CCR - Final self reflection

 This is my critical self reflection for my music video high school in Jakarta:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQACmAr3sxdxorpTpauFca1PrAkvfPe_CAujYfheHNScTWo-Hj3owe-45szO8xO2tAYOfYUTOMupPby/pub 

Intro: Our music video “High school in jakarta” by Niki has the pop genre with a mix of indie. In our music video, we subvert typical high school music videos themes such as love and friendship. Instead we choose a deeper meaning for the music video, the darker side of high school, allowing us to get a unique perspective with themes such as life after breakup, feeling alone, school, etc. We chose “high school in Jakarta” because we felt like it was the most durable due to the school setting mostly, making it accessible for us and we are able to shoot at spare times in school. Our star, Hannah has a relatable and introspective persona which is shown in the music video by capturing raw emotions of teenager life’s struggles. Hannah is also presented as vulnerable yet expressive through the music video and in her instagram by being relatable to audiences. 

P1: Branding is a way where stars persona, dominant reading, visual and themes are curated into one to make a product like music videos, digipak and social media feed which they need a strong branding to make sure of the connection between all the post and making sure artist is instantly recognizable for their brand identity. My star persona is curated to be authentic, relatable and vulnerable to appeal to teenagers, in the music video positioned as a young introspective teenager going through breakup and self discovery to make herself relatable to the audience and reinforces her identity as a storyteller. Dominant reading for the music video and digipak is how there's a darker side in being a teenager whose emotions are complex. The overall branding on music video, digipak and social media page share the same soft colours to give off nostalgic vibes of a highschool student (light blue, purple, white, grey). The camera shots of intimate close ups, natural lighting in the music video also reinforces the theme of personal reflection. The branding on social media pages included behind the scene pictures, teasers, personal messages that the artist gives & funny pictures to show her fun, funny side with random bits from shoot which reinforces her being relatable making a connection with the fans. On the digipak, the bold and messy handwritten combined shows how she reinforces fun and implying on the ups and downs of highschool. Locked panels and handwritten doodles make it feel like a scrapbook, personalized.

P2: In the research, I researched indie pop music conventions and I analyzed some artists such as Olivia Rodrigo, Clairo and Billie Eilish. I confirmed some genre conventions such as narrative based story lines. Most of the music videos I analyzed have a clear storyline in the video, which has a linear progression to show climax and also resolution. Other than that I choose a similar aesthetic which uses natural settings for their lighting such as softer looks to create vintage, nostalgic feeling to the music video. In music videos usually there are lots of closeup to show emotions, conveying them for the audience to connect with the music video emotionally. However I subverts some genre conventions such as the love story trope where in the original music video of NIKI it portrays her in teenage years falling in love, me and my team decided to make it more realistic and relatable to match the branding of our artist. The artist in the music video is also left with emotional ambiguity as there are no clear sad or happy endings, which in real life is usually just the way things go. The music video is also made to be personal and raw using handheld methods as it symbolizes turbulence which shows how a teenangers life is messy and uncoordinated. This choice reinforces the artist's authentic and introspective persona curated as a relatable artist which makes the music video more impactful. 

P3: For digipak, I conformed to some conventions in how pop artists establish branding using media such as continuation from music video which looks like an additional scene from music video due to the same theme. The digipak uses muted colours which confirms to the alt pop conventions as the song isn’t fully pop but mixed with indie as usually they do pastel/desaturated to reinforce nostalgia. I subvert some digipak conventions such as using handwritten fonts to add a personal touch like a journal which is not usual for professionally

produced albums to add a personal touch. No super strict photoshoots but more candid, natural and funny pictures which aligns with the theme. I also subverted in the digipak where the theme of the photoshoot is the same. However my teacher opted for a serious look for the serious and introspective tone in the front cover and a more personal, funny, casual picture in the inside of the digipak. This contrast gives the audience insights into both side of the artist persona such as and exclusive look in the inside, this adds personal touches.I like candid, natural poses and funny pictures more than professional and serious pictures for digipak as the aim is to be as relatable as possible and authenticity to create an emotional bond with the audience. Other than that there are technical elements that confirms the convention is the straight camera look pose as it creates a sense of direct connection with the audience, which is why artists usually use this type of poses to make them look more emotionally open and present. 

