Research: Industry

This is my industry research for my music video project

What genre am I working in? 

•     Indie

What company would most likely produce my media text in the real world? 

• Epik Music Videos

What other content do they produce?

• Interview videos
• Live Event Filming
• Behind-the-Scenes Videos
• Documentaries 

How big is the company? How long has it existed?

• The company is medium to small size company, considering their social media presence is low
• The company has existed since 2012 so it's been 12 years and they're still operating

Who is their typical audience?

• Anyone who is interested in, primarily, making music videos because Epik Music Videos claimed that they can produce music videos based on any genre (rock, hip hop, indie, classical, etc)

What is their most successful product?

• BBC3 THREE - When You're Too Scared

Self Reflection:

This industry research was mostly not useful in my opinion as I didn't find researching about a music video production company, would prove helpful in the creation for our project. However, our teacher said it would be of use in the future, when we make the social media page (part of the post production section of the project) and also, a part of the research would be beneficial for us because we could gain information and analyzed how, the company 'EPIK music videos', make Indie music videos. With this, we could identify what's common within these videos and categorize them as conventions in the genre. A problem I faced was that I struggled to find a company that specialized in making Indie music videos because a majority or not all Indie songs are made by the artist themselves with a couple of people that helped them. With this, and in order to save time, I just decided to research about a company that claimed that they can produce any genre of music videos. Next time, I'll try to find a company that is an expert that produces Indie music videos so we could learn a thing or two from them, which we could implement in our project. 

Preliminary Research

This is my preliminary research for the music video project.

At the start of the project I want to research a variety of genres. Here are a few different genres that I looked at.

Song, Artist	Genre/ Genre Conventions of music videos	What issue/social group was being represented? How was it being represented?	What did you like/dislike about the music video?
Yura Yunita - Dunia Tipu Tipu (2021)	Indonesian Pop + Indonesian language Indonesian people + Loud motorcycles (smoke coming out)	People who are in relationships (family, husband and wife, friendships) Comfortable looking background, white tent, push in camera angle to highlight emotions and then long shot to give them space to express their private moment.	I don’t like how it is just in a tent and it lacks background diversity. I find it boring. I don’t like how the singer sings after a private moment.
Harry Styles - As it was (2022)	Pop + Money + Lamborghini (fancy cars) + Sexy dancers + High budget + Flashy	People who are in love More performative to show the connection between man and the women (using the rotating surface to emphasise how the man is chasing the women.)	I dislike the man using a dress. I like the song in the music video and it looks creative but it's too expensive to replicate for us.
Jamie T - Zombie (2014)	Indie + Band playing the instruments + Lower budget	Zombies were represented Band performers were acting and looked like zombies. The use of blood and limbs tearing apart. Background actors don't care about the zombies.	I don't like the song because it sounds too repetitive. I like the props used to show that they’re zombies, and I like their acting, which makes it more believable and adds to the realism.
The Weeknd – Blinding Lights (2020)	RnB + Warm colours + Singing into a microphone + Romantic scenes	Violence, masculinity, and his relationship with the women were being represented. Fast cars, the use of the colour red, blood, fighting, running away from something. The use of fast paced editing to create energy and excitement.	I enjoyed the song. I like the use of the colour red to emphasise that he is in danger or is danger himself. And the change of the sound to make it more deep for that one scene made it more engaging to the audience - which I also enjoyed. I disliked the violence in the beginning but I understand why they use it (to further show the colour red).
The Beatles - Now and Then (2023)	Rock + Sharp pointy objects + Mow-hawks + Using the colour black	Friendships, past and present were represented The use of colourful costumes, band playing the instruments, fans cheering, and the use of AI to make it seem like the dead person ,who was in the band, looks like they are playing with the rest.	I like the use of AI to connect the people from the past with the present. I like how they subverted from the rock convention and used bright coloured clothes.

Based on this research and after some discussion with my team, we decided to choose Indie as our music video genre as we believe it simpler to do since we have limited budget (which is a convention of Indie music videos) and we enjoy the mood that Indie song creates.

