Final - Promotional Package

This blog consists of my groups final music video, digipak, and social media page. This blog is written by me (Rara) 

Music Video

MV Gdrive Link: The Weekend

Digipak

Front Cover

Inside-Left

Inside-Right

Back cover

Mock-up

3D Mock-up 

Social Media 

Link to our instagram social media account: Cinta Kyle

Audience Interaction

Question box (story/highlights)

Final - Critical Self Reflection

Here is the critical reflection for my Component 3 which includes a music video, digipak, and social media. This blog post is written by me (Rara).

1. How do your products represent social groups or issues?

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

3. How do your products engage with the audience?

4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

According to the brief set by Cambridge, students had to create a music promotion package consisting of the music video, social media, and digipak. My group decided to create a fictional pop star called Cinta Kyle and covered the song “The Weekend” by BIBI. You can find the links to my groups blogs in my team introduction post. In this essay, I will be delving deep into our pre-production, production, and post production.

We conducted extensive research across various music video genres to passionately pursue our creative vision. This process refined our conceptual framework, helping us determine whether our final product would adopt a narrative or performance-based structure. Our aim was to maximize creative potential and ensure a cohesive artistic output. Central to our mission was portraying a dualistic persona within our artist, embodying the contrast between innocence and assertiveness in romantic relationships. This aligns with Levi-Strauss’s Binary Oppositions theory, where contrasting elements drive narratives, creating tension and engagement.

Through analyzing pop music video conventions, we strategically conformed to and subverted key dynamics to craft a compelling love-themed narrative. Targeting teenagers and young adults, we applied Steve Neale’s genre theory, balancing convention with innovation. Traditionally, women in love narratives are portrayed as euphoric and idealized. Our artist, Cinta, presents a more complex persona, oscillating between vulnerability and assertiveness, challenging gendered stereotypes while reflecting a modern view of relationships. By doing so, we engaged with evolving gender discourse, emphasizing female agency within romantic storytelling.

Steve Neale’s notion of genre as repetition with variation influenced our creative choices. We included conventional close-ups of emotions, synchronized dance sequences, and high-energy montages while challenging the passive portrayal of female leads. Cinta’s assertiveness counters the pop trope of female dependence on male validation, aligning with Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory. By subverting this norm, we reclaimed agency for the female protagonist, allowing her to shape the narrative and challenge expectations within mainstream pop culture.

Our research on Asian representation revealed prevalent tropes in romantic narratives, often slow-paced tales of heartbreak. We diverged by introducing a "player" persona, challenging the underrepresentation of Asian men as confident in romantic contexts. By centering Asian characters, particularly Asian women who are often sidelined in Western media, we aimed to counteract marginalization. This representation not only corrects historical underrepresentation but also appeals to our target demographic.

Furthermore, by incorporating an Asian-led love story with a bold, confident female lead, we sought to normalize the presence of Asian artists in global pop culture. The predominance of Western beauty standards and Eurocentric narratives in the music industry often results in the exclusion or stereotyping of Asian performers. Through our music video, we challenged these norms and expanded the scope of representation.

Applying Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratifications Theory, we understood that audiences seek personal identity reinforcement in media. By featuring an all-Asian cast, we strengthened connections with Asian communities, allowing them to see themselves reflected in the narrative. In the digital age, social media amplifies audience interaction. Comments, likes, and shares provided real-time feedback, helping us refine our approach. Active audience participation in media consumption, as seen in Henry Jenkins’ participatory culture model, further supports this interaction.

During production, we integrated various media elements to convey feminism, love, and young adulthood. The artist’s name, "Cinta" (Indonesian for "love"), anchors her branding. Red, symbolizing passion and romance, visually reinforces this theme. Her "innocent" persona wears soft pink pajamas with plush toys, while her "player" persona dons bold red attire, aligning with Levi-Strauss’s Binary Oppositions theory. These visual contrasts drive the narrative and enhance engagement by creating clear symbolic differentiation between the two personas.

