Classwork: Cut To The Beat Editing

Here is a blog for the classwork I worked on with Maxine and Mila, two classmates from my media studies class. I contributed by watching a tutorial video incase the editor (Maxine) needed help, I helped in choosing the song and also gave feedback on editing. 

⋆˚꩜｡ Cut To The Beat .ೃ࿔*

Here is the link: https://canva.link/buv6mw02ce4vub1

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REFLECTION:

Styling Plan + Analysis

 This is the styling plan and analysis for component 3. This blog was done by me (Cassie).

༘˚⋆𐙚｡ Styling Plan + Analysis ⋆𖦹.✧˚

Cassie’s Media Dictionary 📖 𓂃🪶

Definition by Oxford Languages

STYLING

/ˈstaɪlɪŋ/

noun | TRADEMARK

the way in which something is designed.

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What does STYLING mean in a media context?

Styling can refer to the way something is carefully designed to communicate certain identities, emotions or connotations through visuals. Styling is basically mis-en-scene, but more focused on clothing, make-up, hairdos, and fashion in general. Styling can support branding by reinforcing a specific image or persona, while creating meaning in music videos (e.g. comfortable clothes + dripping mascara can imply crying and show sadness). This mis-en-scene can then be used to attract the target audience. 

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STYLING PLAN

We already have certain scenes prepared in our filming schedule, which meant we had to find outfits and style Kellie properly in order to create the connotations we wanted to support our dominant reading and attract our target audience. To gain more ideas, I mostly looked on Pinterest for inspiration. I then decided to create a pinterest board where any of my members or myself could add pins and organize them into certain sections to create a sort of mood board and also to generate ideas. This makes it easy for us to easily refer back to our Pinterest board if we were confused on the mis-en-scene of a certain scene. Below, is our Pinterest board, where I’ve created two sections for our main star’s styling and fashion, along with her love interest’s as well.

THE LINK: https://pin.it/7DpjkqZRh

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STYLING ANALYSIS

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REFLECTION:

my reflection blablabla

Typography Research

This blog is the typography research blog for component 3. This blog is done by Cassie.

‧˚꒰ ᵎᵎ Typography Research ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ

Cassie’s Media Dictionary 📖 𓂃🪶

Definition by Oxford Languages

TYPOGRAPHY

/taɪˈpɒɡrəfi/

noun | TRADEMARK

the art or work of preparing books, etc. for printing, especially of designing how text will appear when it is printed

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What is a TYPEFACE?

A typeface is the design of letters, numbers, and symbols that create a specific visual style for text. It helps shape the way words look, making them feel formal, casual, modern, etc, giving them meaning. For our project, choosing the right typeface for the digipak is important because it helps set the tone for the album and music promotional package. Additionally, a signature font or logos are a type of typeface that can solidify our artist’s branding. By carefully selecting a typeface, we can make sure our project matches the emotions we want to create and align with our genre.

A TYPOGRAPHY strategy can:

❀ Redirect attention

❀ Create branding

❀ Influence people by emotion

This means the typeface used in my project is crucial to grab attention and differentiate it from other RNB albums. I also need it to create memorable branding for my artist’s so consumers easily recognize her. Additionally we can use typeface to support and amplify the dominant reading of our project, specifically our digipak.

I think doing a typography research blog is beneficial as the knowledge I gain can be applied beyond the digipak, and can be used in the music video and social media too, which is why I decided to make it in an entirely separate blog post.

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TYPEFACES TYPES

Made with

SOURCES:

❀ designmodo

HOW TO CHOOSE TYPEFACE

According to realfakeart, choosing the right typeface in music marketing is highly important as it creates a mood, reinforces an identity and makes information readable. Below, I have summarized this article and I will apply this knowledge in our final products.

1. Choose Fonts That Match Your Sound

Your typography should reflect the mood and genre of your music. Avoid switching fonts every release and develop a consistent style to strengthen visual identity through logo and imagery. 

2. Prioritize Readability
A font must be readable no matter how appealing it is. It must be a clear at a glance to promote a brand. 

3. Limit the Number of Fonts
Using too many fonts can make your design look messy and unprofessional. Stick to one or two fonts to keep your design clean and cohesive.

4. Use Contrast for Impact
Ensure there is enough contrast in font size, colour, and weight so that your text stands out and remains easy to read.

