 |
| FRONT COVER |
 |
| INSIDE LEFT |
 |
| INSIDE RIGHT |
 |
| REVERSE COVER AND SPINE (DOTTED LINES FOR REFERENCE OF BORDER ONLY) |
 |
| INSIDE (MOCK UP BY CARRICK) |
This is my final critical self-reflection.
The Component 3 project required my team to create a cover music video of an existing song to promote an artist of our choice. To achieve this, we researched various music genres, analyzing their visual styles, rhythms, and musical and technical elements. We decided to proceed with R&B, a genre known for its soulful singing, steady beats, and themes of love, friendship, and personal struggles. After exploring different R&B songs, we selected Bruno Mars’ “Leave The Door Open”. To bring our vision to life, we conducted a screen test and selected Jaden as our artist, branding him as J Muse a cool, chill, semi-romantic, and down-to-earth persona. Our goal is for the dominant reading of the music video to highlight J Muse's love life and struggles while reinforcing his effortlessly cool and charismatic persona.
Branding creates an identity in media, allowing audiences to associate it with specific messages, values, and emotions. In our music video, branding is achieved through visual storytelling, visual consistency, and character portrayal. Since “Leave The Door Open” conveys romance, we enhanced this by incorporating warm lighting (yellow, orange, and red tones) to emphasize intimacy and passion (Fig.1). J Muse's persona is cool, chill, romantic, and down-to-earth, but we also aim to make him relatable. Instead of presenting him as a flawless "lover boy" who always wins in love, we show him experiencing real heartbreak. To reinforce this human aspect, we filmed in natural settings, the beach, trees, fresh air, and the sunset, symbolizing reflection and healing. His emotional struggles are depicted through dim lighting, alcohol as a symbol of escapism, and a transition to nature as a metaphor for personal healing (Fig.2). By combining storyline, visuals, and performance, we ensure J Muse’s branding remains consistent, presenting him as a real, emotionally complex artist rather than an idealized pop star.
In the R&B genre, music videos typically include relaxing and cool stylization visually, actors present themselves as slick and smooth we conform to by using warm lighting and dressing the Star with beach vibes and breathable costumes to show that relaxation, no intense formalities (Fig.3). Camera movements in R&B are often smooth and slow cinematography, intimate storytelling, and themes of love or emotional depth. We often framed J Muse in close-ups and mid-shots to capture his emotions, making his heartbreak or feelings more personal and engaging - this builds emotional depth within the music video. Instead of portraying J Muse, our star, as a charismatic and dominant lover which is common in R&B, we show heartbreak, rejection, and emotional struggle, subverting from the hyper-masculine portrayals in the genre. We also used darker tones and rainy/cloudy weather in some scenes which is an element that is uncommon in R&B visuals, we did this to reinforce J Muse’s emotional feelings (Fig.4). We also went for natural locations (beach, trees, fresh air) rather than luxurious urban settings, to make J Muse more relatable, as people typically go to nature for leisure or healing.
A digipak is a physical album cover and packaging that visually represents an artist's brand, persona, and music style. We must ensure our digipak is aligned with R&B genre conventions, so we analyzed a couple of existing R&B digipaks from artists like Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Ne-Yo, and a few more. We used serif fonts for the album title and tracklist so that we kept a classic and stylish appeal that most R&B digipaks have. We’ve seen many artists use their face as the digipak’s cover, so we featured a close-up of J Muse’s face, to build an emotional connection. We tried to maintain a consistent brand identity with the digipak’s color palette matching the music video, this conforms to the R&B genre, and we did this not to confuse the audience with our branding. While most R&B digipaks use studio-shot images and dark aesthetics, we subverted by using natural elements (beach background) to reflect J Muse’s laid-back, down-to-earth type of guy. J Muse acts chill, giving a more relaxed pose over the serious look typical in R&B (fig.5).
Music videos can reflect or challenge social groups and issues, shaping how audiences interpret emotions, relationships, and identity when watching the video. Our music video focuses on teen experiences, love struggles, romantic relationships, happiness, and personal desires, making it highly relatable to young audiences. In traditional R&B music videos, male artists are often portrayed as charismatic, confident lovers who are either in control of their relationships or deeply heartbroken in an overly dramatic way. These videos often show over-the-top romantic gestures, luxurious lifestyles, and emotionally intense breakups, making love appear either idealized or excessively painful. My team and I aimed to represent love and heartbreak more realistically, while still maintaining J Muse’s cool and admirable persona. Instead of portraying him as helpless or excessively emotional, we ensured he remained relatable, like going out for a walk to cope, allowing audiences to empathize or sympathize with him rather than pity him. The star’s acting plays a big role in representing what we wanted, J Muse expresses subtle, natural emotions rather than exaggerated sadness (Fig.6). The mise-en-scene and setting locations were a casual restaurant and the beach, this reflects an everyday love story, making his experience feel authentic and familiar to the audience. We played a lot with lighting during production/filming, we show a shift from warm tones (happiness, romance) to dim, shadowy lighting that helps visually mirror his emotional transition in such a subtle but noticeable way.
