Social Media Page – Conventions Analysis

To understand how an artist within our genre uses social media, we created a screencastify analysing the formal and general conventions and the use of AIDA. We also used Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratifications theory and Dyer’s paradox of the star theory to understand the decisions made on the Instagram page. We also understood different marketing techniques and the technical conventions that support this.

We have found that within our genre, artists like to add a personal touch to their page, this is something we should consider doing to convey our star as ordinary and extraordinary. We have also recognised that artists stick to the formal conventions of a social media page to be successful. 

Focus Forward

This task has allowed us to understand the key, formal and technical conventions of a social media page. In order for our brand to be successful, we must ensure we do the same and take inspiration from similar artists within our genre. By analysing AIDA (attention, interest, desire and call to action), we could determine what specific features of a page attract an audience and get them to interact with our star and with each other. We have highlighted that it is important our audience can identify with the star and feel like they have a relationship with them, we need to ensure that our metanarrative supports this. Overall, this task has helped us understand what is required within a social media page and how this is achieved. 

 

PMA for Digipak shoot

To plan our shoot for our digipak, we made a production meeting agenda to outline all the things we needed to bring. We also gathered some inspiration pictures of different poses to ensure we obtained the correct photos

click to see full document

We also have recognised that we will need to be strict with our timings due to wanting to get a variation of different outfits. We also need to ensure that the last thing we shoot is the ‘ruined’ makeup look, otherwise we will waste crucial time redoing makeup.

Social Media Page Terminology

To begin understanding how social media pages work, I learnt terminology to allow me to widen my knowledge on how social media pages function. I chose an artist similar to my own, highlighted the key features and analyzed the key and formal conventions across our genre.

Focus Forward

This task allowed me to understand the key forms and conventions required to make a successful social media page that creates an impact, coincides with the brand and fits the metanarrative and mission statement of our star. It has allowed me to identify key features that are extremely useful and utilized to convey the paradox of our star as ordinary and extraordinary, such as highlights and reels. We can also recognise the commercial aspect to this social media page and how artists work with sponsors and companies. I also learnt that by using different media forms such as posts and videos, we can create variation within our page and engage our audience in a positive way. Formally, we need to ensure that we include professional conventional posts such as album covers, whilst also using the social media platform to have fun and evoke change.

Digipak Mock Up

To begin planning and visualising our digipak, we drew some ideas for the front and back covers. We took inspiration from our previously created padlet and ensured that we complied with the general and formal conventions.

Front (click for full screen)
Back No.1 (click to see full screen)
Back No.2 (click to see full screen)

We have created 3 potential designs. The front of the album consists of our star in fun, bold makeup with some pink/purple colour correction. We then are going to create a ‘rip’ in the middle with a black and white more serious image of our star. This encodes the key message of our star capturing the hardships and struggles of being different. Furthermore, this design adheres to our genre by using a similar colour scheme and image manipulation techniques. We are also following formal and general conventions by ensuring our artist’s name and album name are displayed clearly on the front. We have decided to call our album ‘Library of Liberty’ to accentuate the freedom of being your true self.

For the back, we have two ideas. Number one consists of a simple design, to fit in with our ‘rip’ in the front cover, we again created the rip effect on the back with the tracks listed below. However, we found this quite bland and boring and decided to scrap this idea. Our second idea is a lot more colourful and vibrant, it consists of four images of our star all overlapping. We would use colour correction to make these different colours but ensure they complement each other well. This ties in well with the front of the album and doesn’t overwhelm the page. We also included a track list, barcode, copyright regulations and record label logos to adhere to the formal conventions.

The track titles we chose are as followed…

  1. Inferno 
  2. Kaleidoscope
  3. Dismissal
  4. Perfect Places
  5. Karma 
  6. Dreamscape
  7. Just Me and You
  8. Tokyo
  9. Today, Tomorrow, Forever
  10. February
  11. Bloom
  12. The Shift

Focus Forward

It has been extremely useful to plan our digipak as we now have an idea of what we want to achieve. It has allowed us to visualise how different colours, fonts, graphics and text will work together to convey our star’s key messages ensuring it aligns with our mission statement. We must ensure that we stick to the formal and general conventions which we have included in our mockup. Next, we will plan our shoot to produce images for our digipak.

The Look Book

To begin creating our brand we collated images and inspiration from our chosen genre. This will enable us to understand the specific styles and elements that we will need to include in our digipak. We took inspiration from different social media pages, album covers and posters. We used a software called Padlet to do this.