Red is a recurring motif across Cinta’s digipak and social media, creating a dominant reading (Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory) of her as an artist intrinsically tied to romance. Symbolic codes, like lipstick kiss marks and a heart-shaped logo, reinforce her flirtatious persona, drawing from Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory. The digipak follows conventional pop music packaging, ensuring familiarity while maintaining uniqueness. The incorporation of vibrant imagery and romantic symbolism creates an intertextual reference to classic pop artists, reinforcing genre expectations while crafting a distinctive identity.

Dyer’s Star Theory shaped Cinta’s public persona. He suggests stardom is built through relatability and unattainability. Her social media blends curated imagery with behind-the-scenes content, fostering parasocial relationships where fans form deep connections despite the one-sided nature. High-fashion photoshoots juxtaposed with casual vlogs enhance her appeal, increasing fan loyalty. This dual representation of celebrity both as an aspirational figure and as someone seemingly accessible aligns with contemporary audience expectations of authenticity in media personalities.

Post-production focused on refining Cinta’s social media presence, integrating personal and professional content. Her daily routines, like exercising and singing covers, alongside childhood glimpses, align with Richard Dyer’s Star Theory, portraying her as both extraordinary and relatable. Engaging directly with fans through comments and Q&A sessions fosters intimacy. This interaction aligns with Marshall McLuhan’s "global village" concept, where digital platforms create instant connections and community. The use of Instagram Stories and live-streamed Q&A sessions allowed for real-time engagement, further reinforcing her authenticity as an artist.

Utilizing short-form content on TikTok and Instagram Reels maximized reach, leveraging Henry Jenkins' participatory culture, where audiences actively engage rather than passively consume. Encouraging user-generated content, such as dance challenges and lip-sync videos, deepened audience investment, making them co-creators. This interactive strategy extended the campaign’s longevity and strengthened audience connection with Cinta. The use of trending audio and interactive hashtags further reinforced digital virality, positioning her within the broader social media landscape.

Our promotional strategy also incorporated cross-platform marketing, ensuring Cinta’s brand was consistently represented across YouTube, Spotify, and social media platforms. Collaborations with influencers helped amplify visibility, following the trend of influencer marketing as a key tool in digital branding. This strategy capitalized on the shift from traditional promotional methods to influencer-driven engagement, particularly effective among Gen Z audiences who prioritize peer recommendations and digital word-of-mouth.

The construction of Cinta’s identity extended beyond the music video into carefully curated content across multiple digital platforms, ensuring consistency in her artistic vision. This multimedia presence was crucial in solidifying her star image, demonstrating the importance of transmedia storytelling in modern music marketing.

Our project represents a theoretically grounded approach to music video production, branding, and audience engagement. By balancing convention and subversion, challenging stereotypes, and prioritizing representation, we crafted a product that resonates deeply with its target demographic.

Link gdocs for CSR (just in case the text is off):https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-qMh1h-wRNUk3dAmMk55njJrt0_BnRCc_dRLa8Bp0jE/edit?usp=sharing

Audience Feedback

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. This blogpost is written by all of us (Chelsea, Kalista, Rara, and Audrey).

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google Forms to create a survey to share with our audience because of the platform’s availability to collaborate online and allow sharing to others which made it easy for production and distribution. This online platform utilisation is also quick so audiences are more encouraged to engage with our survey.

We divided our questions into sections in relation to different components of our product. 

Here are our questions: 

Section ‘Music Video’:

(Several short snippets from our music video are shown) 

1. Do you relate to some of the elements in our product? 

2. What message do you think we are trying to convey from our concept?

3. What is the most memorable scene from our music video to you? 

Section ‘Digipak’:

(Images of our digipak cover and inspiration pictures are shown) 

1. Which digipak are you attracted to the most? (1/2/3)

2. What is the most appealing feature from our digipak?

3. How likely would you purchase our digipak from its cover design? (On a scale from 1-5) 

4. What do you want us to include in our digipak? (Lyric book/Artist personal story/Posters/Stickers/Other)

Section ‘Social Media’:

(An image of our star’s Instagram profile is shown) 

1. Choose 3 words to describe our star “CINTA”

2. Do you prefer our social media to be professional or intimate? (All intimate/Mostly intimate/Mix of both/Mostly professional/All professional)