Self Reflection:

This preliminary research exposed me to all the different type of songs and genres in music videos. It gave me a wider insight of song genres that we could potentially use for the project, including its conventions, and briefly contains what I like/dislike about it. After consideration with my group, we choose the Indie genre. A problem I faced was that some of my research wasn't as detailed as I hoped it would be, meaning it wouldn't be as useful when choosing a genre since I didn't have enough information to make the decision. Due to that, in my free time, I rewatched the music video back and inputted more information about it to ease the decision making process. This improved my problem solving skills as I needed to find a way to finish the research. In the future, I would straight away make the research detailed, during class, so that there would be more time available for me to finish the other blog posts in this project.

Weekly Progress + Plan

This is my weekly progress and plan for the music video project.

Week	Start Date		Task		Blogpost Title	Content	Deadline
W1	30 September	Pre Production	Research	1	Brief
				2	Team
				3	Weekly Progress
				4	Preliminary Research	Broad genre research	W3
W2	7 October		Research	5	Research: Industry	Who makes music videos?	W3
W3	14 October		Research	6	Research: Genre	Codes and Conventions of your genre	W4
W4	21 October		Plan	7	Statement of Intent	Your initial proposal	W5
				8	Theory of Stardom: Richard Dyer	A summary of the class, plus your example	W7
W5	28 October		Plan	9	Moodboard	Your visual style	W7
				10	Lyric Sheet	Breakdown your song into scenes	W7
				11	Storyboard	Shot by shot plan	W7
W6	4 November		Plan	12	Song Research	Background of your song	W7
				13	Screen Test	star auditions	W7
				14	Classwork	How to: Camera, MeS, Sound, Edit	W7
W7	11 November		Plan	15	Location scout & Risk Assessment		W7
				16	Filming Schedule	Film over the break?	W7
							W7

Week 1

This week I started getting the blogs ready such as setting up the brief, team weekly progress, and all the types of research blogs (preliminary, industry, audience, and genre). Me and my team are still not sure what genre to choose as there are many options and choosing the right genre would helps us do less work as changing would mean that we all have to restart our research progress.

Week 2

This week, me and my group choose Indie as our music video genre ,for the project, because we thought it would be simple to replicate since it requires a small budget. We brainstormed the conventions of Indie music videos and wrote it down in the form of a mind map to help us clearly identify it. I then started researching for the genre conventions and noted down the technical elements used - which I have to research a total of 8 media texts (2 big, 6 small).

To-do list:
+ Finish research 

Week 3

This week I finalized my research of music videos in the Indie genre. However, me and my team haven't decided on a specific music video to based the project on, but we have a few ideas such as Niscaya.

Week 4

This week me and my team created and finish our statement of intent that includes our song choice, target audience, and divided the roles between the team. I also learned the theory of stardom which would prove useful as I can use it on how I want to represent the star in the music video.

Week 5

This week me and my team made a moodboard to guide us for how we want our music video to look like. We then divided parts of the lyrics and plan what scene would take place as well as, started on the storyboard to help visualise the projects' end result.

Week 6

This week was full of project lessons and is the 2nd to last week before submission for the pre-production of the project (brief, team, weekly progress, etc). With this said, me and my team are  trying to finish up everything and plan to continue it during the weekends. My teacher also gave us a checklist for all the blog posts that needs to be completed by the end of the term and this helped me to stay on task to finish the unfinished.

To-do list:

+ Do reflections for all blog posts

+ Team photo

+ Put moodboard, lyric sheet, storyboard, classwork, location scount, song research, and filming schedule into my blog

Week 7

This week is the last week for submission for the pre-production part of this project (specifically on Thursday). So I finished every blog post which is in that category in order to get a score this term. This week started hectic since there were many worksheets and unit assesments from other subjects so I felt slightly overwhelmed, but I finished it either way. 

