Advanced Portfolio CCR

Our music video linked with the song brought up a lot of issues in todays society among teenagers and young adults. We have addressed the very vocal topic of depression which is displayed in many moments of the video, the darkness and isolation shown in a lot of it links to the darkness you feel when in a constant state of depression, it is furthermore shown in the way she has distanced herself from her family and friends. Demi Lovato is the person singing the song and she has and still is very open about her depression and drug abuse, we felt encasing the song around these feelings and tying the visuals to the lyrics helped bring across the deeper message to the song. We have represented both male and female perspectives on the topic, this is due to the fact that there is a stereotypical view that men should be stronger emotionally and physically and that there should be a stigma towards men showing their emotions and letting them out. We have fully challenged this view showing that men can be just as vulnerable and that men can feel the exact same emotions as women. Demi Lovato is also very vocal about her support of the LGBTQ+ community.

 

We have multiple platforms where we showcase our media and create this sense of branding. We have created Instagram pages to promote our music video and our artist just like a real-life distribution company would on this page we make the colours of our photos posted look like they are snippets from the music video due to the match in colour and outfits of the actors. We have also made a digipack themed in the same way that the Instagram page is to create that sense of one overarching brand. Finally, Vimeo is the platform we have chosen to upload our Music Video to because of copyright reasons on YouTube. Across all four of our team, we have a relatively similar branding in terms of colours and photos however we vary in the way that we have presented them. Since it is so important to keep everything relatively looking the same and supporting each other branding became the main focus of our process of making the music video.

 

Our Music Video relates a lot to people from early teens to early twenties due to the fact that mental health and drug abuse is more openly talked about and our product in one way or another can link to a way they feel or once felt letting them know that they aren’t the only one to have struggles. We also decided to go with a story line linking to the music to get people to be engaged in the music video and wonder what it is going on, this helps people to stay watching and listening for longer. Having an Instagram as well helps being able to interact with the audience and they can send private messages and leave comments on posts it can make the audience feel heard. The mixture with an engaging story, good message and colourful visuals help to engage and draw people into the music video. Narrative theory is based on the concept that people are essentially storytellers. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most universal forms of communication and so individuals approach their social world in a narrative mode and make decisions and act within this narrative framework

 

We have researched a lot into the motives behind the song and the inspiration which was how both Demi Lovato and Sam Fisher suffered from mental illnesses and drug abuse this initially inspired our male and female actors to act in the different singing parts, when Sam sings the guy is shown and when demi sings the girl is shown this makes the story more easy to follow and it helps people match the voices to a face. From early on these were our core goals and what we centred the whole video on. Originally we chose a different song and did research on it to see what we should do and ultimately decided on What Other People Say instead because It had a good message and we could make a story to it a lot easier as it basically told a story in the lyrics. Lessons by Stormzy was our original song but we ultimately left it as a thought. All of us have had experience in making short films during our AS Media curriculum this helped tremendously when it came to editing a story music video as it was almost exactly what we did the year before except just with music in the background. The process wasn’t all that hard although it did take quite a lot of time as we had a lot of shots and a lot of cutting and matching to do although we are all very happy with the outcomes of our Music Videos.

 

Multiple artists in class such as Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, etc. and we took inspiration from the way they market their products such as linking their store in their Instagram bio, linking their music video in their Instagram posts, and many more things that helped us not be in the dark about what to do. We took inspiration from other Demi Lovato music videos to see what she likes to do with her songs and she often had some sort of storyline backing up the music. We also looked up ways to appeal to the audience, the song is a mid-tempo pop song. 

We studied media theororists such as Marshall McLuhan with his media effects theory which helped to see in proven studies how we can appeal to our audience and make our music video have a long-lasting effect. And we studied media Theories such as the Hypodermic Model, Cultivation Theory and the Two-Step flow theory. Another huge area that was addressed was that of the "Star Image" we made this a very common thing in our music video as it was something often talked about, we centred our video mainly around the main actress who was acting as Demi Lovato, having her at the centre of the attention helped bring out the meaning in the words and help to show them in a visual way.