Social Media: Research and Development

This is our social media research and development, written by me (sharon).

Choose 3 artists from your genre

Visit their social media page. Screenshot examples of their overall page, their posts, their comments section

Niki Zefanya's

Instagram page and post:

These are her comment sections: (filled with interactive fans especially since she is announcing our tour on various countries) 

Personal post:

Professional post:

NIKI usually post things such as personal post (trips, friends, animals), interaction post (where she thanks her fans) and promotional/professional post such events happening, new albums, concerts. For NIKI's personal post it feels very genuine as if NIKI herself is creating that post as she post things such as selfies, sceneries, food, friends which shows the funny and careless side of her, However, for her promotional post it feels somehow more professional as it looks curated by her team to promote her album, songs and her self branding (pesona). Her posts reflects on her personality and career showing her carefree and fun side relating to fans more. 

Fans are able to interact with the post as usually some of the post from NIKI (after tour post) is directed to her fans to thank them for coming, ect. Usually fans are able to engage from comments, react or respond to stories. Others fans usually are able to interact by comments and replying to each other. In other applications such as tiktok fans are able to post their fav videos of their artist and other fans are able to repost, interact with the post even more. 

NIKI promotes her music by posting teasers of music videos on her upcoming album, her album's trackline, behind the scene looks, announcing tours and collabs with other artist. She used instagram to direct her post to be more professional and informational things.

By NIKI's social medias such as instagram i am able to find informations such as her tour dates, her new album releases and her social life updates and collaborations with other artist.

Olivia Rodrigo's

Instagram page and post:

Comment section: 

Personal Post:

Professional post: 

This is her paid promotion with sony:

Her paid promotion with glossier (in here she uses her signature color purple again)

Olivia Rodrigo usually post about her daily life such as travels to countries, being with friends and her process of producing the music. She also post to promote her music such as upcoming albums, concert tour dates and behind the scenes of her production. Olivia Rodrigo also post paid promotions such as the one with sony’s link fit collaboration, glossier which still fits her aesthetic. Throughout all she post she frequently used the color purple which makes her audience link purple to her.

Olivia Rodrigo’s post consists of very personal and funny and unique post as they feel like Olivia herself created her post. The posts are abit messy but very down to earth and represents herself alot as a teenager. Promotional posts feels more professional due to the good usage of camera, professional lighting (feels more formal) which captures her stage presence and thanking her fans for the tours she got to have in various countries. 

Olivia rodrigo constantly uses her social media platforms to promote her upcoming tours, sharing teasers for upcoming albums and events which she attends, collaborations, ect.  Fans are able to interact and engage by commenting, reacting to some post or sharing content. For other social medias such as tiktok fans usually post videos of concerts and performances that olivia did.

Her social media inspired me to make our social media personality for our project. As her feed consist of formal and funny post which is the perfect combination for a feed in our opinion. However personally i have always been hooked up on her post as they feel very genuine and not fake which impacts me as an audience in being interested.

Gracie Abrams

Instagram page and post:

Comment section: 

Personal Post:

Professional post: 

paid promotions: 

Gracie Abram's social media consist of a blend of professional and raw moments, but more professional feel which has a minimalistic aesthetic constant throughout all her page. This is as Gracie post semi professional pictures with a film like effect, vintage feel which makes her page feels very artistic and minimalistic but nostalgic due to the colouring. 

Gracie frequently post behind the scenes pictures or pictures about her process of making a song (handwritten lyrics draft) which gives her fans a glimpse in her songwriting. Her personal post usually consist of unpolished, casual moments in her life which are not so vulnerable however still feel realistic. Her contents also feel carefully chosen from the colours and entire vibe as she often reflect her emotions and artistic process in her post making audience engage more and feel closer to the artist (relatableness). Her post usually has a muted colour which makes it look somehow vintage and nostalgic with soft aesthetic.

Gracie uses her platform to promote her music professionally using high quality concert picture, she share updates about upcoming tours, live performance which her professional post feels more professional but has her signature touch of vintage, ect. For her promotional post also maintains her aesthetic and her personal signature touch which makes her paid promotion never feel forced and blends in with her feed. 

Her aesthetic is dreamy, nostalgic, vintage feel which she usually inputs visuals, simplicity, and aesthetic which subverts from usual high curated artist, making her page seem more relaxed and dreamy and relatable to her audience. Her relatableness makes her fans engage more with her as her followers constantly commenting heartfelt messages. Her fans also engage in tiktok and other apps by reposting her live concert.

Gracie's post is balanced between professional post and semi professional which makes her seem genuine but professional showing her personality through her post and connecting her audience to her art (music) which makes her post engaging. I admire how she curates her personal branding in social media and how she's consistent throughout her post. 

Reflection: Similarly to the branding research, Sharon did most of the social media whilst I just looked through for feedback ehre and there. This research helped us with making our social media account (instagram) for our artist. We wanted to make our artist have fun and goofy posts whilst also keeping some posts have professional photos, as I think if it was too informal it would look more like a teen's instagram account than it is a professional singer's account.

Branding Research

Olivia Rodrigo

• Social medias >

• Music albums

• Music videos : "Drivers License", "Good 4 U", "Deja Vu"

• (Magazine shoots/interviews)

Interviews:

What brand identity are they giving off?

- teenager (heartbreak, angst): this is as her music video shows her raw emotions through filming and her lyrics. Her personal touch to the songs bring out a sense of nostalgic and a way of finding identity in teenager phases.

- Purple: throughout all her music videos, brand promotion, album covers, personal lifestyle shows her favorite color for purple which makes it her personal color that people connects her with.