This is a list of tasks that I had to finish, with its checkboxes, that my teacher gave us so that I can easily track what I finished and what I didn't so that everything is organized.

Self Reflection:

Throughout the making of this project, this weekly progress + plan blog helped me to stay organized and keep me on track to finish the pre-production part of the project. The to-do list was beneficial for me because it acts as a reminder so that I do my tasks as soon as possible and I won't feel as burdened in the future. The weekly progress was also a place to note down the activities I did each week so I could refer back to it if I needed to remember what I did in the past. Problems I sometimes encounter was forgeting the activities that I did, so a solution to this was to ask my group and we reminded each other. This act of journaling the activities I completed each week, helps to me to reflect back on what I learned (active recalling), thus making me further understand the materials (such as understanding the theory of Stardom), and lastly tests my memorizing skills. In the future, I would make more to-do lists so that I'll know more specifically what tasks are due in the next few days, and then would complete them, so that I won't be doing as much work when the project is near the submission period.

Semester 2

Week 1

This week, I got a mini project from my teacher which was to create a short clip of a music video. My teacher gave us a chorus for the 'Here comes the Sun' song and me and my team made a storyboard and the video about it. My teacher gave us a tip which was to actually sing the song while recording, eventhough it might feel weird, because the lip syncing would actually fit the song better rather than just mimeing the song. This mini project helped me avoid futher mistakes so that my final project would turn to be a finer piece.

Week 2

This week, I learn how to do multicam editing as my teacher showed us how to do it step by step. This type of editing is basically continuity editing and shows a variety of shots of a subject while they are doing an action. I could use this for the my music video project so that it doesn't look static and boring. In class, I practice to do multicam editing by recording my friend, gathering all recording from my teamates and then edit it in an app called CapCut. Also, my teacher told us to finish the filming schedule so that me and my teamates know when and where to shoot the scenes and to make everything more organized. 

To-do List:

+ Finish filming schedule

+ Start recording scenes

Week 3

This week, I was introduced to branding as my teacher explained to us that branding is important for an artist so that they can be differentiated from others. He also told us to have a specific branding for our star and was tasked to make a mindmap about it. The mind map included our star's persona, core values, how our star's social media presence would be and his audience. This helped me to specifically identified our star's branding so that me and my team can match the ideas to produce our final music video.

To-do list:

+ Finish artist persona self reflection

+ Start social media research and development

Week 4

This week, there was a 3 day holiday so me and my team didn't get much work done for the project. However there was a project lesson on Friday which my teacher tasked us to make more blog posts about file organisation, behind the scenes and editing. My role was to make the behind the scenes blog post with Nicho, while Bagus worked on the branding blog post and Bagas did the file organisation post. We all delegated the tasks so we all don't feel overwhelmed.

To-do list:

+ Start social media research and development

Week 5

This week, me and my team created the questions for the screen test audience feedback for our music video, album cover and social media draft. We did this to gain suggestion from people in order to improve our project.

To-do List:

+ Send the google forms (about audience feedback) to people

Week 6

This week, I only had one class for media studies and it was through online meeting. This is because there was heavy and windy rain that made it dangerous to come to school and on Wednesday, there was a religious holiday. During the online meetings, my teacher introduced us to the critical reflection essay and I started making the plan and am halfway done. Also, this week, we gain feedback on our music video, album cover, and social media page then we collect the suggestions from the audience and improve our project with it.

To-do List:

+ Finish the Critical Reflection essay

Week 7

This week, I continued the social media research and development and did abit of editing for the music video. There was a mock test on Wednesday so me and my team didn't have much time to continue filming additional scenes, as we need to study to prepare for the test. 

To-do List:

+ Film the b rolls for the music video

+ Shoot the sad scenes in school

+ Finish Social Media research and development

Week 8

This week, there was a camping field trip and there was a mock exam so time was limited time during this period. On tuesday me and my group continued our digipack, social media research and development. We're still trying to figure out what typfont and colours we should use to represent
our star and to do that, we're doing trial and errors.

