Creative Critical Reflection Q.4

Creative Critical Reflection Q.3

Q3

Creative Critical Reflection Q.2

Q.2

Creative Critical Reflection Q.1

Q1. How does your product use or challenge the conventions and how does it represent social groups and issues?

Ans. The Advanced level portfolio task for us was to create a music video either following or breaking the general conventions of the existing real media texts, allowing us to explore and eventually produce what would interest the mass audience.

I believe, our product uses most of the conventions of a typical music video but also, in a few parts of the performance the rules are also challenged to an extent that it gives us an edge. Our music video is on the song “Duaa” which means “Prayer”, the overall feel of the song is about yearning and desperation to achieve something; the video is performance and narrative based. With an indie band to represent we had to make sure that there were enough references taken in order to have an accurate representation of how the production of the video is to take place.

For the performance of the music video our major references included Boyce Avenue videos, especially those when they initially started off. 

Low budget, low lighting, small studio, acoustic instruments: This was our situation as well. Hence, we followed their example and decided to go with something that would be somewhat similar to their mise- en- scene especially since it would be easier for us to pull of as well. The final cut of our music video shows how our location has warm, soft lighting with maximum consumption of natural lights, it definitely gave an amateur studio- like feel to it. It also complimented with the narrative of the video and the lyrics of the song giving it a deeper understanding and emotion to it which happens to be the convention of indie music videos. 

In our music video, one way in which we challenged the conventions was that usually, in all sorts of music videos the artists look directly into the camera, especially when the entire band is shown; for our music video, we saw that none of the band members had direct contact with the camera which gave the feel that the song “Duaa” was on a much more spiritual and emotional level. The essence of yearning and the attachment to the song could evidently be seen with the way the expressions of the members were.

The narrative of our music video seemed to be very simple but had to be understood on a deeper level relating to the social reality. The conventions for the narrative were followed and referenced from a popular Pakistani music video, “Ankahi by Overload”. Generally we see that most narrative based music videos essentially cover a very typical narrative but for our video we chose something to which the audience would have to connect with the entire society and link their interpretations to it. There are various concept based videos but those are difficult to understand by the audiences. We turned the concept of hopelessness into a narrative which gave us a chance to play around with the conventions of the music video. 

Our music video represents an entire society in terms of the performance and the narrative. According to our music video survey we had more of the teenagers targeted since we did not have a wide access to the elderly- however, we feel that it can be enjoyed and understood by everyone. Since in the narrative the protagonist is a young girl, we would have a greater audience attracted to it to find out what the music video is about. If we have a closer look at our society, in Pakistan we all are going through a stressful phase in the society with so much disruption and hence, the video allows audiences to relate to the reality through the music video; especially groups in the lower middle class, the ones who are necessarily targeted with those problems. 

One very important relation of our music video was with the different dressings of the young girl, from wearing traditional shalwar kameez, to wearing a sweater and jeans. This shows that the girl is from a well off family but she has a different outlook for society, she is not a typical girl, her concerns about the society and the needy are legit and hence walks out in search of hope. 

A major issue represented in our music video is “hopelessness” and “depression” in the society, as there is nothing positive happening in the society. There is a loss of motivation to achieve what needs to be achieved but somehow a teenager still has hope and proves that if one is motivated enough and the desire to achieve is strong then even in the darkest times, good can happen. The social issues represented in the music video are easily relatable to the reality of our traditional society giving viewers a chance to have more emotional attachment to it. 

In a society like that of Pakistan where there are so many issues, hopelessness in various situations is very common and hence, this is an extremely relatable topic for our society. With the use of the elements of the earth water, fire, land it made the narrative stronger as each element has its own representation and depth to it. For our entire music video to express a certain meaning, these elements added their own essence to it as all three elements are extremely important for human survival and aid each other as well. 

In conclusion to this, the social issues targeted are universal and the only way to counter these is to not lose motivation and continue working even if the society is going through the toughest of times- this is what the young girl was able to establish by her effort of sowing the seed and watering it in the barren land. 

Final Website

Visit the official website now: http://yazdani9.wix.com/awaaz

Website: Production Journey

We decided to make the website using Wix.com which is an online free website builder tool. 

Our group member Faisal Yazdani started off with the layout of the website and produced a first draft of the website, then Humble Awan and I, Fatima Ali added the hyperlinks and made the website more interactive and pleasing to the eye.

We started off by changing the pictures to the ones that looked more appropriate and then added hyperlinks and added text and coke studio logo to give the picture words.

Then since our website was a Single page continuous one so we added divisions by anchors and new sections like a Digipak and album section where we provided a button for Buying the album as well.

We also added a track listing and created an interactive album as well by the album tool that was available which and then added the songs that were part of the album.

We also embedded the music video of the song Duaa on the website and also created a section for Tours and also an Instagram feed after making an instagram page of the band "Awaaz".

So our website consisted of 6 sections which were anchored to the section bar on the top of the website.


