Critical Reflection

In Annie LeMaster’s music video for the song ‘“i’ll call you when i’ve made it”, the theme of heartbreak and trying to find oneself  is explored. I chose the music promotion package for this project and we promoted her album Cough Syrup. Throughout this project, we wanted to create a sense that everyone can find themselves even after a hard period of time in life. 

    Annie’s music is pop music so our research focused on products similar to what we would produce. We decided to make a storytelling video because we couldn’t film with the artist. Therefore, research was concentrated on videos with a mix of storytelling and promotional or just storytelling so that a better picture of what we could produce could be gathered. I viewed Taylor Swift’s “Everything Has Changed” music video, her “All Too Well” short film, Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license”, Lizzy McAlpine’s “ceilings”, One Direction’s  “Night Changes”, and Gracie Abrams’s “i know it won’t work”.

    While watching these videos, I was inspired by a lot and there was a lot that really stuck with me, especially a part of the “All Too Well” video in which the title is shown with the sky and trees as the background. That idea really influenced the ending of the production I created as it ends with a frame of the sky. Additionally, in Abrams’s “i know it won’t work” music video, there’s a part that was filmed at the beach and it strengthened my wanting to film at the beach because the way that they filmed that made it look really good. However, given that I don’t have  professional equipment, it was hard for mine to look similar, so we decided to film during sunset. In the “drivers license” video, the constant use of different colored lighting to convey the mood inspired my video’s recording booth scene as I wanted to make the room dark with only the orangey light shining towards our actress. 

    Pop music is generally tied with themes of heartbreak, love, loss, or friendship, given that the target audience is mainly teenage girls who are experiencing this. Our project really followed the heartbreak theme that is commonly seen, but with a twist of self-discovery. We noticed that these types of videos often have the artist singing at the camera, and also have lots of close up shots to capture intimate or sentimental scenes. We tried to follow all these conventions except for the artist singing the song since we were doing a purely storytelling video.

Since the song we used is tied to a relatable theme, we wanted to make sure that not only the music video, but also the artist overall was able to engage our audience. Since our target audience tends to be very active on social media pages like Instagram, we knew we had to make our Instagram as relatable and approachable as possible to maximize engagement. To be able to accomplish this, I looked at some artist social media to see what is normally done. I viewed Taylor Swift’s, Niall Horan’s, and Gracie Abrams’s, and out of all those, Swift’s felt too professional and distant for what I wanted, while Horan’s and Abrams’s felt more personal and engaging. These two artists inspired me to keep most captions short and easy to read, and to also do my best to sound like the artist is just a normal person posting about her life. I noticed that Horan tends to post a lot of snippets of him singing parts of his songs as teasers, and Abrams tends to post a lot of behind the scenes pictures of everything, so I incorporated both of these aspects.

Another way that I intended to engage the audience was by adding the inserts to the digipak of what inspired Annie to write her songs because it makes it feel much more personal which is something that this age group is really looking for in artists. For the actual music video, it was engaging because it was an easy to follow and relatable storyline that a large part of the target audience would enjoy.

Fan engagement was really important for this project and by creating a consistent brand, it boosts the retention rate of how the audience remembers or identifies a certain artist. We wanted to create a brand that felt welcoming and relatable, but also looked cohesive. To create this consistent brand, I wanted to have a color palette and use the same font, same theme, and same voice in all the writing components when creating all products for this project. The colors that we used consistently throughout our products were orangey sunsety colors and some shades of grayish blueish, which can be seen in the vinyl, the social media, and in some parts of the video. It was harder to show the brand in the music video and I think we could have planned that a little better, but we did our best. 

    

    Something that we wanted this brand to achieve is to help Annie’s audience reach the part of themselves in which they don’t have to rely on someone to be happy, as you can create your own happiness, which is also presented in the ending of the music video as she finally feels free and like herself again.

This was important for us because we wanted these teenagers to feel represented and like they were not alone, crazy, or dramatic as they tend to get told. We wanted them to feel like they were understood since some struggle with relationships, whether romantic or platonic, loss of someone, something, or even of confidence. The stereotype that is put onto them can be damaging so we wanted to create a brand in which they would feel free to find themselves, and be themselves. 

Overall, I feel like our products were able to create a brand that allowed engagement from the audience. This project took lots of time, effort, tears, and passion for what it represents and I’m beyond grateful to have had the opportunity to create this.