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.