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We chose the song “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer for our music video. In this, a boy and a girl were singing therefore we chose both a female and male character to represent the two artists. Our most prominent actor/character was Phoebe who played Demi Lovato and was our female lead throughout the video. Although there was a male voice that had almost the same amount of input as the female voice, we chose to base everything around Phoebe (Demi Lovato) and how she is going through a hardship that is making her lament the loss of her mum and the mood and overall tone is supposed to come across as sad and almost depressing. To keep the realism of the video we decided to take society's view on women and portray it. Females are stereotypically known for being more emotionally unstable and vulnerable compared to men. We felt as though this would draw the audience in and make it more believable even though males can often be just as sensitive as women if not more.

In this day and age, mental health plays a big factor in how we live our lives and certain guidelines and rules that have been put in place to try and spread awareness for mental health such as depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts. It is such a big thing now that although it is a sad contributing factor, some people may be able to relate to the music video more if they feel as though they have gone through something similar themselves or knows someone else who has had troubles in the past. Audiences can become more invested or like something better when it shows the problems of society and how life can change from being an adolescent girl to a struggling young adult. This idea was based on the research we did of the original artists where Demi Lovato had a past of mental illness and struggled with drug abuse herself. 

I decided to try and maintain a blue and purple-hued color scheme throughout my digipak as well as mimicking the colored lights that are seen in the music video. In contrast to the cold colors we used a lot of black and white to represent the ‘dark’ times and how her whole life felt like it was in literal darkness and shadowed, so I took this into my digipak as well as my social media page, where my first post of the ‘artist’ is a black and white photo and she was smiling to almost let viewers know that although what we filmed about is a hard-hitting topic, that the artist was okay and enjoying producing the album. I also used black and white images taken from the music video on the inside of my digipak so that it maintained fluidity and wasn't overwhelmed with too many colors or different shots. We chose to use Instagram because in this day-in-age moire than 45% of teens now either own or have access to a smartphone. Nearly half of the teen population aged from 13-18 have said that they use Instagram compared to Facebook, released in 2004. This was ideal as our target age range was anywhere from 15 to mid-20s. 


My CD case's front and back cover was purple staged lighting, the front cover containing an image of the artist (Phoebe), and the back just of a purple screen with a stage lighting streaming through and lyrics on the back. Although the music video is supposed to be sad at the beginning, it is also supposed to be a sort of visible breakthrough where our character comes out the other sad despite her difference and I tried carrying that through into my social media page where there are images of Phoebe doing different things like holding an umbrella in the rain. To keep the Instagram page realistic, I had to also take inspiration from Demi Lovato's real page and tried to carry that through to make it realistic. For example, she had just announced that she is non-binary meaning she is neither a boy nor a girl nor a selected gender. Because of this, I used a lot of gay pride images or pictures showing support to the LGBTQ community. A big part of my digipak was based on Richard Dryer's Star image theory first introduced in 1979, where it's based on the idea that the viewer's perception of a narrative is highly influenced by the image of the stars. In order to follow these guidelines, I made sure that Phoebe was the main feature on the cover and the bold font behind her was to give the impression that she is now a solid and firm wall who is slowly rebuilding herself, but it also made her stand out almost 3D. 

To engage with viewers we had to determine a target audience, because the genre of the song is mid-tempo pop, we thought that this is best suited to females aged from 15 - 40. The song is slow in some places and has a melodic tune but is also quite touching, and to really grasp the concept I feel that the person has to be a bit more in touch with their feelings, something women are usually known for. I tried to keep the design of my digipak, not ‘girly’ but so that you could definitely say that it had more of a feminine touch with the colors and fonts. This was carried through in all the different elements both seen in the music video and my social media. On the Instagram page, there are different links that you can click on to take you to the music video on Vimeo, because of different copyright regulations, etc we aren't able to upload it anywhere else limiting the realism of the song actually being produced. Even though this may have restricted what we were able to post I still tried to incorporate a lot of different interactive hashtags and carried the slogan ‘#WOPS’ throughout my post adding continuity to the images and creating hype because of the acronym of ‘What Other People Say'.