P4: High school in Jakarta music video explores the struggles of high school relationship, studies and self discovery mostly focusing on breakups, uncertainty and the emotional complexity which subverts the usual representation of a high school story in media. This is due to the usual representation of highschool is overly expressed as to confirm into idealization of romance and friendships. However, I subvert from typical high school stereotypes and use more quiet and introspective moments to make the storyline in the music video more relatable and personal to the audience. This shows the other side of highschool which is it can be a place of loneliness, uncertainty and personal growth from the bad things that surround her. To support the dominant reading, shaky camera hand held movements are used to show to the audience as if they are experiencing the roller coaster of emotions with the artist. Other than that muted colours connotes sadness, isolation alone as it matches how the artist is feeling in the music video/mathes how the artist wants to portray the music video. Stuarts Hall reception theory can be used as the music video encourages audiences to engage personally and interpreting personally. Unlike high energy music videos that uses fast cuts, this music video uses slower pacing to show the artist lingering on emotion which makes the music video immersive. 

P5: My star persona was curated to be authentic, vulnerable in order to appeal to teenagers who go through the same thing as they did, or relatable due to the unfiltered emotions being shown in the media. Using branding across all factors such as music video, digipak and media, our artist Hannah is reinforced as a relatable emotional storyteller as her branding and persona. Her instagram page shows bits into her more realistic and relatable contents reflecting her funny persona through candid, post, behind the scenes and her dog pictures in addition the digipak uses handwritten notes and doodles to reinforce the 90’s scrapbook feel. Colors such as muted tones in the post enhances nostalgic and reminiscent, however realistic, as the artist outfit choices match introspective themes in the music video. Other elements used are school setting used to convey the teenager persona and branding using blue & white color scheme and settings such as lockers and notebooks which is posten to promote the artist instagram. However, those unfiltered glimpse into the artist’s life shows rawness and unscripted personal moments that are taken using close ups or medium shots with natural candid pictures makes the audience feel as if the artist is approachable and relatable, making an emotional connection with the audience. Dominant reading of teenangers discovering, heartbreak, nostalgia make the branding realistic as everything aligns from the style, themes and brand identity. 

In conclusion, the project, although challenging but feels very rewarding as I am able to analyze successfully in depth of teenagers identity and emotional struggles which is used to further storytell into the music video and to showcast the visuals to the social media in order to connect to the audience. However i would improve the narrative story to make a clearer storyline and to put more consistent branding in order to represent teenage identity and emotional struggles well while maintaining aesthetics, visuals, colours. I would also improve in using more angles for the cinematography to make it more fun such as more lighting, angles, effects as it would create a more interesting result. Overall, because of this project I am able to learn better communication with my team, better teamwork and analysing more well in branding, socials teaching me the importance of the elements, I would also like to take more creative risk that would make the music video (or other project) subvert more for experiments.

Self Reflection: Looking back to the CCR, it gives me newer insights into personal branding and how it is all tied together with representative, star pesona, etc. However if i'm being honest i do not feel like CCR is as important as other researches as most of the things in the CCR are already taken from other research blogs. CCR is a good way to finalize reports for the whole entire projects. 

Final Promotional Package (High school in Jakarta MV)

This is our final result of the MV, Digipack and Instagram page

youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrVqu8xWExc

Digipak

Front:

Back:

Inside covers:

Inside covers (lined):

Social Media

Self Reflection: I was very satisfied with the results, definitely could do better but since we're still media students and were learning it's pretty cool to see our first ever MV. I also really like how my teammate (Jocy) edited it, i think she's skilled for a media student. Although there are some challenges such as missing from behind the scenes, limited time as we need to manage with exams, I think we did pretty well as we gave our all into making this music video. My team (Jocy), also has really great ideas which is inputed in the music elements as she does technical stuff while I do the researches or give feedback/input into the work she does. I think we balance our roles well and teamwork plays a big role in our music video. Overall, this project caused me to learn many technical elements and valuable skills that we can use for future projects. 

Audience's feedback (Screen test)

This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our music video, album cover, and social media page to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. (made by Jocy)

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if their are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use google forms to create a survey to share with our audience because it makes it really easy for us to compare the answers and even provide graphs for if we use quantitative questions. Here are our questions: 

1. Choose three words to describe our artist.

2. What do you think of our social media layout?

3. What improvements can we add?

We chose these questions because we want to better understand how people view our artist and their social media character/presence. We included members of our target demographic in the screen test to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Here are the drafts that we showed audiences for the screen test: 

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

Note: an unfinished edit of our final music project was shown !

From the feedback we learned:

- our coloring could be improved/changed

- the story of our music video wasn't understood

We are going to change:

- The color tone, we plan to edit the coloring of the music video once all the clips are finalized and everything is edited into the timeline as we want to make sure all the clips have the same coloring, ensuring none of the scenes have a different setting than others.