Social media was a great tool for us to engage with the audience, and to develop J Muse’s brand identity beyond the music video. By using a social media platform, like Instagram, we provide fans with exclusive, private, content, like J Muse’s personal life (friends, family, holidays), it’ll strengthen the audience's connection to the artist. We posted candid, less professional photos, to make him relatable, showing moments from day-to-day life that fans can connect and were familiar with. We also posted behind-the-scenes content, showing insight into the music video production and the process of hard work put into making his music video, which makes him look more human rather than like a miracle(Fig.7)(Fig,8). Uses & Gratifications Theory explains why people use media to meet their needs, we believe people want to watch J Muse for personal Identity because fans relate to J Muse’s romantic struggles & chill personality so they idolize and try to be like him by watching his content. Entertainment, there are a few engaging visual content, smooth aesthetics, and also entertaining/comedic content to keep the audience invested. We used CapCut and PowerPoint to design and edit posts to be uploaded on J Muse’s social media. By combining social media and technology, we were able to keep J Muse’s brand consistent, and additionally, engaging to the audience.
This project really gave me a deeper understanding of branding and media representation, showing me how visuals and storytelling can completely transform an artist’s identity. Watching Jaden take on the persona of J Muse reinforced how branding influences audience perception, people don’t just see the artist, they see the version that’s being designed for them. Throughout this process, I learned the importance of attention to small details, especially in lighting, mise-en-scene, and camera work, as these elements shape how emotions and context are represented, which successfully transformed Jaden to J Muse. Overall, this project was a valuable experimental and creative experience.
This is the link to the of the essay in PDF form: PDF
(Fig 1)
(Fig.2)
(Fig.3)
(Fig.4)
(Fig.5)
(Fig.6)
(Fig.7)
Here is the development of the editing stage - completed by Me
I used Google Drive to store all the footage that was filmed using my Leica smartphone camera. I used movie ratio during filming directly so that I won't have to add an effect or change the ratio later on during editing.
I'm using Capcut to edit the Music Video (MV). Capcut offers many premade effects and editing tools. It's very easy to use, easy to learn, and practical. I have been using CapCut for almost 2 recent years, so I'm fairly good at it and still familiar with it. I have bought CapCut Pro which gives me access to more features and effects that I normally couldn't use with normal CapCut. So, with this membership, I'm hoping I'll finish things much more smoothly and without hindrance like the limitations of normal CapCut. I will be using my computer to edit on CapCut.
Here is the overall timeline of the project in CapCut computer.
SIGNIFICANT EDITING CHOICES AND METHODS
The Intro will have an opening title of the song, I used a text element and animated it for the title introduction:
The title serves to give context to the audience.
I changed the text's color to match the branding and overall lighting.
I chose a color that compliments the background lighting and scenery. It is important to make it visually appealing so that the audience doesn't feel odd or get distracted by it leading to not being able to focus on the content.
I use filters to color grade the footage for better quality and make it more cinematic.
The highlighted elements are the filters:
Color grading is a very important aspect of editing as it creates meaning and stories in the media. I could make the music video seem horror and scary with dark color grading, or enunciate certain colors to create the branding of the video. As for our music video featuring J Muse covering "Leave The Door Open" I go with a filter that matches the persona of J Muse which is laid back, cool, and down-to-earth, which is why I picked a filter that enunciates the warm colors like yellow and orange, as well as ones that compliments the lighting of the footage.
I used markers to symbolize the beats of the music/audio. It helped me with matching the timing of footage cuts and transitions.
The audio is at the bottom, the color is blue, and the markers are on top of the audio, the color is light blue:
I use jump cut, decided on that during editing, for this scene.
example 1
example 2
I matched the cuts based on the music's beat so that it looks smooth and not messy which is disturbing for the audience. These jump cuts were placed during a very energetic part of the music, so it suits well and creates a visual appeal or eye candy for the audience.
MINOR EDITING CHOICES AND METHODS
I used special effects to give a dreamy look on the artist's face during part of the song where the lyrics talk about being clean-shaven.
This makes the visual more impactful and engages the audience more with the song and music video, as it immerses them better with special visual effects.
I edited the speed of the footage to give a slow-mo effect on J Muse's expression.
This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our music video, album cover, and social media page to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. We were told to receive 4 responses to our feedback form - completed by Me, Carrick, Kaka, and Jaden
.jpeg)
(Fig,8)