Website layout designed by Faisal Yazdani
Website creation and hyperlinking done By Fatima Ali and Humble Awan

Plan for the website:

So as you already know, we must not only produce a music video but also a digipak alongside a website. Going through the different types of websites has really opened my eyes to all the different lay outs that can be used.
Here are some of the websites that were especially inspirational, in a way.

This is the official website of the artist Bruno Mars. I really like the way the borders slide over the screen to reveal the next image. We may try to incorporate such a thing in our own website.

Calvin Harris’s website was by far my favourite website. It engaged the viewer by filling the home page with lots of things; songs, music videos, instagram posts,etc. It had a lot more pictures than text which made it so much more colourful and interesting.

This is the official website of the band ‘Guns and Roses’. The reason i chose this is its simplicity. Although we would like to come up with something that is more creative than this, it is helpful in telling us the different content we could use to make our website better.
 These are just a few more pictures of some of the website i researched on. This research has been really helpful as i am now aware of the different lay outs and designs for websites. Along with that, ive also learnt what content needs to be present on an artists official website.

So far,Ii believe our website’s home page will be full of pictures of the band members along with other things such as pictures of funny tweets, songs , etc. A lot like the Calvin Harris website’s homepage. Other than this, the website will have links to the band members social media profiles, BTS footage, tour schedule, news, upcoming releases and so on.

Final Digipak

So after discussing the production journey of our ancillary task of a Digipak here is the final Digipak:
​
1. Front Cover

2. Back Cover

3. Cd Cover

4. Inlay

Post by Humble Awan

Digipak Inlay (Production Journey)

The Inlay was also created in Adobe Photoshop and we decided to have a collage of pictures from the behind the scenes and the photo shoot and the narrative shoot, something to interest the buyer and interact with the whole production phase. A border was added to make the pictures more prominent and layers were placed on each other to give a more creative effect.

By Fatima Ali 

Digipak CD (Production Journey)

CD

By Humble Awan

Digipak Back cover (Production Journey)

For the back cover of the Digipak I used the same background as the one on the front cover, this would help to create a link and follow the same theme that the digipak is following.

Then i added the same band name logo and the album name as well, I also added a rectangular ellipse to mark a boundary of the back cover and also the record label which was "Walnut studios". The back cover finally started to have its shape as i rearranged and placed these items to find out where they fit best. Then I also added the song listing which was aligned on the left side under the album name. I tried different placements such as in the center but at the end placing the song listing on the left side seemed more appropriate.

Finally The group also came up with the idea of adding tags such as that of online social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others, so we added those as well to give it a more diverse look, and to show that the band can be followed on these networks as well which would create more audience following and a band image.

Finally the Final back cover was prepared after adding all these and aligning them in their places, which is shown below:

By Humble Awan

Digipak Front cover (Production Journey)

So in this post I will talk about the production process in Adobe Photoshop of the digipak front cover.

I started off with choosing the background picture which was of the barren land and the cracks in the ground since it depicted our narrative and I wanted to make a link with the performance.

Then I added the band logo which was created by tracing in Photoshop and the color was chosen in a lighter shade of red and Opacity was reduced. Then to make the background more colorful and pleasing to the eye, i used the gradient overlay and adjusted it in brown to give it a more earthy feel and make the details of the earth more visible.

Then I used the Lasso tool to crop out the faces of the 3 performers and by using the eraser tool and masking their faces using the magnetic lasso tool and giving them a proper face outline, I moved the faces to find the best position and then decided on positioning their side poses on the left side then I used the blending options and the darken color tool to make their faces blend in the background giving a more artistic look. 

Then i downloaded and used the "Signerica" font to write the Album name which is "Duur". 

The final digipak front cover is shown below: 

By Humble Awan

Making the Band Logo

Bands have their own recognition symbols and have their logos designed in a specific manner so that audiences are able to recognize immediately what artist or band they are listening to. 

For our band "Awaaz" we decided to make the logo using calligraphic reference from the Newspaper: Awaaz. 

Using Photoshop to create the logo, we used the pen tool to trace it out. Since our logo will be in urdu it gives a traditional look allowing more audiences to be able to relate to it. To make it easier for all sorts of audiences to understand we will have "The Voice" written underneath the logo.

The image above shows the process to create the logo, we used the pen tool to trace the letters, we added different colours to each part of the letter to make the process visible and easier to understand at first. The final logo with "The voice" written underneath is also shown to make it understandable for all audiences.

Having our own logo gives the band their own recognition for people to be able to recognise them instantly developing the star image of the band, making band promotions and marketing easier.

By Fatima Ali

Digipak (Photography)

After preparing the sketches and getting the ideas about the Digipak from our group member Faisal, I went out and did the photo shoot for the Cd which we chose would have a plant on it with barren soil behind it where the depth of field will be applied. and i will add the burnt effect and also add more color to the background as well in Photoshop.

For our main Cd cover we were planning to Keep a shot of the whole band, or create a picture in Photoshop which will basically be a Tree in the center and the side poses of the vocalists on either sides of the tree trunk.

On the Inlay we will have a collage of pictures such as the one above and of another members, candid pictures and behind the scene pictures as well. so a lot of pictures in a unsymmetrical collage will be on the inlay of the CD cover.

By Humble Awan