Since doing the music video first, we had to learn a lot about the different types of conventions that were usually seen in a video from mid-tempo pop. A lot of them had a storytelling/ narrative theme where the audience was to follow along with the message being portrayed rather than just singing or seeing different images that had little connection to the song or the meaning behind the lyrics. The narrative theory is based on the concept that people are essentially storytellers, a theory coined by 20th-century communication scholar Walter Fisher. Another convention was how nearly every music video from every genre had lip-syncing. In my opinion, a music video, depending on the way it is being made, can't be a music video without singing or some sort of lip-syncing. To make it look right we had to watch different tutorials from Youtube to learn how to overlay the original song over the lip-syncing in editing without hearing the original audio and making it look realistic. In different videos it had tips and tricks such as always getting your actor or actress to actually sing the song when you are filming and just cut it out later, it makes it easier to match up the mouth movements with the different words in the song. Having your audio always on is another helpful bit that we forgot at times thinking that we wouldn't need audio but then when we got to editing we didn't know what part they were singing.

Social Media Page

Demi Lovato, Instagram Page 

Username: l0vato_fanpage

Link: https://www.instagram.com/l0vato_fanpage/

This is the main cover page you see when going onto the Instagram page that I created. I tried to add in little things such as the "Musician" title to make it more realistic. I added highlights which are stories of different moments in the 'singers' life, for example, I put one backstage when they were supposedly producing the song 'What Other People Say'. I also added one of a dog because on Demi Lovato's real Instagram page she has stories of normal things such as pets or family outings etc. It almost humanizes our artist. 

This was the first image I posted on my Instagram page. It was to imitate the feeling of her being backstage and recording parts of the song, almost like a sneak peek of what was to come which I took from Demi Lovatos and other recording artists' pages. It was a very common thing to release small images and teasers for the album or single that is going to be released. 

I posted this once the Digipak had been and prior to the showing of the digipak I posted things on stories and highlights leading up to the release. 

Something that has been seen a lot on the media lately is how Demi Lovato is now Non-binary, therefore they now refer to themself as they/them. This had only been known throughout the making of our social media page so I tried to include little things such as quotes and images supporting the LGBTQ community. Because Demi is they/them, I chose to use the Non-Binary flag because it is something that relates to them as the artist we are trying to represent. 

Digipak Online Covers

 Front cover:

Back Cover:

Inside Left:

CD back:

DigiPak CD Case

Demi Lovato Digipak by Kayla Lockington

Digipack Hand drawn Mock-Up

 

Digipak Photo mock up feedback

Digipak photo mock up feedbak by Kayla Lockington

Digital Mock up

Blue and Yellow Greeting Eid al-Fitr / End of Ramadan Instagram Post by Kayla Lockington

Filming Process

 Behind the scenes:

These were the first shots we got as we filmed it during a school day and it was easier to get access to the sanctuary. In my opinion, these were our most time-pressured shots as we had to try and get them done all at the same time, and because we wanted the lights to be on and we didn't know how to work them so we had to get Duthie to help us in order to get the perfect colours. We had to leave a little earlier because Pastor Peter needed the space to film but we managed to get everything done and I think the shots turned out really well. 

Filming wasn't too bad for the first couple of tries we only used the camera and microphone most of the time so it made setting up and packing down a lot easier and faster. We already knew how to use the camera from doing media in the previous year so having to do white balance and focusing the camera was simple. 

We did the majority of filming at Grace's house. This is where we got the shots of the mother and the daughter together. We were also able to film our car scenes since the road outside was the perfect backdrop and setting for what we needed. In the beginning we were supposed to be filming more scenes to establish the relationship between the mother and the duagther at the beach and othe rlocations but unfortunatlyey we didnt hvae enough time. Our male actor was suppsoed to be played by Ethan but he was unable to do it and because of this we didnt put a dance into a video which was supposed to be used as cutaway shots on the stage. 