3. How would you like to communicate with the artist on social media? (Instagram live/Interactive Instagram stories & posts/Online meet & greet/Responsive towards comments/Responsive towards DMs/Reposting mentions/Other) 

We chose these questions because these servers will lead us to knowing our target audiences better and if our concepts align with what they are expecting and engaging with. We included members of our target demographic in the screen test to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was easy because we had lots of connections and people who were already anticipating and enthusiastic on our project. We specifically chose our audience to be non-media students in order for us to grasp more feedback from a wider perspective of consumers rather than other producers. We want to understand how our music video appeals to the actual target audience hence we tested it out to other seniors. We had incorporated feedback from previous media students (alumni) on our screen test who had experiences with Media Studies hence they are able to decode elements and our intended meaning to further analyse it. 

Here are the drafts that we showed audiences for the screen test: 

Music video (compilation of rough snippets): https://youtu.be/yXV2x3ienro 

Digipak cover sketches:                          

Digipak cover inspiration pictures:

Instagram profile:

 

Google form link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd8Tp1WgTbEH85P17N8IB-LtqTwXZa2-ZnA5NbuWkUMwPpMRg/viewform?usp=header

Here are the RESULTS from the audience feedback:

View link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGfm1d5UAc/2BfURXX-AuEPU6MZeenzBg/editutm_content=DAGfm1d5UAc&utm_campaign=

designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Embed link:

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK RESULTS by chelsea tirta

From the feedback we learned that our genre conventions fit the target audiences that we are aiming for as most of the audiences are able to decode the message that we are implying through our music videos. With teenagers being our main target, audiences now know what they find appealing and interesting in our MV. Moreover, through asking opinions from our audiences regarding the design on digipak, what are the audiences expecting about the content of the digipak, as well as how they want to interact with the star, this helps us in creating a product that is aligned with our target audience's demand. 

We initially wanted to conform to the pop genre conventions of digipaks as their music albums usually consist of a close up shot of the artist with a plain, colored backdrop. However, after compiling feedback from the participants, we found that they preferred a shot subverting to the conventions. Many of the respondents chose digipak design number 2 which included the artist facing a mirror instead of looking directly at the camera. We understand that our audience wants elements that aren’t conventional as they want something that is new and interesting to them.

This screen test was a useful part of our process because it allowed us to reach our target audience on a personal level. By engaging directly with viewers, we gained invaluable insights into their preferences and expectations. This feedback was key in shaping our creative decisions, ensuring that our final product resonates deeply with our intended target audience. Additionally, the screen test assisted us in confirming our project's vision was relevant and valid by making sure our message and visuals were aligned with and relatable to our target demographic. As our project is still in progress and not fully completed, it is crucial to receive constructive feedback at this stage to prevent incurring extra costs for reshoots and edits after the project is published. This way, we can tackle any issues in advance.

Self Reflection: In order for our message to be decodable and can effectively reach our target demographic (teenagers - young adults), it is helpful to conduct a audience feedback. This allows us to collect comments and feedback from audiences as we get to know what our target audiences prefer to see and what they expect to see in our music video. The form was created by Chelsea I helped distribute this form as well as evaluating the result we recieved from our audience. Even though this task actually took a long time to accomplish I was happy to see the positive remarks it got as our audience was also giving good feedback and insight allowing us to put more emphasis on our narrative which we were aiming for. We used the knowledge we received to maintain consistency in our branding as we knew our audience already understood the message we were trying to convey. So after making adjustments we found that our social media page gained lots of engagement as not just from our personal mutuals but people on the internet would follow and interacts with our account.

Post Production - Editing

Here is our editors (Chelsea) editing process. This blog is written by (Chelsea)

To edit the music video, I used CapCut that is compatible for Macbook, this is a free editing app for PC designed for beginners (like me) and experienced creators which offers a variety of tools for both basic and advanced editing tasks to create high quality and visually appealing videos. CapCut also has an online version that is meant for novice editors and doesn't require downloads or installations; nevertheless, I got the installed version on purpose in order to edit offline and organise my files better. Below are the process of my editing sequence in this presentation file: 

- editing view link:https://www.canva.com/design/DAGegcZMnDs/_Yb1y3BU_D5rLDK6-Sr6gQ/edit?utm_content=DAGegcZMnDs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

