This is our final music video.
Final Music Video:
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 reading of the brand, preventing inconsistency which could cause misinterpretation, weakening the band image's identification and credibility. BLΛST's branding is centered around presenting teenagers as politically aware-challenging 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 works 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 theory of stardom concept by Richard Dyer which suggests that stars must appear ordinary enough to be relatable and likeable. Our stars were deliberately shown engaging in mundane interests such as passion in 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 more firm 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 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 changes 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 or subvert across all media products. Typical alternative rock digipaks often feature low lighting, muted colors, and dark coloured undertones and effects such as grains, distortion, scratches, and messy layouts. These elements symbolize seriousness, rebellion, 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 adhere 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 subverts the typical seriousness of the generic conventions and highlights 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 interpretation. Its simplicity and low-budget aesthetic conveys 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.
This is the editing process of our music video. This and the editing was done by me
MV blogThis is our branding research, done by Sagara
BrandingThis is our research and development. This was mainly done by Gusde.
White Minimalist Building Construction Presentation by Gusde Yaka Digipak Research by Gusde YakaReflection: I think Gusde did a great job. We had an opportunity to discuss many of his ideas for the digipak development and eventually landed on the perfect idea which was inspired by Radiohead.
This is our social media research presentation for our project. This was done by Maisie.
Social Media Research Comp 3 Social Media Development Comp 3This is our persona and brand mindmap classwork, maisie did this