CCR Draft notes

CCR Notes Draft

1. How does your video represent social groups or issues?

• We chose to use a vulnerable storyline where it shows and represents a lot of emotion, we thought that because of this it would be best to use a female actor as our main character as society sees them as more in touch with their feelings and sensitivity. Our male character is seen as a companion to the girl who is going through this hardship. He is almost used as a type of symbol, representing the fact that not only, females/teens/pale-skinned people go through this but that in fact, all people of every nation and ethnicity face the same challenges.

• Use of a typical caucasian female with blonde hair, a typically seen character portrayed as the ‘perfect’/’ideal’ female.

• The main storyline of our narrative music video is the fact that we are targeting a younger demographics issue, where a lot of young people in the 21st century are struggling against depression and anxiety, so by targeting a topic that we feel is a common occurrence in this day-in-age, we are grabbing our target audiences attention as they may be able to relate to the video or know someone who may be going through the same thing.

• At first, we were discussing using different ethnicities so that there would be a differentiation between the characters, but unfortunately, we weren't able to find anyone that could act for us. This was because usually in most films or videos, whenever there are opposite gender roles they are both most times the same skin colour or ethnicity. We wanted to challenge this but because of circumstances were not able to achieve our original idea but were still able to utilise the people in our group, using one of our team members as our male role.

• The idea of ‘growing up’ is a key theme that remains constant throughout our video. It is something everything goes through, but obviously, as our music video tries to portray not everyone has the same upbringing or outcome and that the fact is that life can change in the blink of an eye no matter how good life may have been previously.

3. How does your music video engage with the audience?

• At the beginning of my music video, I have tried adding a scenic video downloaded from youtube in order to create an intro type start that introduces the song title and engages with the audience as they are left in the dark about what actually is to come but get the sense of something slow or calming, possibly a false sense of security as later on in the video we are able to see what really happens and the death of the girls' mother after having built up the relationship (a rapid climax in the music video)

• After having done previous research from our focus group and having gained other information I tried to adapt my video in order to satisfy my target audience's wants. A lot of what was said that possibly needed improvement was the soundtrack to my music. I was able to find the original song and add it so now when audience members watch the music video and then hear the song on the radio or in public they automatically subconsciously think of my music video because it has that relational connection. This means it has the potential to play an everyday part in people's lives.

• The video contains both stage (theatrical) performances as well as shots from everyday life. The memories of the little girl and the mum almost act as flashbacks within the mind of our main character like we can see what she sees and have that prior knowledge for why she is now in so much pain. This can help to connect with our audience on a deeper level as if they are going through what she is going through.

• Because we have chosen to target a younger audience we have made our music video available on different platforms such as Youtube and Vimeo, which a lot of young people in this generation know how to use, making it easier for them to access and engage with for example, like, share or leave a comment.

• I have used editing techniques that make it an ‘easier viewing experience’ for audience members. Certain shots have been aligned with the beats in order to create a satisfying yet immersive viewing experience

4. How did your research inform your video and the way it uses or challenges conventions?

• Because we chose to do a narrative-based music video, we included the main story that was not too hard to follow as explained in our focus group. This is a typically seen thing in a lot of current music videos as it gives the audience something to watch and take interest in. It is also in my opinion the easiest theme to cover when filming your own music video.

• A common convention in pop music videos is that they use a lot of theatrics for example excessive lighting rather than creating a natural look they go over the top with brightly shone lights that are often coloured in some way. There is often a stage or some type of performance that is seen intermingled with the other footage of the music video, hence why, since our song is from the mid-tempo pop genre, we chose to adhere to these conventions in creating our storyboard and shot list. We were able to make use of the resources around us to make our video look less amateur.

• Pop music videos often have a lot of close-ups and mid-shots when filming. Our footage consisted of a lot of close-ups because of the fact that we wanted to see a lot of our characters' emotions and we thought that is best portrayed if you are close to their face and can see the picture of how they feel. This only added to the music video as it became more clear of what type of music video this was and instead of focusing on the external we wanted to draw more attention to the internal.