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.