How do your products represent social groups or issues?

How do your products engage with the audience?

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

Our mission statement is all about teaching and providing opportunities to help people to let go of their worries that are fixated around this society and opening up your mind from the result of our EDM and messages that are educating people on the fact we are all writing our own reality, therefore we have to power to change reality for ourselves. Across all of our products we have emphasised our mission to create a sense of branding, promoting an energetic, prosperous and insightful, open minded, youthful party. Our music video  promotes our branding and star image through a narrative of  self discovery, learning how to let go,  relax and really enjoy the beauties in life. Our digipak design focuses on this notion of new beginnings and transcendence. It signifies an unlocked cage positioned on a figure’s forehead, releasing a majestic phoenix rising above. The figure is also wearing headphones. This album art is a signifier (De Saussure) that connotes how listening to this EDM album potentially opens up your mind and sets you free from reality which yet again closely links back to the brand’s message to enjoy life and not take things too seriously. To complete this package and relay this message consistently across all products it seemed only fitting to represent our star image as a perfect example of someone who is living according to these morals and messages, this is how he portrays himself as present (Dyer). Therefore we included constant new updated posts of him partying and performing at raves on our SMP as well as travelling around the world experiencing different beautiful sites and wonders that the world brings and simply just loving life. The absent side we don’t get to see is basically anything other than the party scenes and life as an artist travelling – what is he really like behind closed doors when he isn’t performing? You can interact with him through commenting, liking, following, sharing but he won’t interact back, so no one will ever really know what he is like. Videos of him alone in his room just messing around on his decks projects hope onto the aspiring followers making you realise that you too can create a better life for yourself and it’s only your own fear that is stopping you. Overall the mission statement across this brand is to help promote mindfulness and harmony to his fans teaching them to make to most of their lives and do things you enjoy without worry about having to conform.

We researched Electronic Dance Music and watched/analysed many different professional EDM artist’s music videos, to understand the conventions that were established within this genre. Dancing is very important to be featured when it comes to an EDM video as this is what the genre of music is purely made for – to make you dance. We found that many of these videos were all narrative and occasionally right at the end would be some shots of the DJ’s performing somewhere live. Many EDM artists such as Avicci create a sense of journey within their narrative, for example Avicci’s music video for his song ‘Wake Me Up’, portrays two sisters who are unhappy and are unable to fit in, in an old, conservative town indicated by the MES which depicted the locals in neutral coloured old farmer looking clothes, and run down buildings with dirt roads and as scorching sun. The people’s expressions are stone cold stares as the sisters walk through the town, they however also have clips of these sisters on a horse which is symbolising their freedom as they escape the town. This results in the sisters resorting to a big rave where Avicci was performing. Lacey’s theory about the repertoire of elements refers to how narrative, star image etc can help achieve the expectations of a genre, and therefore we have used these repertoire of elements to achieve a similar but different media text to previous media texts. We took inspiration from this sense of journey and so we developed a narrative similar about a workaholic who is drained and overwhelmed from her office job to help convey her emotions, we made sure to include low key lighting and desaturated the colours through our editing and many high angels to represent her vulnerable state. A vital prop we included throughout was her office chair that comes to life one day and takes her on a journey, we incorporated green screen and stop motion to make the chair look like it was moving, and the entirety of our music video consists of frequent short clips to enhance the experiences flashing by.  On the way she has a series of different interactions, (resulting in her at the end arriving at a rave) from this she discovers how to loosen up, free her mind and relax. Throughout these scenes we included a lot more camera movement especially for those dance scenes to help the audience preserve themselves dancing along in beat with the music and to highlight this adrenal active and energetic buzz from EDM and her adventures. Not only that but we boosted up the saturation, lighting and included many colour/distorted effects designed to be surreal, fun, party like, euphoric and so on. Her transformation of office clothes into a rave outfit for the very last scene reflects she is now a changed and liberated person. Altman states that the producer uses the genre as a blueprint for production. Therefore by sticking to the genre conventions/guidelines we are providing expected pleasurable content for those who would be interested in EDM and so by understanding what is currently popular with what other EDM artists are doing and applying it to our own in a new twist this will minimise risk of not selling. 