5. Consider Printing and Merch Use
Not all fonts work well across different formats. Think about how your design will look when printed on merchandise such as clothing, embroidery, or vinyl to ensure it remains effective.

TYPEFACE PRINCIPLES

Below is the video I’ve watched that has helped me understand the key principles of typography. This video helped me understand the connotations of different typefaces and how they create different emotional and psychological responses from audiences based on how they perceive it. This is why typography plays such an important role in media and branding.

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REFLECTION:

Critical Reflection

 This blog contains my critical reflection for component 3.

For our music promotion package, we decided on “pov” by Ariana Grande (2021) from her Positions (Deluxe) album. This song is from the RnB genre with pop influences. Our star, Ellie Collins, is an upcoming singer-songwriter, who's passionate, artistic, and a shy daydreamer. Our music promotion package is aimed at teenagers to young adults (15-25), couples, hopeless romantics, and Indonesians. We want to convey a dominant reading that vulnerability and self-love in new teen relationships is healthy, and that people should be their authentic selves.

To create a music promotional package, we must first think of branding and persona of the artist. Branding is how a recognizable identity and perception is created, possibly through visual elements, logos and emotional connection. This is especially important for artists to differ themselves from others and build a dedicated fanbase. According to Stuart Hall’s theory, media messages are not passively received. Instead, producers encode their intended meaning into the text, and audiences actively decode and interpret that meaning. To make Ellie’s brand, the most notable similarity between our products to create a sense of branding are the warm colours, where orange and brown are the main hues, especially on her Instagram (Fig 1). We decided on these colours as it connotes comfort which shows the artist’s softer personality, and these colours are a popular convention of RnB digipaks. We also used digicam footage and pictures in our video and digipak to give a timeless and nostalgic feeling to our products. We used guitars and written lyrics/doodles (Fig 2, 3) in all products to show Ellie’s passion and creativity in music production, reflecting her singer-songwriter persona. It also emphasizes vulnerability and intimacy, reinforcing the healthy relationship dominant reading of our music video. Across our products, a “handwriting” and cursive typeface (Fig 2, 3) similar to an autograph, was used to make our products more personal and more feminine respectively. Our digipak was inspired by Bird’s Eye - Ravyn Lenae (2024). We found that Ravyn uses a small logo consisting of her initials, and I wanted to place one on our digipak too to make Ellie’s initials more recognizably hers (Fig 3). We posted grainy pictures with a filter consistent with the other social media posts so audiences are able to make visual connections between posts and think of Ellie when they see similar photos (Fig 1). Though Ellie’s brand shows that she’s an introverted daydreamer, Richard Dyer also argued that stars’ personas are constructed. Ellie occasionally shows her off-screen persona on her Instagram (specifically on her magazine post), where she wears revealing streetwear fashion, shows confidence, and seems career-focused because of the photoshoot concept (Fig 3). However, her signature warm tones are still present to connect her on-screen and off-screen persona and solidify her brand.

Fig 1: Ellie’s Instagram

Fig 2: Shot from the MV and Thumbnail

Fig 3: Digipak design 

Genre conventions adapt over time to satisfy changing audience expectations and cultural shifts. My group uses genre conventions and technical elements to create engaging RnB products. RnB music video genre conventions include dream-like/low quality shots, low-key lighting and simple fashion (“Get you” - Daniel Caesar [2025] and “Love Me Not” - Ravyn Lenae [2025]). We conformed to these conventions to make our video and digipak feel authentic and intimate, aligned with Ellie’s “small artist” persona. The dream-like visuals are also meant to show the hopeless romantic daydreamer trope, making it relatable to teens who crave love. We also conformed by using vintage elements such as digital camera footage/photos (Fig 3, 4) and vinyls (Fig 1, 2) in our social media and video to create a nostalgic and retro theme to target young adults. These elements work together to make our products recognisably RnB. Steve Neale argues that balancing repetitions and difference will keep texts familiar yet new, which is why we decided to subvert some conventions. From my music video research on "Snooze" - SZA (2023) and “Nasty” - Tinashe (2024), I learned that female RnB artists often represent sex symbols with revealing outfits and sensual eye-contact with the camera which aligns with Mulvey’s male gaze theory. We decided to challenge this convention as there are cultural shifts which protest the objectification of women. We challenged it by portraying Ellie as an introverted “girl next door” by making her cover cameras and by using comfortable fashion such as a plain t-shirt (Fig 4, 3), she becomes more relatable to teenagers. We subverted the luxurious convention by using public and personal spaces, with no show of materialistic props, to highlight the ordinariness of our star — which, as mentioned by Richard Dyer, is one of the key factors of stardom. Since our song still has some pop influences, we decided to use high-key lighting (Fig 2, 4), a pop convention, at the start of our video to appeal to pop fans, and also to make the “love at first sight” scene feel happier and surreal (Fig 7). 

