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Name: Anastasiia Lukinskaia Candidate number: Critical Evaluation In this essay, I will discuss a media campaign that I and my artistic group created. We created the entire social media campaign, music video, and digipack for our artist Matilda due to her new single "Boys Like You." Furthermore, we have subsidiary character Malaika, 'with whom Matilda was collaborating on her debut album.' Malaika worked as a producer on the music video for 'Boys Like You,' and appeared on the screen herself. She also has her own Instagram page which mostly contains backstage shots and other information about the music video. In this music video I wanted to represent my artists as 2 strong independent feminine characters that would stand for women’s power and stand for feminism, but also appearing as stereotypical young white girls surrounded by tinsel and diamonds. Thus, reinforcing Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory: even though the entire production team was composed entirely of females, we chose to draw our characters from a 'male's perspective' to contrast the notions that females may pursue their own projects and run independently of men. Throughout the video, I was aiming to emphasise, the lead singer, Matilda's femininity by highlighting two crucial features: her seductive appearance and her innocence. In the monitors scene, for example, she is dressed in a tracksuit with an unzipped crop top and defiant makeup that draws attention to her eyes, allowing her to create deeper eye contact and thereby make stronger connection with the camera/viewers. In terms of camera movement and angles, I chose a fixed camera because it allows viewers to focus more on the character's body language, which has its own subtext, resulting in a more intimate and flirtier environment. She is touching herself in the shot and moving her hands down on top, implying that she is a stereotypical female figure that society has come to sexualise. Besides, I decided to make a
transition between the mid-shot and the wide shot of Matilda, so the audience can first focus on her facial expressions and then see her full hight in a sensual position. I also chose to only use fluorescent lighting in the shot to create a more intimate setting. We used dim lighting to create a private ambiance, which helped me ’sexualise’ the character. However, in the final shot, Matilda is dressed in a short flutter dress with two side ponytails and pink eye makeup, wandering barefoot, and painting on the walls and on herself, all of which are typically considered childish behaviours. Thus, viewers may observe significant changes in the character and the message she sends throughout the music video due to the fast pasted editing. I wanted to represent her in this scene as a total opposite of the cliché of the young girl that people, primarily male members of society, believe is stupid and reckless.
Matilda also has the greatest number of shots and screen time than Malaika, which may slightly subvert the expectations that she is more important. While the music video subverts gender stereotypes, the album artwork adheres to them. I chose pink and blue as the primary colours for the Digipack. This colour scheme is frequently associated with children, such with gender reveal parties or bubble gum. I chose these colours to reflect the singer's 'childish' side; but, to represent both aspects of the character, I decided she needed to wear a red top. Red symbolises passion and love, while pink is a pale red hue that is frequently connected with love and romance. As a result, I was able to combine these two ideas, although emphasising the charming, happy, and innocent side n contradistinction to the music video. I chose to feature a close- up of Matilda on the digipack's cover. Her hands are on her cheeks, and she has a wide smile on her face. This welcoming image and colour palette are intended to attract the interest of the feminine segment of society, as we then explore the subject of women's strength through the artist's character.
In terms of the Instagram, I chose the primary colours of red and yellow. I previously discussed why I chose red, this contrasted to my choice og the colour yellow as it usually associated with optimism, joy, and happiness. These characteristics are typically associated with insouciance and childhood. As a result, this aided me in combining the two stereotypes I was attempting to portray on a single page. Additionally, I created a stark contrast between the page's content and therefore the stereotypes. Matilda presented her first makeup collaboration with 'Superdrug' on Instagram. All products in this collection were designed in a red/pink colour scheme and included a company emblem in the shape of a kiss. This integration portrays my character as a stereotypical girl that is concerned with her appearance, enjoys wearing makeup, and acts girly. However, she is ‘making faces' in practically every single image, which is unusual behaviour for an adult or typical female who aspires to seem 'perfect'.
By knowing the psychographic, I was able to appeal to the target audience's values, attitudes, and lifestyles throughout my campaign. We chose to reflect the young female demographic through the media we used and how they were structured to meet the audience's demands, such as the need to feel supported by other females in society in terms of sexism. The use of the red/pink colours on the digipack, Instagram page and the music video allowed me to connect all branding and content aspects together creating hidden meaning behind the character. I also chose Jonathan font for the merchandise, digipack and the Instagram promotion posts to create the connecting feature for all the products, allowing the artist and followers to be part of the same community. The audience wants to be alike their idols so the unique branding that is straight connected to the artist will raise the sales of the products and encourage activity on the social media.