To-do List:

+ Finish filming

+ Finish Digipack

+ Finish Social Media

+ Finish editing final video

Week 9

This week, I continued making more drafts for the digipak (front and back cover) and film more sad/angry scenes with Bagus on Friday. However, half of my team was busy with either competition or family matters so it was just me and Bagus that was shooting the scenes. There was a problem on that day because Bagas forgot his camera at his house and because of this, we had to go to his house and pick it up since our phone camera doesn't produce as high quality videos as Bagas's camera. We then film the scenes and upload it to our whatsapp group so Bagas can later edit it.

To-do List:
+ Finish filming
+ Finalize Digipak

+ Finalize Social Media

+ Finish editing final video

Week 10

In this week, me and my team finished everything in this project since the due date is on Wednesday. I feel relieved as this is the last project of the media studies syllabus, I'm free from completing blogs and chasing deadlines. On Tuesday, it was the last day for us to get feedback from our teacher so me and my team tried to ask for his opinion of our video, digipack, and social media so that we can make any last minute changes. Also, we asked feedback from our friends in class, as their advice might not have been said by our teacher.

Self Reflection

This project was fun and stressful at the same time. While this project made me and my team creative during the productin of the music video, I felt overwhemled at the last stretch since my time management was bad as I kept procrastinating. This led me to stay awake until 5 am just to finish everything. One of my main problems is that I kept avoiding work until the day before the deadline which ruined my sleeping schedule, made me sleep deprived, and result in negatively affecting my health. Next time, I will divide the tasks into smaller, easy to complete assignments so I don't feel as overwhelmed and thus I wouldn't have to sacrifice as much sleep to complete this project.

Team

This is my team for the music video project

My Team Member Blog:

Bagas: https://bagasaja-regentsmediastudies.blogspot.com/

Nicho: https://nichohoho-regents-bali.blogspot.com/ 

Bagus: https://agustina-regentsmedia.blogspot.com/

Self Reflection:

These are the members in my group. They helped significantly during the making of this project because I can't possibly do all of these tasks on my own. They are not just my teamate, they are my friends that I can trust upon to finish their assigned work. Each member has their own strengths and weaknesses, so based on our previous media project that we did together, we just assigned the roles that we're best at. This is becasue they'll be familiar with the task at hand and it'll be easier for them as they've done it before. Since no one is perfect, there was a problem that I encountered involving my team. An example of this was, on a particular day when we were delegating tasks, Bagas said he didn't want to edit the music video so that assigned role was left empty. To solve this, I volunteered myself to edit as I have experience editing videos for other subjects. This made me slightly go out of my comfort zone however I believe this would further help refine my editing skills which would be useful in the future.

Brief

This is the brief for the music video project

Self Reflection:

This brief introduced me to the music video project and it includes the tasks that needed to be done. Starting this project, I was excited on what me and my team would produce as I believe my previous project went well. I have a lot of ideas of what the music video would look like as my teacher introduced us to the brief at the end of the last term (so we brainstormed slightly during the break period). Hopefully the final product would turn up well as this is the final media project for me as a grade 12 student and I want to end it with a cherry on top.

Final Documentary

This is my final documentary.

here is the link for the google drive, just in case the youtube video has problems:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sNhg5v4ZcZE2-vDlSLFQ5SwCcYssnR8S/view?usp=sharing

Thumbnail

Critical Reflection

This is my critical reflection for the documentary.

Questions:

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?

Me and my team (Bagas, Nicho, Bagus) was tasked to make the opening of a crime documentary, around 3-5 minutes, for this project. We decided to based the documentary about murder and kidnapping, which in short, contains a story of a student called Bagus who was once a happy guy but later on, becomes distant and suddenly disappeared because he got rejected by his crush and wants to take revenge. Our purpose to make the media product is to raise awareness about murder and kidnapping and to highlight its dangers towards women and the people around us.

