YEAR 13 CCR!!
Our product is an emotional narrative lip-syncing MV of the song Die For You. We have followed many conventions of these genres such as reaching and breaking equilibrium, lots of blur, kissing and fighting, shallow depth of field, low hyper-realism, two main characters, etc. The narrative is based on the love between an broke-up couple and we have used the women perspective to narrate the story which challenges the stereotype that men always dominates the relationship. We have built up the narrative by gradually using more impactful shots such as the water diving shot which has strong, vibrant, color and composition. Our song’s lyrics originally demonstrates the issue of long-distance relationships and it’s original MV is about love that could sacrifice self for the other half, but we have changed it into loving someone in a toxic relationships which targets a larger audience. The MV specifically, acts as a voice for the female social group to demonstrate the trauma females go through after breaking up. We have not gone into a race or ethnic level representation as we chose our actors wholly due to the location we’re in (China). Also, we believe that because emotions and facial expressions are a worldwide code in semiotics, it could be easily understood by a very wide demographic. A Chinese artist called Zhiqian Xue has inspired us a lot during our planning because the elements in his emotional narrative MV such as tears and broken vases can conveys emotions very clearly. The other parts of the coursework which is our social media page and digipak also challenges the conventions by using things such as live-streaming to advertise and and not using love symbols such as hearts in the digipak design.
As a whole, we appeal to all people who have relationship problems between the age of 16-35 as they are mostly the people who will listen to this kind of music when they’re going through hard times in their relationship. The imagery we create in the MV, such as the flashbacks, would fully reflect how they are feeling at the moment. However, our product has unintentionally excluded the LGBT group as we have only demonstrated the love between a male and female.
My product creates branding by clearly establishing our artist’s character and our product’s genre through cross-media branding. The MV have portrayed Shirley (our artist), as an emotional girl who loves so deeply that she fails to be conscious after an emotional breakdown. She dresses like a black widow when she sang she song in the barren land scene which is implying that she’s not willing to fall into a new relationship. In contrary, in the flashbacks, she constantly wears white t-shirts and jeans which represents her innocence and purity when she was in the relationship. It shows that after this relationship, she has grown, but she still loves her ex-lover deeply and can’t get out of this mess. This character branding aligns with many females nowadays and we have given a lot of shots on Shirley in the MV to reinforce this to the audience. The MV is then promoted by other parts of our product such as the digipak and the social media webpage by using pictures from the MV and designing them in the style and convention of an emotional MV. For example, I have used blue throughout my digipak to show the sorrow of the song and a bit of pink to hint the love going through. I’ve also made a post introducing our character Shirley showing off some of her personal pictures as an artist to further establish her.
Audience engagement is mainly shown through our rough cut viewing, social media webpage, digipak, and final MV. The rough cut viewing allows us to do some final touches and adjustments to our product before we release it to the public as we have created rating and feedback forms for our audience. This means that we’ve involved the audience into the production of the product. The social media accounts on different platforms allow audience from all around the world to be updated on our product’s newest information. I have created posts on the release and promotion of the product such as the information of the presale and the lucky raffle. I’ve also opened live streaming to interact with our fans. For the digipak, I have created both online and offline versions for our audience to choose. Every single one will have it’s own number which will make every single audience feel that they’re special. It will also contain 2 Polaroid pictures with my handwritten font which closes the distance between me and the audience. The final product also interacts with the audience in someway. We have a a lot of shots where Shirley stares straight at the audience as if she was talking to them. This pulls the audience in as it breaks the fourth wall.
The research I did at the beginning gave me a heads up to what my product should look like at the end. I found out the key elements and conventions of the emotional, narrative, lip-syncing genre and even did a tryout with another song called “Heartbreak Anniversary” to see if I like this kind of product and am I able to produce it. Through looking though hundreds of examples of MV, digipak, and social media webpages, I have merged out my own style of product by following genre conventions but challenging social expectations of the content. By learning technologies and softwares in editing MV, creating digipak, and building social media webpage, I have maximized my ability to engage my audience too. So overall, I believe the research I have done fully informed me and got me prepared to start and finish my product.