Critical Reflection
The social issue of gender is a key component within my music campaign. Within our campaign we adhere the stereotypes of women. In our music video we used beauty shots of the artist to highlight her beauty along with body shots of the artist. These include closeups of her face, lips, hands which are full of accessories and her legs. This further plays into to stereotypes of sexualising women. This is also shown in the digipak. Her facial expression is filled with attitude and makes her look desirable. In our music video we see two blonde girls who are made up to look like barbies. This pays homage to what women were supposed to look like and what men were attracted to. This compliments Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze which we used to further play into the stereotypes of women. This aspect of barbies is further emphasised when one of the ‘barbies’ walks up to the camera and blows a kiss. The artists social media highlights Skylar’s beauty and style. Her Instagram helped to highlight her beauty to further intrigue an audience to listen to her music. She displays an array of stylish outfits, wearing jackets that accentuated her feminine attributes. and her picture she dominates power and attention by her unique and trendy outfit choices. In the music video, we see the artist singing about a boy named Ricky and how she wants him. They are seen together dancing and flirting with each other. This helps reinforce the artists sexuality and it also helps create the artist star image, girls want to be her, and boys want to be with her.
For our music campaign we used Several techniques in order to create a sense of branding. The demographic for our music campaign is predominantly 15 -17 females meaning we needed to create a combination of products that appeal to that audience. We created a sense of branding by using the same colour palette, font on the digipak and the website, the star image of the artist, etc. these components create a cohesive campaign and further link all the products together. Our audience can also identify that all these products are apart of the same campaign as on our website, it contains, links to her social media and the front cover of the Digipak. On Skylars instagram posts, her captions contain lyrics to "Disco Barbie", e.g. "Dancing like its a disco". Skylar’s star image of being edgy and unique is represented throughout all our products.
As our demographic are ‘Girly girls’ our entire music campaign follows the colour scheme of bright vibrant colours, predominantly pink with all our products. This is eye catching to our demographic. Her Instagram is constructed of many pictures which show her as a normal girl, e.g. taking walks, going on public transport, hanging out with friends etc. Making her relatable, giving more appeal to the chosen demographic. On our website we create a cool image of the artist making her seem confident and ‘edgy ‘which is displayed by the photo collages of the artist and specific structures of her face. All these aspects of the music campaign are constructed in a way to adhere into the demographics needs and lifestyle choices.
The products of my music campaign use personal relationships and diversion to engage with our demographic. Personal relationships were key when creating our products as it made the audience feel a part of the artist's life and felt like they knew her. We use this particularly within our social media. The artists Twitter contains retweets, likes from other tweet's as well as updates about the album. Specifically, Skylar retweeted Ariana Grande's promotion for her new album coming out. This shows the audience what type of music Skylar listens to and what type of interests that she has by what she retweets and likes as well as see keeping the audience informed and updated about products that she is releasing.
Diversion in our music campaign was key to engage our demographic, as it enticed them towards the artist. The audience got a forum to escape from their own reality and escape to another world where everything is glamorous, interesting, and fun. In our music video diversion is particularly highlighted. The artist looks glamorous with her high-end jewellery, classic glam makeup look, perfectly styled hair and daring outfit choices. There is a moment in the video where the camera starts at the artist White Prada boots, and pans upward to reveal her whole body where she is wearing a pink sequined bodycon dress, as she is walking towards the camera. By the technique of panning the audience can focus on the appearance of the artist as well as seeing how much fun she is having. As well as this in our music video there are multiple captivating locations which look enchanting and prestigious. One of our sets includes a party room with streamers and a disco ball. It again lets the audience escape from their own reality while seeing the artist in exciting and non mundane settings.
As our artists fell into the genre of pop, we used symbolic and technical pop conventions within all our products. Before creating our products, it was imperative that we understood the conventions of the pop genre and what we needed to do to create products that appeal to pop audience using these conventions. When looking at other pop artists products, we saw a pattern within the videos, social media, website and album cover. In most pop music videos, there are bright colours, backup dancers, tints and filters. Within the social media and websites, the artists are dressed in many stylish outfits, looking very glamorous with lots of makeup and fashion accessories. When researching I saw similar conventions within Dua Lipa is and Selena Gomez music videos where they both had backup dancers and bright lighting with bright colours. This is important as Steve Neal believes it’s important to uphold these conventions for the audience to like the products.
For the artists social media, you can see a colour theme within her pictures with tints of blue pink and purple. this firstly creates a cohesive and aesthetic Instagram and Twitter page as well create a fun energetic sense of the artist due to the bright colours. In the music video we used backup dancers behind coloured screens to show their silhouettes while dancing and posing. This convention helped bring an energetic atmosphere to the video and made it look more interesting. The screens that the dancers are lighted in colours of pink and blue and throughout the song, the lights change, bringing more energy and vibrance to the video. Within the conventions of the genre, it is typical to see a quick pace to the editing of the video, we use this throughout the video, especially in the instrumental where the dancers are cut in time to the music where one appears at a time.
