Branding Research

This blogpost will revolve around our branding research, which helps us understand deeper how a musical artist’s brand is perceived and helps us to identify opportunities and make strategic decisions for our main star (Cinta Kyle). This blogpost is written by Chelsea, Kalista, Rara, and Audrey, collectively as a group.

The artist we choose for this branding is Sabrina Carpenter.

Our Media Studies teacher required us to find examples of their; 

• Social media 

• Music albums

• Music videos

• (Magazine shoots/interviews)

And analysed the artist’ branding strategy and image with a few questions to answer.

Here is what we found about Sabrina Carpenter.

Music Videos:

Espresso - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVli-tstM5E

Feather - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLbn61Z4LDI

Nonsense - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcSP1ZUf1eQ

Instagram: 

Albums: 

Magazine covers:

Interviews: 

Concerts: 

What brand identity are they giving off?

Sabrina Carpenter’s identity is more girly incorporating lots of pink, red, and things that are associated with kisses. This gives the illusion that she's more of a feminine artist with her over the top outfits (sexy)  throughout different media products, it builds an image that she's a global style icon as most of her outfits go viral on the internet. Especially in her albums and instagram she has built an identity with the colour blue, where we can see her most popular album ‘short and sweet’ uses a blue backdrop and another album called ‘espresso’ using a light blue backdrop it allows audiences to associate the colour blue with Sabrina almost making it her trademark. Furthermore, other mise en scene elements such as Sabrina's hair, makeup and outfit has been kept constant throughout her whole music career as shes known to use glowy makeup with lots of blush, iconic blonde volumized blowout which shows audiences that this is her brand image and it has been kept the same throughout her new albums. 

What is their personality? 

Sabrina Carpenter builds an empowered yet mischievous feminity by incorporating glittery outfits in soft pastels and romantic cuts with strong stage presence. In other pictures, her poses and expressions centre on female agency within the music industry, and challenge the notion of passive female representation. Another thing is that, Sabrina Carpenter curates a carefully crafted image embodying her youthful charm, fashion-forward style, and playful personality on Instagram. Her feed, a combination of editorial-quality shots and casual behind-the-scenes moments, has a funny and relatable energy that is still elevated. She often taps into nostalgic aesthetics, Y2K-inspired dress and pastel color palettes, which gives her a visually signature pop aesthetic. Her engagement strategies include: behind-the-scenes or personal stuff that gives fans a connection, touch of humor and self-awareness in captions that complements her relatable persona. Additionally, for music video persona, Sabrina combines playful with edgier tendencies. In Feather, for instance, she utilizes bold, pastel visuals crafting a persona who is both untroubled and in complete possession of herself. Likewise, in Nonsense she leans into a flirty, cheeky vibe, doubling down on her brand as playful, fearless and confident. What we can learn from her branding is that her brand lives in a space between femininity and confidence, where cute aesthetic finds a home with playful lyricism and audacious storytelling. cinematic storytelling, she aligns cohesive themes through her music videos and across her social media to maintain brand consistency. As well as, her activeness on Instagram through fun comments, personalized posts and such allows her to engage with fans on a personal level.

What image are they creating for themselves, how? 

Three things that are associated heavily with Sabrina Carpenter’s image are cheeky, flirty, and vintage. Firstly, Sabrina Carpenter creates an image that is associated with vintage, old Hollywood, and retro style conforming to the traditional conventions of women. Her reel persona relates to Hollywood glamour from her social media marketing, concerts, and outfits as her inspiration mainly comes from the 50s-60s aesthetic. Her advertising and social media presences mainly consists of fonts and typefaces from 50s-60s newspaper or  movie poster and VHS overlays. Her iconic look showcases her vintage-inspired attire and channels old Hollywood pop icons such as Marilyn Monroe which we can see that she was represented through the bold, red lipstick and blonde curly hair. Second, her flirtatious image is conveyed through meanings and themes of her songs, exploring mature themes of love. Moreover, this could be a development from her image as a Nickelodeon child star into a mature pop icon. Her outfits and make-up looks bring up a very feminine look on her concerts, interviews, social media presence, and many more. Lastly, her image as a pop icon is cheeky as her persona reflects how she is a very friendly artist from increasing engagement and connections with her fans. She is very easy-going as reflected on social media. Moreover, the usage of colorful clothes at her concert may connote playfulness.

How do they speak to their fans?