- Even though our product isn't done and the scenes we do have are shown out of context, we had atleast hoped that it showed the main star/character was upset or heartbroken. The next time we show our product we hope most if not all audiences see the story we are trying to convey.

This screen test was a useful part of our process because:

- It helped us review over what we could change and what could be different (in this case, lighting). We think it's important for media products to be tested and reviewed before finalizing the product and just publishing/posting it, as it could result to a better product that everyone (and especially the audience) would love.

Reflection: The screen test helped a bit as we get feedbacks to improve. However the screen test video that we showed is the uncomplete version as we have not done the filming completely that time, so the audience commenting and watching it might not understand as some scenes weren't there yet. My teammate Jocy used the results from the google forms feedback to further improve what needs to be done and I (Sharon), was the one who made the forms to send it out to the audience for a screen test.

File Organisation

My team (Jocy) wrote this blogpost. In this blogpost I will show how I organize my files for the scenes used in the music video for it to be edited. 

In my file explorer, I have a seperate folder to keep all the files I transferred from my camera over to my laptop. In that folder I have a seperate folder in it for media and I organize the files via the date it was shot at.

We shot different scenes each day, and at first I thought it'd be difficult to have to rummage through all the different folders for each individual scene (not to mention the many takes it took for each one), however I recalled that in my notes app on my phone I have a list of all the scenes we need to shoot (for me as the cameraman and editor to keep track of), and I had written down the date of when we did the shooting.

Advantages: It's rather organized and I haven't had much trouble using this method, so far it works great and until I find issues, I'd prefer to keep track of my filming projects this way in the future.

Disadvantages: The only problem I encountered was if I forgot to note the date down. Thankfully it has only happened to me once, I had to rummage through my camera's SD card to see the date of which I recorded the scenes.

How did this benefit me?

I like organizing the files this way, it makes it easier for me to just look back on the dates of which we recorded specific scenes on my phone and then just pick them out from my files in my laptop. 

Self Reflection: Organizing the files made things much easier for me and my team as sorting our the dates and keeping tracks using notes app, we can also keep track of the things we have or haven't done yet without the need to waste time searching for scenes we haven't done by looking at the video/etc. Even if sometimes the date isn't written down, the notes app is very convenient to use as it is reliable (it has checklists too).  This shows me the importance of file storage/checklist is when filming as it speeds up our process. 

Behind the scenes - High school in Jakarta

Here me and my teammate will show behind the scene photos and the scene descriptions of each one, this is to show our progress and how our filming experience went for the music video. (this was written by Jocy)

Over all with behind the scenes, we forgot to take actual behind the scene pictures most the time so I have to improvise and use any picture we took that day that happened to involve some filming we did (unfortunate, but better than nothing).

I used my notes app (explained in the file organization blog) to keep track of when and what scene was being recorded!

First day - 01/08/2025 || At school

pre-chorus (so1 halls - locker, sharon n kezia)

People in the shot: Kezia (our friend who played Hannah's friend)

Second day - 01/20/2025 || At school

Verse 1 (classroom, anyone around) “didnt you hear.. - …on your vespa”

verse 3 + pre-chorus2 (in bedroom) 

People in the shot: Sharon and Kezia (respectively)

People in the shot: Jocy

Third day - 01/30/2025 || At school

chorus2 (classroom, Sharon exbf+gf) “We were a sonata… - …loved you harder”

chorus2 (so1 halls, sharon + random ppl)

bridge (transit) (so1 halls, sharon n kezia + exbf n gf)

People in the shot: Kezia

Fourth day - 02/02/2025 || Sanur beach (behind the mall ICON)

verse 2 “it was orange from 3 percent”

Chorus1 “we were a sonata, thanks to tight lipped fathers… - …but i loved you harder” 

chorus1 “you love-hate your mother, so do i”

pre-chorus2 “that you’re better… - …we’re older”

chorus2 “high school… - …suburban armadas”

chorus2 “high school… - …came out smarter”

bridge “i made friends… - …march or so”

last chorus "say thanks to your mama... - ...high school in Jakarta"

People in the shot: Sharon

Fifth day - 03/06/2025 || Sharon's house

redo first scene (15 seconds) (gaps)

final scene 

People in the shot: Jocy (hand)

Sixth day - 03/07/2025

reshoot - Hannah looking at ex

People in the shot: Ata, Ryan tj, Gio, Jaden (all of which are media students except for Ryan tj).