The research that my team and I did, tremendously helped us during the production of our work. From crime documentary opening research, thumbnail, and sound research, guided us so that we our documentary looked and feel like it belongs in the crime genre. At the crime documentary research, we identified and analyzed all common techniques that are often used in each of the documentaries. The conventions used for crime documentaries range from: dark setting, eerie music, dim lighting, random camera movement, and many more. These use of camera, mise-en-scene, sound, and edit ultimately lead to a goal which is to make the scene as suspenseful and make the audience be at edge for a majority of the time. For the thumbnail research, we took inspiration from the documentary ‘what Jennifer did’ and implemented the subject smiling and the subject frowning for our thumbnail. We also use the red to color the word ‘good’ because red has connotations of blood, and danger which is perfect for a crime documentary that revolves around murder. Furthermore, we specifically color the word good because we want to implement reverse psychology as good implies that it’s a positive word but after what Bagus did, the good turned red meaning something terrible had happen such as a murder. We choose this because based on one of the 5 codes (hermeneutic code) made by Barthes, it creates a sense of mystery and hooks the reader on the possible reasons that made Bagus change from the positive to the negative side. Furthermore, we use color white and black as the mise-en-scene to differentiate the good (being white) from the bad (being black). Also, based on the culture code made by Barthes, we decided to use the title “Not so Good” because our subject’s name, Bagus, is a word from the Indonesian language that means ‘good’ and we thought of the idea to make the connection so that the title is related to the documentary.

I choose an audience by identifying what resources we had as 4 teenagers who was tasked to make a crime documentary. For example, our resources was the availability of Indonesian people that were around us and I could make them our actors instead of hiring professional ones. This logically led to choosing Indonesian people as our target audience but we also decided to include foreign people as well so that more people can enjoy the documentary. After choosing an audience, I intentionally design my media text to appeal them such as using Indonesian slang (like ‘curhat’ which means deep talk) to make the Indonesian audience able to relate to the film thus making them more engaged. On the other hand, a way to target the foreigners was to edit in English subtitles so that they can understand what is being said - without them learning the Indonesian language.

The groups that were represented in our documentary were young Indonesian students around the age of 17, that are both male and female. The group contains the main subject (Bagus), the girl and Bagus’s friends. At first, Bagus was shown in a good light because his friends said (through the interview which is considered as diegetic sound) that he was a great and kind guy which is also paired with positive mise-en-scene such as using silly pictures/videos of Bagus’s past which connotes that he was an unserious person. But then he changed to a mysterious, and anti-social type friend and this was shown by his friends stating it during an interview that is dimly lit, expressed in a flat tone, and the interviewee using dark clothing to further express what they’re stating are the negative side of Bagus and showing hints that he is connected with the disappearance of another student. This is done so that there’s a plot twist in the documentary that drives the narrative forward. Then, the girl is shown as innocent and classified and this was represented by camera angle showing every part of her but her face which implies that the producer of the documentary is trying to protect her privacy. Also, Bagus’s friends were represented as side characters by them being interviewed (which is what side characters do in crime documentaries) and their purpose is to give context of who Bagus was as a person and foreshadow an incident that involved the girl who rejected him.

Since we target the 17+ year old Indonesians and foreigners, our preferred reading about them is that different people handle rejection differently and thus it is unpredictable to know how they would respond in that situation. Additionally, a stereotype was used in the form of a person would get sad when they get rejected and in this case, Bagus got depressed, distance himself from everyone, and for a while, locked himself in his room before he started his plan for kidnapping. This is because stereotypes help to make audience understand the context faster without wasting any more time. It is also a way for the audience to relate to the media text, making them more engaged. Also, another preferred reading is that boys are naughty, troublesome, and defiant as even when things doesn’t go to their way, they would find a way to take revenge and get the last laugh (in this case, Bagus got rejected, kidnapped the girl that rejected him and took her life as payback but he was so insane that he took his own life too). However, the preferred reading for girls is that they are innocent, and often the victims.