Through her music videos, she uses narratives that connect to her female audiences more such as love, being hung up on a guy or even showcasing men treating women like a princess in her “espresso” album. It allows audiences to connect more with the artist as they will believe it will resonate with their real experiences or desires in life. While in social media, she uploads many stories of her fans reacting or lip-syncing to her new albums indicating that she watches the content her fans post, making audiences feel a deeper connection with the artist. And in order to keep her audience interested in her next shows or concerts she creates a certain element of surprise her audiences look forward to in each show. In this case her outfit that she's wearing for each show is different depending on which city she's performing at, with a towel covering the outfit until she shows the grand reveal before starting her first song. With each performance that she showcases the song “Juno” she adds a certain pose with the saying “have you ever tried this one” making audiences wonder what pose she's going to do in her next show, keeping audiences at their feet as they want to know what other surprises she has set in place for them. She also uses a lot of informal writing with emoticons such as “neowww” & “thank you :’)”. By speaking informally she gives her fans a sense of familiarity as she also directly consumes and replies to content her fans make, fostering a bond with the artist and audience. 

What visuals link all of the media products together?

In her media products multiple elements are used to create an identity specifically towards the artist. One of the most obvious is her choice of colour, pose, clothing and typography. These 4 elements are used throughout all her products: social media, music video, album, interview, concerts. In her music videos she mostly uses a vintage tone colour, fonts from the 50s that are in newspapers or movie posters with her pose being mostly flirty and showy and this is used throughout all her media products as it keeps her identity consistent allowing audiences to easily recognise her. It creates a feeling of nostalgia as she incorporates both modern trends with old Hollywood glamour but it mostly shows heavy emphasis on old fashion trend such as her 90’s hair blowout making audiences feels amused of how Sabrina is trying to bring back past trends while incorporating her own unique ideas such as personal kiss marks and letters in her digipak giving a sense of personal touch to her audience, connoting a flirty, bold and sexy demeanor of the artist. As she constantly pushes this idea her audience already recognise this to be Sabrina’s style as an artist because all her products theme flow well with one another as she mixes both 90’s and modern styles together creating her iconic PERSONA. In addition to that her over the top looks can be seen from her mise-en-scene such as her makeup and outfits that stays the same in all her concerts, interviews, and music videos. She uses clothing that is sleeveless that mostly shows her shoulders and legs indicating the sexy vibe she's aiming for, while her hair is always kept the same, an iconic 90’s volumized blowout with bangs. It leaves an impression that Sabrina is the “IT” girl always looking on point fully dressed to any event, allowing audiences to focus on the fact that Sabrina is someone they get inspired by. All these repeatedly used elements altogether shows her audience that she's building a brand identity that stands out as someone that is confident, indicating her being the “IT girl” of her generation making her stand out more than other artist. 

How could this artist influence you?

Sabrina Carpenter is one of our main inspirations for our branding as her consistency in upholding her image is top-notch. Carpenter’s identity as a former childhood Nickelodeon star was immediately unrecognised as her brand identity changed completely which was due to the consistency of building up a new image. We want to follow a great consistency in building our star’s brand in order to convey a clear interpretation of our star’s person by using a certain theme and color to uphold in every social media presence. Carpenter’s old Hollywood aesthetic had been consistently used in her music videos, social media campaigns, and concerts. We need to create a certain theme to follow for our star so posts and social media presence could follow and maintain this image. Moreover, Sabrina Carpenter is very feminine which we may tell from the symbolic usage of red lipstick and kiss marks. We are, especially, inspired by the kiss marks which are vital for her image and creates a symbol to represent who she is as a pop artist. We want to incorporate this element in our braiding as our target demographics are similar to Sabrina Carpenter’s.

Self Reflection: I actually spent a lot of this in this specific blogpost, even though we did it as a team I blanked out many times when thinking about the branding of our inspired artist Sabrina Carpenter. It was because she evolved so much over the years, from her whole marketing to overall branding as an artist it happened almost like overnight which I taught to be so inspiring because in the end it worked she became a global sensation again after her days in Nickelodeon. I enjoyed collecting all her media products since it fit our star's (Cinta) persona so much. I learned that mixing two era's can work so well for targeting female young adult demographics as it keeps them engaged with both modern and vintage era giving a sense of realism yet inspiring touch. Although the writing took forever, this helped my group understand how we want to brand our artists media products to fit her persona as we know were going for a more feminine and IT girl vibe which Sabrina Carpenter is portraying.