Fig 4: Shot of Ellie covering the camera

According to Clay Shirky, audiences expect media content to be interactive or else they’ll reject it, which is why artists must engage with their audience to sustain their fanbase. Since our target audience consists of teenagers and young adults, we decided to use more modern methods of engagement to appeal to them. We made our digipak interactive by adding a QR code that leads to a LinkTree containing Ellie’s socials (Fig 3), letting audiences discover and explore more of Ellie’s work. We also input a phone number on the inside that fans can call and will hear an automated message from Ellie (Fig 3). I was inspired by Katseye’s Gabriela (2025) marketing campaign where they used similar techniques and went viral. Although Katseye is a pop group, their target audience is also teenagers and young adults, so I believed this method would be effective. This creates an “easter egg” for audiences to talk about in comment sections. The uses and gratifications theory says audiences consume media to fulfill personal reasons, such as social relationships. Our star encourages social relationships through her social media by sparking discussions with teasers, which is a hermeneutic code that creates big reactions from fans leading to them interacting with each other (Fig 5). Ellie posts behind the scene vlogs of her dates and the filming process, sharing personal bits that make fans build parasocial relationships. Ellie occasionally replies to comments to keep audiences engaged and keep her “extraordinary” aspects too, which is supported by her newer posts with brand partnerships (Fig 1), which relates with consumption in the theory of stardom. Our star also encourages active consumption within her fandom, which aligns with Henry Jenkins’ theory that fans don’t consume passively and are active, creative participants who create new content. Ellie’s fans create edits of her and interact with each other to gain her attention, and Ellie encourages this by interacting back (Fig 6). 

Fig 5: Comment section and post of teasers

Fig 6: Comment section interaction

In our products, we focused on representing a healthy teenage relationship as our dominant reading. Stuart Hall’s representation theory states that meaning is created through signs and language. Our video represents this couple with cliche and stereotypical events and dates, and also montage-like editing which reflects Ellie’s imagination and mimics a daydream. An example of a stereotypical trope used is the “love at first sight” trope (Fig 7), which ties into what a hopeless romantic (Ellie’s audience) may think love works. We represented couples in the “puppy love” stage by making Ellie have shy mannerisms such as covering the camera (Fig 4), which also shows her vulnerability in her shyness. However, as the music video progresses, she seems more confident as we have her lip sync on a TV screen (Fig 8) without shying away which connotes comfort with fame. Since the theme of the song is about Ellie’s partner’s perspective, we used POV shots from a digital camera (Fig 4) to show Ellie’s growth and journey to self-love from his shoes, which makes audiences have a deeper emotional connection to the storyline, and makes it more immersive. The concept of “puppy love” is often associated with younger audiences aged 15-25, which helps attract teen and young adult audiences. We additionally represented them by using a messy, self-decorated bedroom (Fig 9) which shows that teenagers and young adults are disorganized and expressive. This also creates a sense of relatability for audiences who face similar circumstances. We also represent Indonesians by using one of Ronald Barthes’ narrative codes — the cultural code — by using Indonesian recognized products such as Indomie (Fig 9), and PDA such as Karl helping Ellie put a helmet on for the motorcycle in an over the shoulder shot (Fig 10). This may increase the authenticity of our star as she reflects her Indonesian culture and daily life.

Fig 7: Shot of Love at first sight trope

Fig 8: Shot of Ellie lip syncing

Fig 9: Shot of projector scene

Fig 10: Shot of helmet scene

Overall, our products create a consistent brand built on nostalgia, imagination, passion, artistry, and love. They promote vulnerability and self-love in relationships, encouraging young audiences to embrace their authentic selves. Our branding aligns with our star’s persona, but if I could improve anything, I would clarify the overall message with my team to ensure a more cohesive final outcome.

