Maddie McDonald

1. Name: Maddie McDonald Candidate number: 3324 Critical Evaluation Throughout this essay I will discuss how and why we made the choices we made to create a campaign for our band UFO (United Freaks Organisation). As a group we had several songs that we thought would be good to work but in the ended up, using the song Take It by Chemicalia. To coincide with our music video, we created a Digipak and Social Media page to communicate with the audience of the band. In our music campaign we promoted a band who we wanted to represent as a confident, deranged and rebellious, group of people to follow the representation of a stereotypical indie/ boy band. Out of the four band members three are male and one is female. They are all represented as manly giving a feel of a typical boy band, this is shown through the placement of the band during the performance, the lead singer is placed at the front, guitar and bass to the side and the drummer at the back. This is a very typical layout for a band. They are also all wearing the same outfits and are all shown together in the social media posts and on the front and back cover of the digipak. We felt this would be the best way to represent our band as almost a family as it is very common in digipaks by similar bands such as Maroon 5 and One Direction. The research that we conducted into other bands digipaks helped us with the layout of ours. We placed the lead singer at the front of the band as we are representing him as the star persona of the band. The low angle shot was used to make them more intimidating giving them a sense of power over the audience.

2. However, although the members are represented similarly, the female drummer is still wearing makeup and a pink top supporting the dominant stereotype that women wear ‘girly’ things like the colour pink and makeup. This supports the principles of Judith Butler’s ‘Theories of Gender Performativity’. The point of us creating this image of the band was to change the audience’s thoughts of a stereotypical ‘boy band’ by attracting heterosexual males through the female drummer and create a sense of confidence in females allowing them to feel that they are free to do and be what they want instead of feeling they must be a stereotypical ‘girly girl’. Reflecting and further engaging our target audience with more modern ideologies, such as gender equality. Age is represented in our music video showed through the rendition of a stereotypical rebellious teenage group. In the music video there is a wide shot scene of the band in a skate park running away from something or someone. We did this to create a sense of enigma for the audience making them question what disobedient action they have done to have to be running away. Throughout our Digipak and social media, we created a consistent low-key lighting and ripped dark denim costumes decorated with messy paint, to create a sense of mystery and confidence to the band. However, although we have done this to create this rebellious persona in our social media page, we do have some more high key lighting pictures with the band in more casual and simple clothing such as jeans and oversized jumpers and jackets. This contradicts our efforts to creating the picture of an unruly teenage group.

3. Our intention across our campaign was to appeal to the values, attitudes and lifestyles of the target audience by understanding the psychographic. We have chosen to reflect the young male demographic through the choices of media used and how they provide the needs for the audience. The use of red serif font is used throughout our social media and for the band logo in the digipak. This creates a consistent image for the audience making them more aware and familiar with the bands branding. The use of social media will allow the audience to have the instant gratification of being in touch with the artists movements and releases making them feel special and unique. This all feeds into Richard Dyer's Star personae where the star is the commodity which is sold to the consumer. In the

4. digipak the band is presented in an intimidating way due to the low angle shot used on the front cover, the use of black denim clothing and low-key lighting. We intentionally chose this because we wanted to make our band come across as confident, but also gave them the connation of being more than just friends playing instruments but a real band using live music style lighting. This also was consistent throughout the music video and social media which will help the audience distinguish our band’s campaign to other bands of a similar/ same genre. Our music video offers the audience entertainment diverting them form the real-world trouble that they may be experiencing. This is provided through the use of the band's energetic, fun and exciting persona. The audience can relate to this feeling personally but when they are watching the music video, they get a sense of euphoria without having to actively find an activity to feel this way. This makes the audience engaged in what the band is doing and the future releases that they are working on. In a social media post, we used a direct and informal mode of address to the target audience: “Who’s ready for the drop of our music video, January 2022 (save the date)”. The Digipak engages our target audience though personal interaction with the use of an informal mode of address on the inside of the digipak where we featured a message from the band saying, “Thank you for purchasing this compact disk”. This gives the audience a sense that the band is

5. communicating with them directly, making them feel they have a personal relationship with the band. The band also gives the audience essential information asking them to visit their website for updates on new music. This information is important as it helps to push the audience to access the right sites online. This personal interaction is also shown throughout our social media page with posts saying, “Here are some sneak peek bts shots...we can’t wait for you guys to see the results #UFO #bts”. After analysing multiple indie/rock band's music videos such as The Hive- Walk Idiot Walk and Arctic Monkeys- Fluorescent Adolescent we took ideas from these music videos resulting in us wanting to make our lead singer as an energetic and crazy star persona. We did this through making him the central point of the performance aspect in the music video, shooting multiple close-up shots whilst he was carrying out unusual facial expressions and eye movement (making him stand out even more). He was also featured more in the digipak than the other band members also repeating these exocentric facial expressions. We intentionally chose to be conventional in this respect supporting the theory that Steve Neale thinks that audiences enjoy repetition in music videos. In social media posts by real bands such as 5SOS, I found that typically within the genre social media posts have multiple photos with low-key lighting with the focus mainly on men. Goodwin following conventions and why as a new band it was therefore important that our audience recognise the genre, therefore by following these conventions we were able to make the audience know what

6. they are getting when they start to follow the band. We wanted our band to follow these conventions, so we replicated this approach in our social media posts by using low key, spotlight, lighting. Subverting conventions such as having a female drummer in our band of boys doesn’t just attract a range of different audiences it also keeps the genre fresh and unpredictable for the audience. We also incorporated photos in high-key lighting where the band looked more casual especially within the clothes, they were wearing such as jeans and oversized jumpers and jackets. We deliberately chose to be conventional because we wanted our campaign to be recognisable to the audience however, this can become boring and predictable, so we also chose to subvert the conventions to make our campaign more unique. This follows the theory from Steve Neale who says audiences enjoy genres that are made up of difference and repetition. 5sos Instagram

7. Our Instagram (high-key lighting) (low-key lighting) To conclude, I think we did a good job at following the codes and conventions of an indie/ rock band as we included the common enthusiastic personalities that are portrayed in similar bands. We also executed personal interaction well with our audience using our digipak and social media. However, I do think we could have done a better job at creating a more distinguishable brand for the band. We could have done this through making merchandise with a consistent logo for fans and posting that on our social media. This would have made the band stand out more to the audience especially due to the spread of the logo over different elements such as retail.