Our star can be represented as extraordinary (Dyer) due the the content on his SMP of him DJing in front of crowds and travelling round the world. However Stuart Hall also highlights that depending on audiences ideologies they may personally have another reading of this artist and maybe not so much of a ‘preferred reading’ (painting him as extraordinary) as many may look on his SMP and focus on other content with him  by himself Djing in his room which presents him to be much more ordinary and you get to understand his passions and what he is doing/like in his spare time. He clearly enforces his music on his page which also creates this absence around him because although you have regular updated content that makes you feel present with him you also do not see much exclusive content of him talking or documenting anything other than his music which highlights the absence that you don’t truly know him, and represents that on one hand he could be painted by the audience as a talented, inspirational figure living  an envious, ‘forever young’, exciting/fun party life but audience members can also have a more oppositional reading of him believe he represents reckless person who hasn’t got a real job and is really seeming like a bum. In the digipak design we see that our artist has stuck to this mystery as he is absent on the cover. Instead we have symbolic cartoon/graphic designed images consisting of a conventional EDM colour palette (bright purples, blues, yellows, pinks drawing the audience’s attention). The signifiers (donnotation) we see is a figure cut out that is wearing headphones and listening to music. On his forehead he has an opened cage door with a phoenix flying out which signifies (connotation) renewal, enlightenment and hope as this music is unlocking and freeing this subject’s mind. Another visual signifier (de Saussure) that is present is the circular frame around this imagery with a kaleidoscope background which symbolises that you are looking through a kaleidoscope, which is significant as when you look into a kaleidoscope everything you perceive with your eyes is now shifted and new and exciting which also echoes the neon in raves.This is the message our artist is trying to reach to his audience that his music is a beautiful escape that creates a rush of excitement and enlightenment. We also chose to use kaleidoscope as our album cover title to interlink with this message emphasising the importance of being able to perceive all in a different light. On average our target audience typically seem to all be rather educated hard working people with time consuming jobs, the importance of not perceiving life as living to work but instead learn how to make the most of every opportunity, to connect with others, wind down and enjoy life. Our font choice was sans serif and in capital letters to draw busy and hard working peoples attention in making it practical and easy to read without making reading feel too much of a chore. This font choice also reflects our genre as it relates to the atmosphere of EDM and reflects the hype and excitement around it.When first clicking on the page the first thing we see is the artist’s cover photo. This will be our first chance to engage the audience, applying Hall’s theory that what they will see at first encodes the artist’s head floating in space and he is purple and distorted. This decodes that he is some sort of alien or god that is out of this world! When you think of out of this world you think of something revolutionary that is being created as well as the prospect of escaping from reality. People with psychographics that consist of being individualistic and  ambitious, reformers are always actively looking for fun and excitement weather through gaming, partying etc may then gain an interest to view more on the page as this is the sort of target audience who work hard and play hard indicating they would definitely be into the high EDM brings to you. 

Blumler & Katz points out that the audience seeks social interaction, personal identity, entertainment and information from the media they consume. We have included posts that allow the audience to share, comment, like, private messages and encouragement for getting involved in conversations through captions (social interaction). Shirky makes the point that the audience has changed from a mode of passive consumption to one of participation interaction due to the internet and the web creating two way communication. What is powerful about this active audience being  given the freedom to speak + encourage to use their cognitive surplus allowing people to lead movements, in this case  it creates a collective of audience members with the similar sharing ideologies as our star image, therefore a community/tribe of ravers is formed and united resulting in empowerment. This makes the audience feel as though they have a sense of involvement and importance within the artist’s life. For much of our target audience come to understand through their psychographics that they seek to be fun, exciting and the life of the party. Our star image represents all of this, creating desire to get to know him or want to be him. Therefore in order for the audience to feel close to him they can buy some of his merchandise and keep up to date with everything going on in his life. We get a sense of entertainment through watching the many performances from his posts as well as other crazy content regularly posted on his story such as his tour delay story. Lastly with each post the artist includes a caption explaining each one and linking more info in his bio to give context and make it more convenient to find his products (information). His highlighted stories also provide up-to-date and easy to access information such as his tour dates and Q&A for those wishing to learn more about him. This saves people the time of having to scroll through posts to find the information they want. Gauntlet says that the representation of gender has now changed due to audiences becoming prosumers and sharing their own ideologies which aligns with others ideologies too. We included a post of the artist doing a collaboration with another DJ both dressed as females.This aligns with many people’s new established attitudes, values and beliefs therefore their movements by spreading the word with a powerful platform and in turn this will gain good publicity and support from the audience.