How do your products represent social groups or issues?
We wanted our stars to be represented as people who were calm, safe and chilled people which would connote an easy listening, reassuring and symbolic image to our target audience of the genre of indie. We used MES to portray models as indie stars by using outfits that suited the colours of indie. As a result of this it consisted of wearing dull and muted jackets and shirts with dull reds, light blues, purples and whites. We also added a filter in photoshop to make the photo look more laid back and chilled. The indie album art consists of low key lighting that relates to Barthes semic code which connotes a chilled, relaxed and calm environment.
These elements are what Lacey would call the repertoire of elements as It is what the target audience expects to see in an indie mannered digipak. By looking at the body language we can see that our stars display Barthes theories of the semic code of the indie genre. For example the arms are folded which portrays the character as authentic, ordinary and easy going.
When in post editing I felt obliged to use a colour filter as I had seen it in an indie social media page. So I used a fade of green and blended it into both pictures, this would make the standard dull photo look more relatable to the indie genre. As it connoted our meta narrative and our stars as relaxed, laidback and easy going. However in the music video and in the social media page we see the paradox of the star as they are also portrayed as less important people having fun and doing things that everyday people do. This encapsulates both sides of the star and makes the stars more relatable towards the audience.
For our layout of our digipak we wanted to make something that would be decoded by our audience, so we had the idea of using a beach for the image and then using words in songs that would relate to the beach. We already had a song called Oceans in our album so we thought we would tie that in with this idea.
How do your products engage with the audience?
When starting a social media page, we discovered that the audience were Gen Z based and that they used social media apps like Instagram, Twitter, facebook and Youtube. The audience are mostly people who are Middle class Americans and English individuals of mixed genders who like to listen to the genre of Indie. It was important that we should find our audience and engage them with a social media page that releases products successfully and connects their followers through social interaction opportunities such as live streams and live polls. Through doing this we can sell, advertise and brand our campaign.
My SMP is filled with essential elements that Blumer and Katz would argue are imperative for maximum audience engagement. For example; we made and branded clothing for our band. After having our final product it was important we shared it to our audience and what better way to do this by using twitter as it allows customers to visit our page and buy our products. This goes off a point made by Blumer and Katz that audiences need to be able to reinforce their personal identity and what better way to do this than dressing in clothes that reflect a band whose ideologies they believe in.
When advertising our Merchandise it was important that we tell the audience what our product is by adding a caption for example “new merch coming soon.” As this informs the reader they are looking at something they can get their hands on. We even made a live moving poster which allows the audience to see where our music can be played and streamed. This benefits both the artist and the audience as the artist gets money from streams and the audience enjoys the music made by the artist. This relates back to B and K as it shows that the audience has information about a place where they can access the band’s music.
As Dyer would say, this connects the audience to the band and reinforces the absence in the fans lives and informs the audience a place where they can access the artists music.
We also added a poster to advertise a live performance on the BBC which shows cross media convergence and engages and fulfills our fans in something that they could go and watch live and for free. These examples from our SMP are to attract and grow an audience, which again satisfies the social interaction needed of an audience according to Blumer and Katz.
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
We started off by researching and analysing other music videos of the same and similar genre. Just as Altmans suggests, we too created blueprints for our indie genre.For example we noticed that most of the music videos for this genre included hand held shots, so when it came to shooting our video we used their conventions of making handheld footage as it gives a naturalistic and reassuring feeling to the audience that isn’t over produced or manufactured.. Another idea we used from another professional indie music video was in the filming, this meant making sure the lighting was high key and bright which develops conventions of the indie genre and portrays the shots as happy and organic.
Evidence of Laceys idea of the repertoire of elements is also present in our music video due to the props we used such as; the drum kit, the guitar, the amp; they all display a meta narrative of the performer and convey the star as chilled out and dedicated to authentic music. We have also taken ideas from the paradox of the star, suggested by Dyer, and have displayed our characters as extraordinary confident musicians in the performance, but we have shown those same stars as ordinary, lonesome and unpopular in the narrative. We have developed this idea from research and used it in our music video.These two ideas juxtapose each other and we see both worlds of these same two people. These conventions from the Dyer theory work well in our indie genre music video.
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
The Mission Statement: The package we have made establishes and connotes our genre well, as we show a duo who are committed to showing the reality of loneliness through their latest album Lost in the Ocean. Believing that one of the best ways to connect with your feelings is to talk about how they both created Lost in the Ocean with a mission of showing the audience the harsh realities of what feelings truly are.
Having made a mission statement before making our products was helpful as we understood what our target audience was looking for and who our competition might be. We established the reality of loneliness in our music video by firstly using close up shots to portray sad and unwanted emotions. We also used effects in premiere pro to make some of the scenes black and white which added dramatic effect and showed the loneliness we wanted to portray. We then hinted the release on twitter by making a poster using photoshop and canva as well as posting the music video on youtube and adding the attachment of the video to then being posted on twitter with a caption saying check out our new music video.
Using media language such as editing, camera, colour, MES and font we were able to convey our message across the platforms to create our brand.Represented as true indie artists, we will use integrated advertising through uploading teasers of upcoming events on several different platforms to ensure our target audience get the full experience.
For example, in our music video, we used slow edits and long shots to represent our genre as calm and relaxed. We also filmed that part of the narrative on a sunny day, which shows our audience that it is an indie music video due to high key lighting.
However, this is juxtaposed in the DP because the indie stars were symbolically represented as much more serious because of the low essential lighting used, the facial expressions, and the outfit worn. But evidently, after doing a tally of what genres the audience thought our DP were, Hall would suggest the audience were able to get a preferred and coded reading of my text as I had communicated with them appropriately through the use of media language.
The paradox of the star wasn’t clearly fulfilled in the branding of the SMP as when representing our stars, as we only represented them as serious musicians and we didn’t show them as being ordinary. Meaning that our fans would have wanted a little more to connect with. We used conventions the artist had used to make a profile picture and post relevant information about their upcoming album and gigs.