Creative Critical Reflection

Throughout the course of this school year, I worked with Ana and Antonia to create a music video promotion package consisting of a digipak, a music video, and a social media page. This project truly helped us as a team, develop our creativity and persistence in the best way possible. We wanted our project to portray a story that many people can relate to. The story of an unrequited love, which in some cases can lean more towards an obsession. I feel like this particular storyline is relatable to the target audience which we are targeting our products towards, which would be people from the ages of 15-30, especially younger people. This is because they will relate easier, as usually those who find themselves in an unrequited love situation are more naive, and innocent, and don’t have the experience necessary to know when it’s time to move on and let go of a person, or how to go about doing that. The music video which we created is from the point of view of the “victim” in this situation, fully allowing the audience to place themselves in this position and be “seduced” and strung along together with the “victim”. The digipak and instagram page by themselves don’t necessarily convey a storyline like the music video, but rather work hand in hand with the other products, complementing eachother to create a cohesive and unified package as a whole.

This leads into the question of how we were able to link all of the products in order to create a brand image. We mostly did this through visual elements like color schemes, texts, and fonts, trying to make sure everything matched, and that similar elements were found in each product in order to keep a sense of continuity throughout.

We were drawn to Melanie Martinez as an artist because of the way that she is able to tell a story through abstract lyrics, and the way that she’s been able to have such a strong impact on young girls. Her music tells tales of drug abuse, depression, and family dysfunction through the eyes of a wide-eyed teenage girl, and after talking to some colleagues, we realized just how many people had a Melanie Martinez “phase” when they were younger, and listened to a lot of her music. We liked how the lyrics to the song Carousel tell such a strong story, in a more abstract way, in a way obligating the audience to look past the metaphors and try to understand the deeper meaning. Our products interpret the hidden meanings and lay them out in a clearer format, especially the music video, managing to convey a strong message to the audience.

Overall, the research and planning process was definitely one of the most important parts of the project, and as a team we placed a lot of emphasis on it in order to make sure that the rest of the process went smoothly. Identifying our target audience was definitely a good first step, and based off of this we knew exactly how to create and formulate our products in order to cater specifically to our target group. During the research and planning process, we were also able to discover our dynamic as a team, and truly be able to understand our different ideas and ways of thinking, which was an immense help for later on in the actual production process of the products as we were able to make sure that we were all on the same page.