Maxine-RegentsMedia

This is my critical reflection of our music video project

Our team chose "Karma Police", an alternative rock song originally written by Radiohead in 1997, later covered by Pierce the Veil in 2023. We created a fictional teen band named BLΛST, which produced a music video, social media presence, and digipak to address political issues. Our target audience is teenagers and young adults (15-25). This essay discusses our use of technical elements to construct branding, shape star image, conform to or subvert genre conventions and engage with our audience.

Branding is the deliberate construction of audience perception and associations surrounding a brand or identity. It is important because it shapes the audience's reading of the brand, preventing inconsistency, which could cause misinterpretation, weakening the brand's image identification and credibility. BLΛST's branding is centered around presenting teenagers as politically aware-challenging the dominant representation of youth as being uninformed or apathetic. Their brand identity is shown through the music video's political theme, fast-paced editing and narrative structure, which work together to create a sense of confrontational, socially aware, and rebellious identity image. However, BLΛST has different depictions on and off-screen, as well as across platforms.

On social media, BLΛST are presented as more ordinary and approachable, aligning with the ordinariness in the theory of stardom concept by Richard Dyer, which suggests that stars must appear ordinary enough to be relatable and likable. Our stars were deliberately shown engaging in mundane interests such as a passion for music, while also revealing a playful side through humorous posts often captioned in a light-hearted tone, directly addressing the audience through phrases such as "you guys", showing authenticity in their band. They also often show their appreciation by liking or responding to comments by using emojis, which also connotes youth knowledge of media literacy.

On the other hand, BLΛST's identity is presented as firmer and confrontational within the music video to reflect the significance of political themes and allow them to be taken seriously. We demonstrated this by choosing justice and the cycle of corruption as our theme. Visually, our music video displays dark green and cream undertones as well as grunge lighting with visual effects such as grainy and warped effects (fig.1). The muted tones suggest seriousness, and the undertones suggest decay. Combined with the dark lighting and low quality, these visuals create a sense of rawness and distortion, implying that corruption is very real and reality is often manipulated by those in power, highlighting the moral decay in today's society. The desaturation also creates tension and adds secrecy, suggesting a lack of hope.

As for our digipak, the overall vibe conforms to the typical conventions of the alternative rock genre, including dark undertones, low lighting, and low quality, which are all similar to the music video as well as the theme of their social media posts. The front and back cover of the digipak contains an image of a chalk outline of a dead man, but also a running man. This gives a message of the inevitable consequences of justice and reinforces the "you get what you deserve" ideology. This ambiguity also symbolizes the instability of power, implying that corruption does not last.

The contrast between the ordinariness and seriousness persona across platforms was deliberately constructed, allowing BLΛST to balance both relatability with political engagement. Audience perception of BLΛST beyond the music video is shaped through their Instagram presence, where they post ordinary content and engage with audiences, reinforcing relatability and accessibility. This cross-platform strategy demonstrates how meaning and identity change across media platforms, allowing different aspects of BLΛST's persona to be emphasised. However, the politically explicit branding risks limiting BLΛST's appeal among audiences who seek escapism from media texts, highlighting the importance of balancing their brand identity. Our MV, social media, and digipak all worked together to establish a clear brand, maintain aesthetics and shape audience perception.

My research has helped me identify which conventions of the alternative rock style to conform to or subvert across all media products. Typical alternative rock digipaks often feature low contrasted lighting, muted colors, and dark coloured undertones and effects such as grains, distortion, scratches, and messy layouts. These elements symbolize seriousness, rebellion, and rawness, and reflect ideology. Our digipak research has helped us by increasing our understanding of how certain technical elements can construct meaning and shape audience reading. Although our digipak mostly adheres to the typical features of an alternative rock genre digipak, we also challenged some expectations, such as the tray images showing BLΛST members with doodles, which subvert the typical seriousness of the generic conventions and highlight the band’s youthfulness and ordinariness. We aligned with these generic codes so that our audience can easily identify the genre of our media text. By conforming to the expectations of the alternative rock style, our digipak connotes our rebellious image and helps shape our audience's interpretation. Its simplicity and low-budget aesthetic convey a message of youth bands or grunge culture, which reinforces typical alternative rock conventions. The use of handwritten chalk messages expresses the band’s personality and humanity.

In contrast to our music video and social media, the digipak was deliberately constructed to have a different color palette to convey the idea of it being an "aftermath" of the chaos and corruption shown in the music video. The cool blue-grey tone was selected to give an impression of the cold and sterile look of CCTV lighting or police station lighting, reinforcing the institutional and systemic feel. While the music video utilizes green grunge tones to highlight the 'sickness’ of society, the digipak adopts a more detached and institutional aesthetic, which suggests that corruption is not an individual issue but a structural corruption. As for social media, the grunge green coloring was chosen as a way to follow typical conventions of alternative rock aesthetics, matching the rawness and underground aesthetics of the band members. We chose to have our digipak represent the “aftermath” as it could function as a foreshadowing to the full chaotic narrative that will unfold in the music video; this operates similarly to film marketing materials that subtly foreshadow narrative outcomes, creating a sense of inevitability.

