct an image for the band, who are represented as strong, independent, and not needing of men. Fast pace, close up action shots of the band members destroyed various parts of the set shows the strength and lack of care that the band have.

The lack of any male role in the video displays their non-reliance on men. The side angle shot of the drummer spray painting on the wall, paired with the spray-painted image of the female gender sign on the wall behind them shows their independence.

Their change in costume from pretty, fluffy pink dresses to black, rocky clothing also shows their independence as women, and their non-reliance on men. The ripping up of the teddy bears also shows their independence and also hints at their stronger side. This representation is intended to subvert the typical stereotypes of women and girl bands, however in some places our video still adheres to Laura Mulvey’s theory of Male Gaze, which contradicts the bands independence from men. For example, a handheld close up on the lead singer as she rips her dress, with the camera following her leg, showing a lot of skin could still be seen as the video being shot from the male perspective, or as assuming that the audience is male.

Although we try and contradict the need of male approval throughout the video, shots like this still adhere to the theory of male gaze.

Status is a secondary representation in our music campaign products. The social media and the album artwork are utilized for establishing hierarchy and status among the band members. A photo from the bands Instagram, with the lead singer at the front taking the selfie, and other band members behind shows that she is the lead of the group.

In addition, the lack of writing on the lead singer, and the two shots of just the lead singer in the album artwork show her status of the rest of the band as well.

This representation of status within the group works well in the way that it establishes a lead role, and adds a formation and dynamic to the band, however, it could possibly create an image of division amongst the band members, and therefore could lead to disrupting the image of strength that is also presented by the bands gender.










Our all-female pop-rock band mirrors the independent, slightly rebellious nature of the genre, and

appeals to our key demographic of young teenage girls. By having accents of bright pink

colouring, we are relating to the younger female demographic, whilst still appealing to the more

rebellious side by also using darker colours in make-up, lighting, costume, and other factors within

mise-en-scene.

By having scrappy and spray-paint influenced fonts on our album artwork, in

addition to the scribbles and annotations connotes the carelessness, again appealing to the more

rebellious side to our key demographic. The black and white photo juxtaposed against the pink

background with spray-painted graffiti appeals to our young teenage girl audience with the darker

photo suggesting a rebellious nature to the band, without being too dark for it to be frowned upon

by parents. The costume changes from a barbie looking dress to a rocky outfit at the end of the

video really appeals to our target audience in the way that it represents that they are all

independent and grown up. Also, the performance factor of the video, with them destroying parts

of the bedroom, combined with the slightly sarcastic and cynical facial expressions also add to

this. Designing the performance in this way really points towards the rebellious and independent

nature that would make the demographic aspire to be like the band members. The lighting,

colouring, costume, and images from the social media were designed to help the audience feel

more represented, and makes the band seem more down to earth in the video, social media, and

digipak.

The media products that we created (music video, social media, and album artwork) are all

accessible to the key demographic and they have all been constructed to seem more relatable and

similar to the audience. The obvious use of pink throughout the social media, combined with

images of spray paint throughout every media product we produced not only ties the products

together, but also gives the band a clear star image that the audience can aspire to be a part of.

An issue of this, however, is that despite consistent posting on different social medias allows the

band to become a larger part of the audience’s life, it also can have an opposite effect, and stops

the band seeming so special if they are so present that the audience becomes too accustomed to

them. We needed to find the balance between having them seem ordinary (so that they seem

relatable to their fans), but also extraordinary (so that they are desirable to their fans), present

enough so that they are on the radar of their fans, but absent enough that when they do pop up, it

still seems special to them. 

Our music campaign products engage with our target audience of teenage girls between 11-14, primarily on social media platforms, through personal relationships. On our social media, there are many examples of this, firstly through the use of asking the audience questions on both the twitter and Instagram. We also create personal relationships through the use of colloquial language, and through tweet or posting with more casual captions, reflecting a slightly more relaxed and therefore informal and personal relationship between the audience our band. We also do this through casual photos, and unprofessional photos uploaded onto social media, selfies of the band and silly poses.

We also use direct address for example “you” a lot when referring to the audience, again forming a casual and seemingly more personal relationship with the audience on social media. On the digipak, we also achieve this personal relationship through the scribbly font and again more casual layout of the album artwork. In the music video, we try to achieve this personal relationship through the use of props – having loads of normal, everyday items appear in the music video making it more relatable to the audience. Also in the music video, the band are seen multiple times relaxing, for example laying on the bed, again emphasising the band is more casual, and therefore allowing for a more personal relationship with the audience. All of this, especially on social media ties in with promoting the band and developing the name of the band, for example having the tickets for the tour posted on the social media using colloquial language really fits in with the personal relationship, but also sells the band.