Classwork: Multicam Editing

Here is the work my team on how to edit with multiple cameras. My group filmed the footage, and this blog is written by (Audrey) as My teacher provided a template for the blog post .

What is Multicam Editing?

Multicam editing is the process of editing footage of a single scene or subject recorded from different cameras and angles. Showing the same scene or subject from different angles helps make the video more dynamic and visually captivating for your audience. 

Shooting

Our subject, a classmate, stood in the centre of the room and did a short performance. My group stood around the subject to record the performance from different angles. You can also see members from other groups because we did this lesson as a class. To make it easier to synchronise our cameras, the teacher clapped at the start of the scene as replacement for a clapperboard. This allowed us to line up the video in the editing process and ensure that the transitions would be smooth. Without this simple action it would have taken a lot longer to sync the videos. 

My teammates (Kalista and Chelsea) had chose a different position to capture the star (our classmate) and we also shot our scene in various angles (high and low) to experiment with it. I had utilised a chair and stood on it to be able to create a high-angled shot. 

(BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGES): LINK HERE

Here are the videos that me and my friend captured:

1. 

2. 

3. 

My editing process

• Upload the videos to the editing software (YOUR SOFTWARE ) 
• Detach the audio of the clip you wish to use in the final video. 
• Find the ‘clap’ marker on the audio.
• Line up the video files together. 
• Cut where I want the edit to happen
• Don’t delete the clip, just lower the opacity. This way it can be used again later. 
• Mute all clips except for the one you want to use.

1. Inserting clips and the audio

2. Duplicating clips and zooming in (cropping) to create a different shot expanding the variety of shots

3. Aligning/stacking the clips with the audio and cutting the clips

Setting opacity to 50% so that I can view all the clips simultaneously to make sure it’s in-sync with the audio. 

I made sure the timing was right as I intend to implement cut-to-the-beat style editing. 

I picked a pop song for the music choice as I wanted to maximise this practice before the editing process for my final project and I had realised that since the song was really upbeat, there were so many cuts

Adding filtters...

Here is my final edited video:

Click here for link to Gdrive.

Self Reflection: I was absent during this classwork which is why I had asked Audrey on what she did and she shared me her process of the multicam editing. Even though I wasn't present I learnt with Audrey how she incorporated the elements together as her result was very engaging and fun/upbeat. I was able to learn how editing plays an important role in making sure all your video clips flow smoothly together since having a static shot doesn't evoke that many emotions and doesn't build excitement from your audience. So by understanding this lesson I knew what insight and input to give our editor once we reached the production stage of our project. 

Shooting practice: Music Video

The post contains a mini project that helped us learn how to shoot a music video. We shot our verse as a group and then created this post together. Verse 3 

Lesson Description: My teacher gave each group a verse from the song "Here comes the sun" we had to plan a scene which included various camera work and edits. As the goal was for us as to learn how to properly shoot certain angles and edit them seamlessly together, this will allow us to prevent casualties happening when doing our actual final music video.  

Pre production 

- Lyrics & rehersal 

Storyboard (Audrey) 

Production 

Our actress was members of our own team (Kalista and Rara) Rara being the lead and Kalista being the side character. With Audrey being the camera man 

Behind the scenes footage of our production 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19OHN2Td7YwuSd0v_Fox0XdjzRIBKDHTg?usp=sharing

Here is the Google Drive file link of RAW video clips which included camera tests, shoot attempts (failed and others), and bloopers. 

Post production 

Editing (Audrey) 

I had edited the clips together and made sure that the song matches the scenes along with the lipsyncing of the actors. I utilised the application Capcut as it was a free, easy, and fast platform to edit videos. It only took a while to finish the project in one period of Media Studies class which was advantageous for the group. We were also familiar with the application which made it efficient.

Our idea was simple which does not include any special effects or color-grading as we decided to keep it natural. This was due to convenience and we wouldn't be applying this editing technique for our music video project as we want to create a visual appeal for the audience.