Our target audience consists of teenagers and young adults aged 15-25, inclusive of both males and females. We chose them because contemporary teens are becoming increasingly aware of global political issues, which makes them susceptible to the perspective on authority, power and injustice. Alternative rock songs also adopt the themes of youth rebellion and attract those through our message of justice and criticism of institutions.

Demographically, we target the youth market that consumes music primarily through digital platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube Music. Psychographically, we target those who have an interest in alternative rock or those who hold values aligned with our themes of rebellion and social justice, making them more receptive to the encoding perception of our music video.

Our social media page appeals to our target audience by balancing both political consciousness and the relatability of BLΛST. The music video constructs a political perspective of the band, focusing on political awareness and alignment with audience ideology and values, which helps strengthen engagement, and viewers would feel represented. However, for other posts featuring the relatable side of BLΛST, it connotes a more mundane and approachable connotation by using humorous captions, responses and direct address, giving a sense of accessibility and intimacy as it makes viewers feel included and valued.

This reflects Henry Jenkins’ theory of fandom, where audiences can become active participants via discussions, comments, and content sharing. The engagement encourages textual productivity as it makes participation, community building and discussions more accessible.

Our band’s social media platforms also fulfil the Uses and Gratifications theory by Blumler and Katz. The diversion category of the theory is provided through entertainment from the music video, as well as their Instagram posts and reels. The personal identity category is given by allowing the audience to be able to align themselves with the band’s political values or beliefs. Social relationships can also be made through interactions in comment sections, as well as in online communities such as Discord. Lastly, surveillance is also fulfilled as audiences can stay informed of the band’s activities, beliefs or other topics the band may create content about.

Furthermore, the audience interaction reflects Clay Shirky’s concept of “End of audience”, where audience behaviour has progressed from passive consumption of media texts to a more active consumption of products, such as through the use of fanspeak in Discord or in the comment section of Instagram. (fig.2)

Hermeneutic codes are used across platforms to maintain audience curiosity and engagement. For example, the digipak's ambiguity, shown through the chalk outline, which appears as both a dead body and a running figure, acts as a subtle foreshadowing of the narration shown in the music video. This encourages audiences to engage with multiple of our media products to interpret the message, promoting consumption across multiple platforms.

The visual similarities across the music video, digipak, and social media create a cohesive brand identity through a similar dark, muted color palette, grunge and grainy texture, as well as the low-quality aesthetic. This consistency reinforces BLΛST’s rebellious and politically conscious persona and maintains their political branding whilst highlighting the band members’ alternative rock persona. Additionally, we used semiotics to allow implications of hidden messages and meanings through indications such as coloring, effects and quality, which were intended to show the institutional system in a negative aspect.

Our music video represents corruption as a systemic issue rather than an individual one, suggesting that it operates within a wider system of power that does not stop after the fall of one person. Our media texts also engage with youth culture through alternative rock preferences. To represent our issue, we combined the four technical elements-camera, mise-en-scene, sound and editing- to shape the narrative and create a dominant reading. This dominant reading is likely to be understood among our target audience of teenagers and young adults, as their increasing exposure to political discourse allows them to recognise the cyclical representation of corruption and align with the video’s critical perspective on power and injustice. Our dominant reading demonstrates the inevitable consequences of corruption and abuse of power, using a corrupt politician facing his punishment as a narrative. The reversal of the events at the end of the music video emphasizes that corruption stems from systemic issues rather than individual issues.

We represented these issues through a combination of camera, mise-en-scene, sound, and editing. Camera work includes angles such as low angle to convey power and control, as well as high angle to convey vulnerability, highlighting authority and oppression. There are also close-up shots to draw the audience's attention to facial expression (fig.3). Mise-en-scene, such as lighting, props, costumes, and actors, support the narration of a power-hungry corruptor, while the band scenes convey a tone of rebellion and youth energy. The use of suits depicted a sense of power and seriousness, which aligned with the oppressive tone of corruption. As for the sound, it is mostly dominated by the music, which undertones energy, tension, and urgency. Editing, such as cut-to-the-beat, is often done in rock music videos not only to evoke energy, but as a way to get the intended message across to audiences in a more engaging and memorable way. We also used editing, such as reverse, as well as some added effects, such as warping, to make it more obvious that the scene is in reverse, reflecting the cycle of corruption that we intended to show.

Our representation of the band members' personas revolves around ordinariness in the Stardom theory, portraying BLΛST members as relatable, youthful, laid back, and approachable. The contrast between their social media presence compared to their on-screen persona humanizes them and encourages fan connection. Whilst our narrative conforms to stereotypical serious and intense rock genres, our digipak and social media subvert those expectations: our social media reveals a more playful side of our band members, and our digipak design features a more youthful and childlike side through the doodle tray design (fig.4).

In conclusion, our media texts work together to encode BLΛST’s politically rebellious identity while allowing audiences to actively participate through social media, demonstrating both media ecology as well as Uses and Gratifications theory. I believe that our products have succeeded in delivering the intended message effectively, as our connotations and use of semiotics have maintained consistency, reinforcing the band’s identity across all media platforms.