EDITING by chelsea tirta 

 - revision view link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGhSdtHidU/61cd8IdYdzMxmlSIng_mKg/edit?utm_content=DAGhSdtHidU&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

EDITING REVISION by chelsea tirta 

Self Reflection: Our editor Chelsea did a great job in putting our ideas together, since I gave my insights of what too add or remove Chelsea was very patient in taking in those critiques. She explained the edits she utilised well as its easy to read and understand. Because we didn't have that much time too finish this with everyones busy schedule of exams and we also had no the time to meet together to finalise everything. We understood that we mostly needed to fix our MV's colour grading so it looks brighter and more visually appealing. As Chelsea added other effects such as the heart to keep our mv aligned with our overall branding of "love" I (Rara) learned that these effects and features added really help enhance the overall theme and mood of the MV which is more upbeat, fun and feminine. 

Production - Behind The Scenes

Here is my teams behind the scenes footage. This blogpost is written by all of Chelsea, Rara, Kalista, Audrey 

BTS DAY 1 by chelsea tirta

BTS DAY 2 by chelsea tirta

BTS DAY 3 by chelsea tirta

BTS DAY 4 by chelsea tirta

BTS DAY 5 by chelsea tirta

Self Reflection: This was actually quite fun to do when I made the first 2 days, but as we got to day 3-5 it got too repetitive which made it seem boring to me. I even got stuck on what to write because the days we shot our music video was very far apart from one another, making me forget what we did during specific scenes. But since we had almost all the pictures and even videos from each day it helped me recollect what we had done. This BTS allowed me to look back on the process of how I got to my final music video, seeing how we as a team carefully choose to do a certain movement or acting pattern to match the narrative of our music video. And since I played the role as the camera man I had to know how to direct our star well, we wanted it too look as natural as possible so we let our star improv some scenes. But we should've checked the equipment and location before hand so that we know what was broken and if the location we picked was too crowded. But in the end it all worked well as we found other ways to fix our issue which is by having a second location already set in place. 

Production - File organisation

This is our teams file organization for our music video project. This blog is wrtitten by Kalista 

My team mates and I used several apps to communicate, combine our work, and to make everything organized and easy to find which  really helped us on the process of exporting clips. Our primary mode of communication was WhatsApp, which we used to coordinate with our cast and crew. This platform allowed us to quickly spread information, schedule shoots, and resolve any last-minute changes, making our process more efficient. To further enhance accessibility, we created a WhatsApp community group, ensuring all key updates and discussions were centralized in one place.

Since we had different side cast members scheduled on different days, this system was particularly beneficial in managing availability. Whenever uncertainties arose regarding which actors were available for a shoot, the group chat helped us clarify and adjust our plans accordingly.

File Management & Storage

Beyond communication, we utilized Google Drive as our primary storage solution. We systematically organized our footage into dedicated folders, including:

• Screen tests – To review performances before final shoots.
• Raw footage – To keep unedited clips accessible for editing.
• Behind-the-scenes (BTS) content – To document our production process.

By consolidating everything into a single drive with well-labeled folders, we significantly improved accessibility and changes speed. This structure allowed us to locate and manage our files efficiently, reducing delays during post-production.

Overall, this organized approach played a crucial role in ensuring our smooth collaboration, minimizing confusion, and increasing our production workflow.

Self Reflection: Having this file organisation actually saved a lot of time for my group. Even though it took a long time to set up at first, we can easily share our finalised works or coordinated with specific actors/actress to know which day their available as we can coordinate the location, time and outfit after everyone has agreed on the specific date. This minimises miscommunication between cast members and production crew as if anyone has a question they can easily ask in the messenger app "whatsapp".  We also had our photos and videos organised on gdrive which allows for easy access to download and pick the image/video needed instead of scrolling up thousands of times to find just one "BTS" picture. I helped add the clips I recorded onto gdrive so my team can have the final say on what clips to use this also eases the process of editing for our editor (Chelsea) as if she lost one file she can easily go back to it.  So I fond this to be very helpful as I belive our structure is already well organised, but if I had to change something I would seperate each picture with its own folder of what day we shoot it just to make life a little easier.