We also use diversion to engage our target audience. This is primarily in the music video, as the band are seen doing drastic activities, such as destroying a bedroom and also performing on a stage, allowing the audience to use the band as a form of escapism from their usual, mundane reality. We were also able to emphasise this on the digipak, with the relaxed, yet clearly professional photographs of the band, again allowing the audience to idolise them and use them as a distraction from everyday life. On social media, we did this by posting behind the scenes footage of the music video, shots of the band in the studio, and shots of the band rehearsing. This really would have helped not only with diversion, but also going back to building the personal relationship with the audience that we also tried to form, and on social media in particular this would have helped increase the popularity of tour ticket sales and merchandise sales.
















Throughout our products, we adhered to Steve Neale’s theory of genre conventions, and made sure that our social media, music video and digipak were all traditional and repetitive of the genre of pop rock so that it was recognisable to our target audience, whilst also adding the odd unique factor to keep the audience interested and on their toes. Firstly, in our music video our costumes initially subvert the stereotype of pop-rock, but this only emphasises the genre more the band start wearing the traditional pop-rock clothing. The positioning of the band for the majority of the music video, with the lead singer at the front is another example of us adhering to the conventions of pop-rock. In addition, we made sure that the instruments of the band featured prominently throughout, according to other similar videos of the same genre. The spray-painting of the wall symbolises the rebellious nature of the band which is an archetype of this genre. When I researched into this genre, I looked into Kelly Clarkson’s music video for her song “Since U Been Gone”, she destroys her boyfriend’s apartment, and in our video, the band destroys their bedroom which was initially an idea to promote the rebellious nature of the band to the audience, but also turned out to be a general convention of the genre. The functions of using these conventions in this music video was to make sure that the audience had something relatable and recognisable from the genre in our music video, but we also made sure that we had some more unique factors to keep the audience interested in the social media and digipak. The use of teddy bears on the digipak is not traditional and does not conform to the conventions of the genre, but since this is one of the few things on the album artwork that doesn’t adhere to the genre conventions, it makes the digipak recognisable, but also interesting to the audience.

In the social media, we adhered to the genre conventions heavily, for example, when I researched into Avril Lavigne’s twitter page, I found she swears on her social media, and so we used this as well to our advantage. When I looked at Miley Cyrus’s Twitter, I found that she retweets other celebrities, especially musicians, which is what we did on our twitter page as well. Also having the darker connotations throughout the social media with the accent of pink also adheres to the conventions of the genre. We subverted this by adding the odd unique post, for example the post with the rubber duck in front of the lead singer. These conventions function again as a something that the audience can find recognisable, whilst also not getting bored and remaining interested.

My Final Campaign

This is the final version of our music video presented on YouTube: 

Here is the final version of the digipak design:

These are the links to our social medias:

https://www.instagram.com/themichellesofficial/

https://twitter.com/michelles_riot

Making of our social media - part 8 (the rest of our social media)

The remaining posts from the social media that I used on twitter were all after the album, single and music video release. Although it may not seem that important to post after all the products have been released, it is still good to keep on promoting these products, and also think of some other stuff to try and raise more awareness for the band and their music campaign which is why we continued with the next few posts. 

The first of these was tweeted after the announcement that the music video had dropped. It is a photo of Georgie (the camera person on the shoot day) holding the camera, to try and show the audience that the video was shot in a professional way. 

The next tweet was the second bit of merchandise that we dropped. This drop wasn't nearly as big as the first drop, and it was different items, but we figured that it would be a great time to release some new merch just after the music video was released, as we ca try and get the audience dressing and looking like the band. I designed the merch for this as well. 

The tweet after that was another picture from the shoot day. Again, we were trying to raise even more awareness for the video, also by showing how advanced and professional some of the equipment we used to shoot the video was. 

The next post was perhaps one of the last personal and "goofy" tweets that I did on the bands twitter page. Dotting these kind of posts throughout the page was a really good way to remind the audience of the star image of the band, but it is also a great opportunity to try and develop a more relaxed a personal relationship with the audience. 

The next two posts were announcing that the band is about to go on tour for their new album. We thought that this would be the perfect time for the tour, since everything has been released, and so going on tour is the last bit of advertisement and awareness building for the band. We also started a hashtag for the tour, whilst still using the same hashtags that we used before. 

The next couple of posts that I did on the bands twitter was showing the dates and locations of where the band will be performing on their UK tour, and the second post is stating that the tickets have gone up and are live. Again, this tour is probably the final big way that we can promote our band on twitter (as all the other products have already been released). 

The next 3 posts, we decided to show on our social media that the band was having some success with the tour, and so we chose 3 locations from the tour, and said that they had been sold out (at 3 different times). This not only shows that the band is doing well (and perhaps gets more people wanting to listen to their stuff), but also makes the audience hurry up and buy tickets quickly, as we are giving off the sense that the tickets are selling fast. Again, we used the tour hashtags, album hashtags, and other hashtags that we have used in our previous tweets to show people who are following those specific hashtags. 

