Critical Reflection
All three of our products were designed by us to be coherent with one another, represent stereotypes, create a sense of branding and engage with the audience, all of this supported by the foundation we created in our pre-production stages.
Covering all of our products, we can say that they do follow certain stereotypes and representations about certain social groups. To begin with, in our music video, the narrative between the couple follows a conventional heterosexual relationship, where the women is constantly sexualised and sentimental. We can evidence this through the main actress’s revealing top and her sentimentalism towards her relationship. However, we did challenge the man’s stereotype, as we decided to portray a weaker and more vulnerable side of him, which contrasts the strong aspect that men are used to having. One example in the narrative is when the actor buys flowers for his partner, which shows his soft side and challenges the idea that men don’t listen to their feelings. In this way, we achieved to break a stereotype and create sympathy towards the character, as it can be atypical to evidence a man connecting with his emotions. Additionally, in our music video, we decided to create an environment of a higher socio-economic class. We can see this in our music video through different elements such as the luxurious house, the jacuzzi and the car. All of these represent a lifestyle that few people have, and in our genre this lifestyle seems to be desired and romanticised. They also connote wealth and privilege, and the audience can infer by these the type of lifestyle that the characters live. Because of this, we can say that our music video both follows and breaks gender stereotypes, and represents a group of people who live in a higher socio-economic status.
As a marketing strategy, all of our products complement each other and tend to be coherent to one another. One of the similarities they share is the theme of love and heartbreak. In our music video, there’s a clear narrative about a couple and their struggles, successfully connecting to the theme. In our digipak, we included a bunch of flowers that look dead. This symbolises love and how it can fade away at times. In our social media page, we included pictures of the music video, specifically of the couple together. All three products have at least something that can relate to the theme of the song, which is why we can say that they complement each other and make sense to our audience. Another element that all three products share is that they all follow most of the genre’s conventions. In the music video, we followed the narrative plot about love, lip syncing and short duration shots. In our digipak, we followed the use of vibrant colours, casual fonts for the text and a simple design overall. In our social media page, we followed the use of the artist’s music, engaging with the audience and bright lights and colours. The fact that we followed most conventions in all of our products causes the audience to feel like they are more connected to each other, as they seem like they all belong to the same genre. If our products were to be real, we would implement the use of our social media to engage with our fans while promoting our final product. With this, we would achieve to make the audience feel like a part of the process, by releasing updates, asking questions and interacting with them, so we can promote our product while also keeping our audience interested and connected to the process.
Our products engage with the audience as we mainly followed the genre’s conventions. In our music video, we included a narrative plot about a couple, who was going through a rough patch in their relationship. This follows the genre’s conventions, and engages with the audience as they can relate the lyrics to the song with what is actually happening in the music video, which makes them feel more connected to the song and interested in the plot. Additionally, we also followed the genre’s conventions with the use of short duration shots. This is typically done in reggaeton music videos, as the songs tend to be energetic, so the shots can’t be too long, or the audience can get bored. We followed this mostly, as we wanted to keep the audience active and always seeing something new, which contributes to getting them engaged with the story. In our digipak, we used elements such as bright colours and casual text fonts, which also follow the genre’s conventions. The reason for this was because we wanted our digipak to attract attention from our audience, in a way that made our campaign look fun, energetic and active, which is exactly what young people tend to look for. Furthermore, in our social media page, we attempted to create the same energy as in the digipak. We wanted our audience to be engaged with our page as soon as they opened it, which is why we included elements such as videos of live concerts, bright lights, updates about the song and attractive colours. All of these elements not only engage and attract the audience, but they also follow our genre’s conventions.
During the process of pre-production, we learned crucial characteristics about the genre and its conventions, which was a huge help in the actual process of producing the product. During our research phase, we used the internet to investigate the genre, music videos in general and specific products that could look similar to ours. This stage, I believe, was the most important one for our product. We created a foundation of knowledge about what we needed in order to achieve the results we wanted. During this phase, we learned about conventions such as short clips, vibrant lights, love narrative, hypersexualisation of women, luxurious lifestyle representation, and many others which we planned on including in our music video. With all of this information, we managed to create an idea of our narrative, and begin to brainstorm about the conventions we would focus on following in our music video, digipak and social media page. We then entered the planning stages, in which we had to go into deeper details about everything we were going to do. Even though we did modify some things, this stage was crucial for us to decide every single aspect of our campaign. Based on our understanding of the genre, it was easier for us to dictate the aspects of our products, as we understood why things needed to be a certain way, for example, the specific clothing of the actors, the types of shots and angles, and the movement of the camera. Because of our previous research, our planning stage became much easier and meaningful to us. Overall, the pre-production stages were significantly important for us to understand what we were doing and why, and it also allowed for our post-production phase to flow easily. This is because we had already decided the duration for each of the shots, as well as the order they were in and the way they would transition from one to another, which facilitated this stage, making it extremely effortless as everything had already been discussed and decided by us beforehand.
In conclusion, our products tend to follow reggaeton conventions, causing a sense of unity between them, as well as attracting our young audience and representing both gender and economic stereotypes, all of these which we were able to achieve through our pre-production phase.