Here are the few steps that I did for editing:

1. Compile final shots

2. Add the song (download the audio from Mr Nick's file)

3. Cut, crop, and adjust the video clips according to the correct time frame

4. Make sure the lipsync matches the song

5. Turn down the audio volume of the clips

(include screenshots)

Final Result

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QL79spi1wMVfoor6xfZ8K2CtwvXWsqQW/view?usp=sharing

Here is the Google Drive file link

Problem (written by audrey): 

There weren't any significant problem throughout the processes of production. Me and my teammates were able to collaborate together as we plan out the details of the pre-production together in under than 20 minutes. Although, our plan wasn't followed exactly based on the final results. There was another angle shot (POV) with the same actions in a scene which we planned to use with a quick cut to capture the character's face clearly to showcase the performance aspect of the chorus clip that we had already recorded. We planned this out initially as it was one of our ideas for our big project so we decided to test it out. Although, this idea wasn't executed well which made it unprofessional and odd if we decided to insert that shot. The timing of the chorus also does not support the use of cuts to show another angle.

Another problem would be that the cut from the first scene with our side character walking to the sink to the second scene with the lead washing her hand was a bit un-neat. I was the one who edited it and saw this immediately and was unsatisfied with the results.

Solution: 

As we had no time left due to us being given only a short amount of time to complete everything we left the transition as it is. By the end we discarded the idea of using another angle to showcase the performance as it wouldn't flow as well if we did decide to do it. 

Future plan: 

Next time if we choose to shoot different angles we have to make sure the timeline of each clip flows well together with the lyric of the song. As the duration shouldn't be that short if we want to add several quick cuts and different angles. We must also make sure that the scene is long enough in order for the quick cuts to seem engaging while making sure the last action shot we filmed is similar to the next action were going to use at the begimning of the next scene. This ensures the transitions go well smoothly and each clips flows well with the narrative being set in place. And if we choose to go for a more professional approach we need better equipment so the result can be clear for the audience. 

Self Reflection: This mini project was quite simple to do as me and my team managed our time well and we were able to finish it before class ended. It made me more confident with our abilities as a team because our ideas flowed well together making us use our time efficiently when planing this video. We already had goals set in place which meant that our communication with one another became smoother allowing us to have a smooth process. I was able to learn from the many mistakes we did such as being overly ambitious because at the time we could only accomplish something that was very simple, hence why I was able to learn more about camera work and editing that benefited my groups ideas when we planned on our final real project. This is to avoid any mistakes were going to make as we know what to do beforehand. 

Filming Schedule

Here is our groups filming schedule created by Chelsea

Self reflection: This filming schedule was created by Chelsea, but we collectively as a team chatted through our messenger app called "whatsapp" to discuss the details of our schedule and what time slots we had available to shoot for our music video. Having this schedule really benefited us to manage our time wisely, so that we wouldn't have to cram our shooting scenes all in one week, and with a new addition of school exams it decreased the time we have to shoot our music video. But things can change where there could be instances where our teammates just cant make it, so we as a group decided that even if 1 person cant make it we can still continue without them because it will be harder to reschedule another time, as we also need to check with our artists beforehand what her schedule will also be like. 

Location Scout & Risk Assessment

 Here is our teams location scout & risk assessment. This blogpost is made by me (Rara) & Kalista

Link: locations scout & risk assessment

Self Reflection: This was pretty easy for me to do as we've done this multiple times for other projects. 

However I hated the part where I had to figure out what could go wrong cause its so unexpected and usually might not even happen which is why we repeated some points as most of the hazards that might happen will always come out of no where, but this does ensure our whole production team to be safe as this case we will more more actors & actresses. Then again I quickly got it done with kalista and it just helped us predict any problems and also helped us manage the locations on where to go so we don't spend too much time surveying different places. 

Song Research

Here we will look in detail at our song choice "The Weekend" by BIBI & 88rising released in 2021. This blogpost is created by me (Rara)

The Weekend - BIBI

1. Song Background

"The Weekend" by 88rising & BIBI seems to be about a relationship in which one person is not fully committed. The first verse describes a woman who parties all night and is only interested in being with the singer when it benefits her. She expects special treatment just because she is with him. The chorus suggests that she only contacts him on the weekends when she wants to be intimate, and he feels used. He is jumping off the deep end to be with her, but then she disappears until the next weekend. The second verse implies that this behavior breaks the speaker's heart. The bridge indicates that the singer is willing to be available for the woman when she is lonely but knows that she is not a good fit for something long-term. The outro is a repetition of the earlier lyrics and perhaps a reflection of the singer's feelings of being used and wanting more from the relationship. In sum, the song is a critique of a partner who only wants a casual relationship and does not want to invest in a genuine connection.

resource: https://www.songtell.com/88rising-bibi/the-weekend#google_vignette 

2. Why we choose it

When I initially heard this song, I was surprised by how intimate and sexual the music video was. And at first I wasn't really into how dark and neon the MV's aesthetic was, but me and my group decided to subvert the whole music video, as we all were only fans of the song itself, not the MV. We enjoyed how the music wasn't too slow-paced but also not as fast-paced as others; in my perspective, it was quite neutral. With parts that were empty, leaving room for us to add scenes that we believe would fit our target audience and keep it engaging. As we wanted to evoke a more bold response toward our audience, we believed that having a strong and complex narrative would make the audience think of how each scene would portray our artist to be 'bad' in the end. 