Note: unfortunately no bts pictures on this day, I was in a rush and just wanted to reshoot a quick 10 second clip of the Brandon (playe dby gio) and his friends chatting.

Seventh day - 03/11/2025 || At school

digipak + screen record messages

last filler scene (bathroom)

Digipak alternates + screen recording of messages

People in the shot: Sharon

People in the shot: Sharon

Reflection: Jocy did the camera work and since we only consist of 2 people, so Jocy had to take behind the scenes as well. I personally find the BTS shots very complicated as we need an extra pair of people in order to perfectly take a behind the shot pics. However, turns out we are able to conduct it properly (maybe not as well but we tried). We also divided our work such as technical blogs for Jocy and other research ones are for me. However due to the lack of people we don't have as clear behind the scene shots only some pictures from some scenes.

Additional: 

this is an example of how my teammate (Jocy) had to record the BTS shot, which is very hard to record BTS while recording the actual scene. 

Post Production: Editing

In this blogpost I will show my progress and experience as I edit the scenes for our music video. (this was written by my team (Jocy).

yt playlist of all the drafts: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLREIman2VXEPRd5Ej-aZjROtCQAFGiQgl&si=ZvgdRDMobORSuHI9

This is a playlist of each time I exported the music video in different milestones and major progresses made, I used this incase I needed to keep track of what the previous edits looked like as I go along. My editing software (Microsoft Clipchamp) wasn't exactly the best software to use, and it was constantly lagging, so the drafts also made it easy to check on how the end results of each change I made looked like, as the lag in the software could make it difficult to actually rewatch the video itself at times.

The original intro was originally 30 seconds long, it was Hannah (Sharon) grabbing a box of old items that was given to her from her ex boyfriend (Brandon) and looking through the belongings. We were adviced to keep the intro short (15 seconds), so we had a reshoot and got a good intro that was around 20 seconds, which I had asked my teacher again and he confirmed the time was alright since forcing it into 15 seconds didn't look as good. The start of the video I wanted to establish that she was missing this person and isn't exactly moved on yet. I used an over the shoulder camera angle so that the audience could get a good view of what Hannah was looking at.

In this scene I wanted to show the audience that Hannah felt sad as she hasn't moved on from her ex boyfriend. Here we see a text conversation between Hannah (green bubble) and her friend (gray bubble) where she mentioned that she hated the ex and was still upset over him. The editing process for the text graphics took a really long time, especially since I had messed up the first time I screen recorded the messages. I used a green background to apply the green screen effect, however I had forgotten that the text bubbles were also green, so when I applied the effect it removed the the texts along with the background (refer to image below)

When I finally got to rerecord the text meessages, I used a red background instead and applied the green screen effect on the clip except on the color red. It worked wonders and despite it looking kind of roughly edited I was really proud to have been able to got over the green screen problem as I thought it was vital for the messages to be included in this scene. 

For the camera angle and positioning of the subject, that being Hannah, I had purposely sat her in the corner of the screen and curled up in a chair, I wanted to show her almost look like she was shelled up and alone.

This hallway scene took so long to film. We had to reshoot twice, first time I had used just myself and a camera, but the shaky random movements didn't really make the scene look good. Second time we got to shoot this, my gimbal device had finally arrived and I was able to use it to walk down the hallway and film Hannah without the camera shot being too shaky and messy.

This scene I wanted to show that she was REALLY alone. Having to walk through couples and even getting her path blocked by them, and then running into a lively big group of friends that she had to squeeze by. The scene following to this she was in the bathroom alone and was frustrated over how lonely and almost depressed she felt over a break up.

These scenes I wanted to show her doing work with a friend, which then resulted in gossiping about her ex and Hannah happily claiming she was "over her ex". When it cut to Hannah in the dark, with her phone as the only source of light, the singing in the song goes "I wasn't..." to kind of match that she wasn't exactly moved on. I had the same problems for the text graphics here, however since this was later on in the video, I had already fixed the problem before so all I had to do was quickly rerecord myself scrolling through the initial break up text from Brandon. The scene was basically just Hannah alone in the dark, having just lied to her friend about being over the break up, when really she was still reminiscing over her ex and still not over him.

This is a match cut edit I made, the first scene shows Hannah listening to her friend, before noticing Brandon in the distance and shifting her attention. The pov shot in the next scene showed what she was shifting her attention to, and the following scene after (image below) shows her upset after having seen her ex.