For the final post on our social media, I decided that we were going to drop our final bit of band merchandise. Again, this merchandise relates to the music video that we dropped earlier, but since we had to advertise the tour, and also since we wanted to end on more merch, we decided to post-pone the dropping of this stuff till the end. 

Overall, I think that these final posts were good and they rounded up the twitter page quite nicely (especially with the tour). One thing that I think we did quite well in these final few posts was with using the hashtags, because some of the previous posts, I had forgotten to use them, but in the later ones I used them more consistently. 

Making of our social media - part 7

The next few tweets that I did on the bands twitter page mostly consisted of retweets from similar artists that we have already researched into. The band retweeting other artists makes them look more established, shows the audience who their inspirations were and it also just gives them more stuff to post and tweet about, and so that is why we did it. We ended up retweeting Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus, Kelly Clarkson and Gwen Stephani. 

The next few tweets that we did were becoming more relevant to the band. The first one of these was a hint to the music video - a picture of the bears from the music video. This builds up the awareness for the video before it is even announced. 

The next tweet was a behind the scenes photo from the music video. We initially wanted some behind the scenes footage, but twitter never seemed to like any of the videos we tried to upload, and so we were forced to go with a photo. Nonetheless, it again builds up awareness for the video. 

The next tweet that I did was another tweet just reminding the audience that the music video is dropping very shortly, again trying to build awareness.

The next two tweets that I did were again quite silly tweets, trying to humanise the band and make them more relatable to the audience on social media. We took one of the cut up bears from the shoot, and said that Connie was the one that did it (in a funny way) to try and imply that the band are generally quite relaxed and jokey people, whilst simultaneously hinting at themes in the video that is dropping very soon after these couple of tweets. 

The next couple of posts that I did were again, going back to promoting and raising awareness for the music video. I also used the hashtag for the single dollhouse, as everyone who started to follow #dollhouse will see that the music video is dropping shortly. 

The next tweet that I did was the announcement that the music video had finally dropped. Again, this kinda of post isn't as important as the posts leading up to the release of the video in my opinion, but it still is one of the last times we get to promote the video on the social media, and so it is worth it. 

Overall, this lot of posts have been quite a mixture, but I think because Tegan and I planned it out on the social media timeline before hand, it went pretty well. It was quite an impulsive decision to retweet some of the other artists, but I think that it worked quite nicely in the social media, and gave the audience a break from just the stuff about the band. 

Making of our social media - part 6

This is the 6th update of the making of our social media. The next few posts that I did were all around the time of the single drop and of the album drop, and so there were a lot of posts specific to that to try and build up as much awareness for the album and for the single as possible. 

The first post from this update is the single release. Tegan designed the album artwork for the single, and we posted it on the instagram and on the twitter. The is very clever as it hints at some of the references to the music video that hasn't been released yet, but will be. 

The next post that we did was announcing that the album is going to be dropped the next day. This is a very important post, trying to build as much awareness for the album as possible before it drops. I decided again to go with no photograph so that the words were not distracted from and also we did not have an appropriate photo worthy of perhaps distracting from the caption. 

The next post was announcing the albums arrival. This was fairly similar to the single arrival post, but we had to use slightly different hashtags to try and develop a new following for the album specifically. We were going to launch this with the album cover, but that wasn't ready yet and so I went for a nice picture of the brand. 

The next few posts were promoting the brands first launch of their Merchandise. I designed the Merchandise, and decided to keep the logo plain and simple, with just "The Michelles" written in a spray paint. For the first launch, I decided we would go for clothing (since that is quite a broad decision that most people buy). 

The next post that I did was a thank you tweet to all the fans that listened to the album. This was something that I found Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne did on twitter and instagram, and so it was definitely something to include on our bands social media. In addition, it creates a more personal connection between the band and the audience. 

In conclusion, these tweets I think went quite well, and they were all posted very closely together (since it was quite a hectic time in the bands campaign), but I think they all went quite well. I think the next move is to start trying to show or reflect some of our influences so that we can try and add a bit of back story and share who the band like to listen to with their audience. 

Photoshoot for our social media / digipak

We decided to have a post shoot day photoshoot for the whole band in the photography studio at school to get some cool images primarily for our social media, but also for our digipak design and so Tegan, Georgie and I organised one and let the band know on the Whatsapp group chat. The reason that we are doing a photoshoot is to get some more unique and different photos. Also, it would be good to get some photos of the band in different settings wearing different clothing so it looks more like a real band and a real music campaign. Here are some of the photos that we managed to get.