3. How your music video will be different 

As we can see from the music video, it's quite graphic and sexual for our target audience (teenagers), which is why we will subvert the whole MV by adding a narrative throughout our whole music video, as in this MV it just depicts the artist being the bad guy due to her only contacting the guy on the 'weekend.' Thus, we will mainly focus on our artist having a soft girl vibe during the beginning half of the MV, which will be shown through mise-en-scene (e.g., hair, location, clothes, and makeup), and then slowly nearing the end of the MV, she will have a whole different vibe, which is going to focus on her being a playgirl depicted through mise-en-scene and our whole narrative. Due to us wanting our visual elements to fit the upbeat melody this song has, by adding a strong narrative, it keeps the audience engaged due to it having a twist of the artist being a soft girl -> playgirl. 

Additional Research 

Grease (1978) this is what narrative we will most likely follow as it showcases the girl mc being a soft girl -> cool girl and the boy mc being a cool boy -> soft boy. But in our MV we will only showcase the girls perspective as she is our star and we want to focus the limelight on her, having our boy mc in the MV only being shown for a couple scenes to indicate how our artists feeling has changed for the boy mc overtime. The use of outfits of the girl in this movie is also similar to the approach were trying to go for, for our artist once her playgirl side gets shown. 

Self Reflection: Creating this song research was actually quite tedious in my opinion as we have so many  different scenes and I wanted to show each scene with clear descriptions but it was quite hard to compile everything to 1 paragraph. Our group also decided on this song for quite a while because we started off with many slow pace romantic songs but we ended up wanting to go for a more fun and creative narrative while still having romantic aspects to it as from the beginning we still want our MV to have some type of love scene because our group was more drawn to that concept. Because according to the binary opposites theory it is the conflict of these opposites that drives a narrative forward, so by having the artist being in love to not caring at all creates a conflict between her 2 personalities this then allows the audience to understand that she became cold hearted due to her being heartbroken by her situationship. 

Classwork: Stardom

Here is a summary of a theory we learnt at class today with our Media Studies teacher (Mr Nick).

It’s about the Theory of Stardom by Richard Dyer which helped us build our star’s image for our music video project. This blogpost is summarized by Rara and Audrey, however some of the celebrity research was done by Kalista and Chelsea as well.

Richard Dyer’s theory suggests that celebrities are constructed by media institutions to attract their target audience and promote their product. The celebrities are portrayed as a mix of relatable qualities (to appear ordinary) and unique traits (to appeal to fans). It focuses on how the image of the star is vital to the marketing to build both commercial success and a deep emotional connection with fans.

Celebrities are appealing due to 5 main reasons: 

1. Love: We are fascinated with the love lives of the stars, can also feel a romantic affiliation with them

2. Ordinariness: We like to see them doing routine things, living normal lives just like our own

3. Success: We like the idea of overnight success, and failure before success. This appeals to our

4. sense of fair play. (Why we like reality TV so much)

5. Consumption: We are fascinated by the huge material wealth brought by media success. Not just

6. luxury homes and cars, but also strict dietary regimes set by expensive nutritionists, holidays etc.

7. Dream turned sour (downfall): fascination with the exploitation of their misery

Self Reflection: This theory lesson allowed me to delve deep onto what I want my artists persona to be as Each star's identity was purposefully designed to appeal to and drive audience engagement by creating a recognizable brand with which viewers may emotionally identify with. This will then allow me to effectively promote my artist towards the target audience were aiming for. Overall me and my teammate enjoyed doing this classwork as we admire the chosen celebrity and believe that her work is admirable as she is one of the most famous kpop idols to exist. Through this classwork it will be easier to find our stars persona because I want to make sure that our star has a strong public image and confidence so that she stands out and can be easily recognisable towards any audience.