Critical self reflection

 Critical Self reflection

For component 3 of our project, Cambridge gave us four option to choose from, which was a Short film, a music video a movie trailer, or a documentary. As so I chose the option of ”A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music video (major task), together with an official social media page for the band or artiste(s) and a digipak for the album’s release (minor tasks).”  

I chose this as my project as I believe that the music video conveys more meaning than the other three but not only that it can fit perfectly with the theme I want to make which is mental health and depression. My group consists of myself, abizer, Jonathan and Angelo decided to make a music video based on Kanye West’s song of ‘Ghost Town’ as it works with the theme I want to make.

How do your product represent social groups or issues? 

One of the social groups we want to target was teenagers around the age of High school or University students (18- 25). We did this as in our music video, we want to represent the teens positively by not showing them causing any trouble or any violent mischief. Instead, we have a plan on showing them minding their own business and have fun with friends, and enjoy life.  While I am depressed in the video, we show my friends which are teenagers to help and support me as much as possible.

But the main story of our music video is that depression and mental instability can cause even the most ‘normal’ looking people to go down in a deep emotional state which can result in them abusing drugs, doing self-harm and them wanting to end it all.  This can be mainly shown by me who is the main actor in the video and is shown to be an average teenager. In the video I am portrayed as athletic as in the video there are times when I am playing football, which is a generic stereotype fro teenage boys who are always portrayed to have an interest in sports like American football, basketball, and baseball. But not only that, we included friends in the video where they hang out with the main character. These all are the normal behaviors of teenagers who the audience can sympathize with and can relate with. But his ‘normal’ life suddenly gets disrupted by complications that push him to depression where he eventually gives up and takes drugs.

The main character’s depressed side is shown in a negative light in the video as it is the reason why he is isolated, and hurt and him wanting to be alone even though he is surrounded with his companions, a very likely act of what a mentally depressed person would do. We show this by the amount of shots of him all by himself, usually in a large empty room which shows loneliness and isolation or by owing a clear binary opposite. An example: in the video, at the dining scene, when everyone is busy talking to one another in the video you can see the main character being in his phone looking depressed even though he is near them. A very clear juxtaposition. The drugs, while the main character drinks it, did ot result in a good outcome, he become even more furious as he didn’t overdose. Whcih let him to act violent and thrashing his belongings and the room, which cna only impacted negatively on himself and surroundings

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

One of our main features or touches of our music video is stigmatized and dark topics like mental health, suicide and drugs. Our theme following those topics, would be equally as dark and depressing.

Our music video appears to have a mix of black and white colors that is associated with sadness and death, A fitting theme for scenes where the main character is desperate. At times we have scenes where the main character, is all by himself. The elements of productions we use here comes in many forms. Like the costumes or outfit the main characters wear in the video where the main character wore a hoody which signifies the meaning of isolation and loneliness and the high camera angles, where it is used to portray the character as weak. The behaviors we watch him perform, in which he consistently fails to score goals and displays a visible expression of dissatisfaction, are all signs that He is under pressure and in need of help. But out of all of the other indications the most important that signifies loneliness to me is by showing that the chracter is all by himself. Our group did this, by taking long full shots where the main character is all by himself. One of our key themes of our media music video is isolation, this element can be expressed constantly in our other products like social media and digipak

In our digipak, i made the color and the theme of the digipak as mainly dark theme, which again symbolises desperation, sadness ad despression.The inside of the digipak was very empty except for the sunset being shown in black and white with texts on top to convey meaning to show that the character in the music video is emotionally drained in the inside, as a depressed person is empty on the inside. But not only that for the front cover we have abizer in a hoodie being depressed as again our themes are sadness and depression, with alot of words in the background that says “ego” and “help me” to show that he is mentally insane and is talking to himself. By doing all of these we are trying to make the audience to be familiar with our brand image with the constant use of dark themes and hoodies to convey sadness.

How do your products engage with the audience?

 There are various ways on how our products engages with the audience. One of those ways are, in our digipak the front cover included the a doctor prescription with our song name “Ghost Town” and our artist “E/GO” shown below the prescription, a QR code was also included in the prescription as it is used to direct the audience to a website called “Better help” Which primarily focuses on mental health and therapy. Below that, we also included the suicide hotlines of the US and the UK. This is used to help our audiences who feel like they are going through the deepest darkest stages in ther lives much like how our main character is feeling could easily find help just by scanning and reading our prescription. Meanwhile, audiences who doesnt have any problem with mental health could access these sites too and inform their friends/ someone they love who have problems to check it out, which raises awareness.

Our audiences interact with us on social media in many different ways. We encourage engaged audience engagement in our posts. Several blogs have links that lead readers to various websites, including Better aid from earlier and a Gofundme where readers, if they so choose, could "fund" our future endeavors. Our internet store, where customers may purchase our goods, and our merchandise are also linked. The merchandise we are promoting—a hoodie—is mentioned numerous times in posts, along with information on the price, the actor, and the size. As they are now more influenced to purchase our own products, this actively engages with our viewers. 

Our hashtag in our social media, #LongWayDownGhostTown, is a hashtag where we ask audiences to post a picture of themselves replicating my poses and a photo with the merch we have, which is again another way of how we interact or engage with our audiences. 

Last but not least, we interact with the crowds by inviting them to DM us and informing them about our future global tour, where we will be performing in numerous cities. Seating arrangements and tickets are also represented as being 'Sold out' which is one of the techniques to indicate the Hype and attraction of a performance. By doing so, we may entice a bigger audience to participate, which increases audience involvement.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

By depicting mental health problems and suicide which are generally stigmatized by the public, our product challenges the typical conventions. An example of how we challenged the typical convention is our main character, who is a male is being depicted dealing with major mental health trauma and problems that lead him to drugs and potential suicide. Male characters are frequently presented in the media as being strong-willed, brave, and courageous. As a result, viewers do not anticipate that the male character will be as feeble and careless as we made him out to be in our music video. We refute this assertion in order to demonstrate that everyone, not just members of a certain racial or gender group, experiences mental health issues.