I wanted to keep the end of the music video simple, Hannah tries on the jacket she got from Brandon one last time, before angrily packing it up back in the box along with the plushie. It cuts to her in the beach with said box, with the music video ending as she walks down the pier towards the ocean. From here, the audience gets an open ended conclusion where they can assume that Hannah was finally over Brandon and decides to throw the belongings into the ocean (amongst other assumptions! The ending is up to the audience to interpret).

Reflection: Usually when my team (Jocy) edits, I usually watch beside her as it is interesting. She did all of the editing as she handles technical things while i handle researches. I really like how she comes up with many interesting transitions such as the match cut, the locker closing scenes. I see how she always times it very well using technical elements. Although editing is not as interesting for me, I still try to give suggestion when I can even when Im not as good as my team, but I like to suggest colouring or maybe my team (Jocy) likes to discuss with me her ideas. 

Branding Research

Artist from our genre: 

Olivia Rodrigo

• Social medias >

• Music albums

• Music videos : "Drivers License", "Good 4 U", "Deja Vu"

• (Magazine shoots/interviews)

Interviews:

What brand identity are they giving off?

- teenager (heartbreak, angst): this is as her music video shows her raw emotions through filming and her lyrics. Her personal touch to the songs bring out a sense of nostalgic and a way of finding identity in teenager phases.

- Purple: throughout all her music videos, brand promotion, album covers, personal lifestyle shows her favorite color for purple which makes it her personal color that people connects her with.

-Authenticity: she creates authentic and fresh content using her personal image and colour with lyrics that relate to teenagers.

What is their persona? relatable and open, funny, pop star. Olivia Rodrigo is seen to be relatable and open due to her post in social media where she post alot of behind the scenes moments and unfiltered glimpse into her life, everyday life experience which makes her more relatable to others.

Her humor also plays a big role in her persona shes creating as shes not afraid to be herself having fun in interviews and lifestyle. Whether it’s through interviews, TikToks, or Instagram captions, she keeps things light and entertaining.

As a pop star, she blends emotional depth with mainstream appeal as a typical popstar. However her music snd lyrics are personalized by her own life experiences which. Her music, heavily influenced by personal experiences, resonates with fans who relate to heartbreak, self discovery, and teenage angst. As her songs are based of personal life experience, the song writing feels authentic which causes a strong bond between her and her audience.

She also brands herself by using outfits that stands out, typical pop star artist outfit which has the characteristics of shiny, stand out, bold, colorful and vibrant. These typical conventions uses outfits (concert fits)that stands out to 

 characteristics and colorful showing fun, bright, cheerful. 

These are the example of typical pop concert outfits from some famous artist:

Olivia Rodrigo’s concert outfits:

Olivia Rodrigo follows the pop conventions, such as outfits in order for people to recognize her as a pop artist.

Taylor Swift

Social medias:

• Album covers:

Lover (2019):

1989 (2014 & Taylor's Version 2023):

The Tortured Poets Department (2024):

Midnights (2022):

From each of her cover albums, she has a clear concept on each of her music video. Such as lover which has colors such as pink, soft. The example shows how each of her music has a clear branding and clear idea & story.

• Music videos : "TTPD", "Midnights", "Lover"

Taylor Swift is known for her cinematic, movie like story in her music video as each of them has a clear storyline.

• (Magazine shoots/interviews):

Taylor Swift is a strongly created pesona and branding which she uses to share informations about her music to her audiences. Taylor swift's

personal branding is storytelling/music writer as throughout her music she always achieves this story like, poetry.Artist usually rely on personal

post to drop their music. However where her lyrics has a deeper meaning and even cryptic messages are hidden across, connecting people with her

music even more. She usually writes songs that are vulnerable, relatable to her personal experience which makes her audience relates to her even

more. She's open about her struggles such as music industry, relationships, ect making her feel more real and approachable to her fans.

She is THE pop icon, where she creates era's by reinventing albums and different styles of music. Where she uses glittery and bold outfits

when she performs confirming the usual pop artist conventions and mainstream appeal, as she is one of the biggest influence in pop. Each of

her album has a specific palette as well, which helps her audience differentiate each era of her music.

Self Reflection: Researching both Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift's branding really helped me understand the concept of branding

and how it can be implied to my artist in the music video. I think the key is consistency and having your own uniqueness which is created by artist

using visuals, music and social media presence. For my music video, me and my team plan to make the branding for our artist (Hannah) her

personal star image to make her stand out, relatable and aesthetically appealing.