Made with Padlet

 

Focus Forward

By creating this lookbook, we have made a place where we can gain inspiration and information about our genre. We can identify key colour schemes that use pink and blue – and visualise what our digipak could look like. We need to remember that the digipak is an advertisement for our star and their brand rather than a music video. This padlet will help us implement the core themes whilst ensuring we represent the star fully and conventionally. This creates a blueprint for all of our work which will be incredibly useful during the production process.

Digipak Conventions Analysis

To understand the formal and general conventions of a digipak, I analysed an album within our genre. It allowed me to learn and understand what is required to convey meaning within a digipak, the technical conventions used and what impact this had.

Focus Forward

It has been extremely useful to analyse a digipak from my selected genre (indie pop/alternative). I have learnt the typical formal conventions such as; record label logos, copyright information and tracklists etc. All of which make up a digipak. I have also understood general conventions and learnt what features run across all the albums. I noted that most of these use a close-up image of the star that conveys a deeper meaning. It was key to understand how our star was represented through imagery, graphics and illustrations so that I ensure within our group – we do something similar following the conventions.

Our Mission Statement – The Package Brand

To begin planning our strategy for our digipak and social media pages, we created a marketing strategy and a mission statement to understand our artists star image and brand. This allowed us to look at the package as a whole and recognise our target audience.

We began understanding the demographics and psychographics of our target audience – this will allow us to curate content that would appeal to them and sell the star image. We then looked at how we could get our audience to interact with the music and content, creating a call to action. This was important as it will tell our audience what to do and how they can connect with the brand and star through things such as merchandise and brand collaborations. To understand what artists are already doing within our genre, we analysed their album covers and social media pages. This allowed us to highlight key conventions across the genre and how the audience reacts to these stars. We also identified our unique selling point and mission statement to gain a true understanding of our star image and brand.

Focus Forward

By undertaking this task, we are able to begin planning our digipak so that it appeals to our target audience. This marketing strategy is important as it allows us to identify the different ways in which we plan to interact with our audience. Our mission statement allows us to have a key focus, which will be useful to refer to when curating different social media posts to ensure our star images’ messages are perceived correctly.

Final Draft

We have now completed our music video.

Reflection

Overall, we did not change our video after peer feedback. We felt like our narrative and performance worked together seamlessly, and any additions may have resulted in the video looking tacky and unprofessional. Our star image is prominent and conveyed well through our use of mise-en-scene and the variety of shots we used to highlight the deep emotions our star was addressing. Our technical forms, such as editing to the beat and lip-syncing, all work together well and allow our video to have a nice pace – making it more enjoyable to watch. In terms of the brief, we feel we have achieved it to the best of our ability. We have conveyed our stars’ ideology of being your true self well and have emphasised this through our narrative.

Peer Feedback

To ensure that we were on the right track with our music video, we received some feedback from our peers.

Peer Feedback:

‘The narrative for your music video is amazing and really easy to pick up from the start of the video. You have used a wide variety of shots and angles which I love as it helps create a connection with the audience. Aidan’s (Actor) acting was amazing, his facial expressions really help emphasise your narrative. I like how your performance was fairly basic as it not only contrasts well with your narrative but it also helps distinguish the narrative from the performance. Your aspects of mise-en-scene brought the music video together really well and the variety of locations is great.’

‘All the shots are focused and framed well. You have made good use of mise-en-scene to convey the narrative. There is a good variety of shots. I am not sure of the significance of the disco ball, I don’t think it adds much to the video. The lip-syncing doesn’t always lineup. Some studio shots can feel repetitive.’

Focus Forward

It was extremely helpful and crucial to receive feedback from our peers – this was since the majority were a part of our target population. It allowed us to understand that we had so far created a music video that conveyed the correct meanings and genre to our audience. However, some feedback given we do not feel is accurate but have taken into consideration. This feedback has given us confidence and will allow us to make a few minor tweaks before our final draft.

 

 

Music Video Draft 4

We have made some important and crucial changes to our music video since draft 3.

What has changed?

  • We have changed the narrative montage in the middle to be more upbeat. We removed some of the walking scenes, as it was becoming boring and repetitive. Instead, we included a variety of extreme close-ups, close-ups, and mid-shots to add variety and dimension to this section of the music video. 
  • One of the most important shots was at the end of the ‘How to Fit in’ book. Previously the quality was awful and the zoom made it look tacky. Instead, we have reordered the segment and used a still image, to focus on the old life our star has left behind. 
  • We have fixed some colour projection issues to make our work of better quality, allowing us to see the mise-en-scene a lot more clearly. 
  • We have added some fun and quirky transitions near the end section, to create an uplifting, dynamic environment that allows our audience to feel proud of the star. 

 Focus Forward

All in all our music video is almost complete. After receiving some peer feedback we are expecting to make a few tweaks so that it appeals and targets our audience better.