Final Products

Here are the final products for component 3.

MUSIC VIDEO

Here is the link if anything goes wrong:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oPMUPi8sh8643u4AWY2w_CrV-FZykgzpd6ReH4r4Zsg/edit?usp=sharing

DIGIPAK

SOCIAL MEDIA

link to instagram: 

https://www.instagram.com/by.elliecollins?igsh=bmdjN2Q1dHU2OGYx

link to youtube:

https://youtube.com/@by.elliecollins?si=TYcEBLl-feJ-x031

link to linktree:

https://linktr.ee/by.elliecollins?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRleAPsxkdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAafxPXqf5Qz64fkVBbq-Gcvb4QJJ_rnviyuhaPZ0NaxCdIWVqR8Gs_pFtERFvw_aem_dfZ9YT3pVykVncj54DwgVw

Editing

In this blog it contains the editing process that was done in order to create the Component 3, Music Video. This blog was created by Tisha, but I (Cassie) highlighted and bolded words to ease reading, and gave feedback on editing.

For this project, I decided to edit using several different platforms all a part of the adobe subscription. To which I used application such as: 

•  ADOBE PREMIER PRO – This platform is used mainly for the whole sequence of the music video, as it would be easier for me to add effects such as transitions and simple cuts without any complicated changes. 

• ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS – This platform is used alongside premiere pro, where in some scenes needed effects that are more advanced. Which is why After Effect is the perfect platform for me to use as it allows me to create complex effects. 

• ADOBE FRESCO – This platform helps me to draw the animations layer by layer to create a smooth transition. It is very simple to use and it provides a variety of pen types that would match my music video theme. 

Creating an animation for this project was something new for me, so I decided to look through different youtube videos in order to teach me how to create the smooth animation as well as learning a little bit about Adobe Fresco user interface. I found this youtube video, where it gives an example step by step in creating the animation. I believe watching a video that explains and shows the step allows me to remember the method for the long term. The music video will be the youtube video that I found and learned from:

I chose to use Adobe applications because they allow me to keep all of my projects in one place using Adobe Creative Cloud. This makes it easier to switch between devices and platforms, as my files can be accessed and shared online. It also makes sending footage and finished work more efficient, without needing to transfer large files directly to my laptop or use extra storage as my laptop storage is at its capacity. 

The presentation below will consist of my first editing progress before any changes from revisions. 

From the first editing, I use my progress in showing it to the target audience which can be found in the target audience section. To which I have received much feedback to which I decided to continue working on with the video until the end while applying some of the feedback from our audience to the video. 

REFLECTION: 

Tisha did great on her editing, and I’m very happy with the result. I assisted Tisha in giving feedback and I was able to offer suggestions. Moreover, I gave a variety of ideas about editing choices and which ways we should film, which increased my contribution. In the process we faced a problem where Tisha’s editing software malfunction, preventing us from making last minute changes. This was really scary as it was the day of submission, and we were scared we would lose the whole video. This problem would’ve also affected everyone in the group’s submission scores.  However, in the end we were able to solve this by trouble shooting and talking with professionals. Tisha’s internship supervisor works in media, and knows how to operate the software much better. So with all that, we were able to save the video and the software started working again. Next time, to avoid this same mistake, we will use auto saver or set safety measures such as duplicating the video in another device perhaps.

Branding Research

 This is the branding research for component 3. This was done by Kellie.

REFLECTION:

This was a blog very well done by Kellie. She researched SZA, one of our main inspirations, in very great detail. Her research is useful for us to properly understand how branding works for artists. I did not have much of a role in this, but I helped answer any questions Kellie had since she was away from her first few weeks of class. However, that itself is the problem. Kellie was away for the first few weeks of class, and she was unable to work on her blog. We couldn’t help her much with this blog as we wanted her to contribute and felt bad if we worked on it for her. So, she had little time to do this blog which made it stressful for her to work on, especially with a tight deadline. We solved this all with all the other teammates helping her if she had questions, and with most other blogs done and ready, she could focus more on this and get it done quickly. Next time, bring your laptop with you when you go on holiday Kellie! Next time, we will definitely make sure we have more time to complete blogs, because it is more work than it seems