My star’s ideology is similar to Beyonce’s view on how women are independent and should not be controlled by men. According to that, I made research on her merchandise products and found out that she always uses album’s/song’s titles for each new drop of clothes. Each of the releases is aiming to highlight different topics and therefore aimed at different audiences, however they all connected with the same main theme of female's power. Due to the fact that my character has only one release yet, I decided to make the connecting point the artist herself, as she is the primary embodiment of our concept.
Using social media will provide the audience with the immediate satisfaction of staying up to date on the artists' moves and new releases, making them feel special and one-of-a-kind. The climax of all of this is Richard Dyer's Star theory that suggests that the star is the product that is sold to the customer. My music video aimed to make the audience appear in the world of glam and fashion, providing them with diversion through the use of extravagant colours that create an intimate environment in the video and out-of-the-ordinary looks that transport the audience to another world of fashion and glamour that is distinct from the real world, all while remaining true to the artist's vision. Camera mostly focuses on the facial expressions or the body movements of the artist or following her movements. That makes the viewer follow the lead of the artist and focus not only on the whole image but exact parts of it (mainly body, mouth, and eyes). Fast cut editing contrasted with long fixed shots keep the audience interested as the image and the locations in the shots are changing quickly. Long fixed shots which are mostly contain upper part of the artist’s body makes the whole video more intimate and creates the world of glamours and sex, because in real life people do not pay that much attention on body language of other people. Constant eye contact or leading moves
create personal connection between the artist and the audience, therefore keeping the viewer involved in the process of the music video. Frequent questionnaires on the Instagram also keep the audience involved as they feel like they are taking a part in artist’s personal life. I also decided to write posts on the Instagram addressing them straight to the audience e.g. asking for their own opinion on the several topics. As it is her first music video, I was mostly aimed to just engage females' audience, however Instagram posts on her personal page can lead to the topic of the further releases (such as body positivity and self-acceptance). Therefore, I decided that it would be beneficial if our artist would support topics of current interest that are applied to our audience’s contingent. I put a few posts in support for the body positive community, educational post about the importance of male's mental health and the motivating post about the importance of self- acceptance. These topics are wide speeded within our target audience, therefore support from the favourite artist will encourage positive feedback and help to expand the audience.
The digipak addresses our target group of powerful women by employing an informal style of communication. On the inner panes, we presented a greeting from the artist to her followers, using everyday language such as "Hey Guys". This would also give readers the impression that the artist was speaking directly to them, as if they had a personal connection with her. As I mentioned previously, the sense of personal connection with the artist encourages followers to support her and
make them be more active on the social media. My group and I decided to use pop genre song for our production. I did research and highlighted key features of this genre: fast-past editing, stereotypical female figures (often sexualised/shown from the male perspective), bright colour pallet (for example, in 2020/2021 neon colours were the most in demand ones). We decided to follow the traditional representations of the genre, thus focusing on unordinary costumes of both characters, unusual locations, and dancing moves throughout the video. Steve Neale’s theory stands for the opinion that audiences enjoy elements of difference within genres. Thus, we decided to contrast the bright appearance of the main artist with the vibes of the secondary character – Malaika. We made her character substandard for the genre we chose. Throughout the video she was only wearing black and white outfit that were contrasted with her bright makeup. Malaika also had her own shot where she appeared in black and white chessboard stylised room featured by dimmed green and blue lighting.
We also decided to combine two of the environments in the shot where Malaika and Matilda appear together. We chose to use blackbox room that is non-traditional for our genre, however using spotlights and putting our characters in ‘fancy’ shiny outfits. Therefore, we were able to combine two styles in the same music video. Pop musicians typically upload pictures of themselves in pleasant and welcoming settings, such as hanging out with their friends and behind the scenes of their videos, in social media postings by actual artists like Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa. It was key for an artist's marketing to have a defined genre to create expectations with an audience, therefore I posted daily selfies of the artist on her Instagram profile with backstage footage from the filming day. As a result, I was able to establish this crucial link between the artist and the audience, maintain the conventional vision of the pop genre, and develop the appropriate look for the figure who embodies female strength on social media. To summarise, I accomplished my primary objective mainly through the use of specific camera movements and angles, shot compositions, and singer's depictions. The colour palette and unique features such as branding, and the character's behaviour allowed me to establish my artist's own community. As a result, a strong foundation is created for the audience, who will then lend its support and assistance to the artist's growth.