-Authenticity: she creates authentic and fresh content using her personal image and colour with lyrics that relate to teenagers.

What is their persona? relatable and open, funny, pop star. Olivia Rodrigo is seen to be relatable and open due to her post in social media where she post alot of behind the scenes moments and unfiltered glimpse into her life, everyday life experience which makes her more relatable to others.

Her humor also plays a big role in her persona shes creating as shes not afraid to be herself having fun in interviews and lifestyle. Whether it’s through interviews, TikToks, or Instagram captions, she keeps things light and entertaining.

As a pop star, she blends emotional depth with mainstream appeal as a typical popstar. However her music snd lyrics are personalized by her own life experiences which. Her music, heavily influenced by personal experiences, resonates with fans who relate to heartbreak, self discovery, and teenage angst. As her songs are based of personal life experience, the song writing feels authentic which causes a strong bond between her and her audience.

She also brands herself by using outfits that stands out, typical pop star artist outfit which has the characteristics of shiny, stand out, bold, colorful and vibrant. These typical conventions uses outfits (concert fits)that stands out to 

 characteristics and colorful showing fun, bright, cheerful. 

These are the example of typical pop concert outfits from some famous artist:

Olivia Rodrigo’s concert outfits:

Olivia Rodrigo follows the pop conventions, such as outfits in order for people to recognize her as a pop artist.

Taylor Swift

Social medias:

• Album covers:

Lover (2019):

1989 (2014 & Taylor's Version 2023):

The Tortured Poets Department (2024):

Midnights (2022):

From each of her cover albums, she has a clear concept on each of her music video. Such as lover which has colors such as pink, soft. The example shows how each of her music has a clear branding and clear idea & story.

• Music videos : "TTPD", "Midnights", "Lover"

Taylor Swift is known for her cinematic, movie like story in her music video as each of them has a clear storyline.

• (Magazine shoots/interviews):

Taylor Swift is a strongly created pesona and branding which she uses to share informations about her music to her audiences. Taylor swift's

personal branding is storytelling/music writer as throughout her music she always achieves this story like, poetry.Artist usually rely on personal post to drop their music.

However where her lyrics has a deeper meaning and even cryptic messages are hidden across, connecting people with her music even more. She usually writes songs that

are vulnerable, relatable to her personal experience which makes her audience relates to her even more. She's open about her struggles such as in the

music industry, relationships, ect making her feel more real and approachable to her fans.

She is THE pop icon, where she creates era's by reinventing albums and different styles of music. Where she uses glittery and bold outfits

when she performs confirming the usual pop artist conventions and mainstream appeal, as she is one of the biggest influence in pop. Each of her album has a specific pallete aswell, which helps

her audience differentiate each era of her music.

Multicam Editing

 In this blog you can find the work I did on how to edit with multiple cameras. My group filmed the footage, but I edited it alone. My teacher provided a template for the blog post. 

What is Multicam Editing?

Multicam editing is the process of editing footage of a single scene or subject recorded from different cameras and angles. Showing the same scene or subject from different angles helps make the video more dynamic and visually captivating for your audience

Shooting

Our subject , a classmate, stood in the centre of the room and did a short performance. My group stood around the subject to record the performance from different angles. You can also see members from other groups because we did this lesson as a class. To make it easier to synchronise our cameras, the teacher clapped at the start of the scene. This allowed us to line up the video in the editing process and ensure that the transitions would be smooth. Without this simple action it would have taken a lot longer to sync the videos. 

(BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGES):

My editing process

• Upload the videos to the editing software (Microsoft Clipchamp) 

• Detach the audio of the clip you wish to use in the final video. 

• Find the ‘clap’ marker on the audio.

• Line up the video files together. 

• Cut where I want the edit to happen

• Don’t delete the clip, just lower the opacity. This way it can be used again later. 

• Mute all clips except for the one you want to use. 

Here is my final edited video:

Reflection: I already had previous editing experience, but since it had been a while since I edited multiple clips and timed it all right this was a great warm up. This was a fun little classwork activity that me and my classmates enjoyed. I had no overall issues besides the lack of time, luckily I already finished the editing and only needed to export it by the time was up. I used my laptop to edit because it's generally easier for me, I've only used a phone to edit once and it was overall a harder process.

Filming practice; Music Video

 This post contains a mini project that helped us learn how to shoot a music video. We shot our verse as a group and then created this post together.

Our teacher gave each group a verse from the song “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles where we had to plan a scene which included various camera work and edits. The goal was to enhance our technical skills through practice and experience so that we have an idea on what we should be doing, learn from our mistakes and avoid making them in the future in order to create a better quality product for our component 3. In addition to that, doing this helps us learn more about each other’s skills and our team’s dynamics so that we can function better when we record our actual music video.

Pre Production:

Our instructions were to create a music video from the verses we were given. We were given 2 verses (both chorus below) and had to consider the instrumentals since we were told to film from the end of the last verse until the start of the next verse.

We started by creating a storyboard that allows us to communicate and outline our ideas

Here is the storyboard for scene 1

Description: The camera would push out from a crowd to a side-shot of the actor sitting down and lip syncing then cut to the front-view as they get up to walk away.

For this storyboard, I (Aurel) thought about a nostalgic approach. This was because, since we had no actual sun due to the rain, I wanted to figure out how I could still incorporate the meaning from the lyrics into what we were displaying as a music video. I thought that a metaphorical sun would work better. I choose to associate this with youth as they are often associated with brightness and cheerfulness much in the way that the sun usually is. Therefore I wanted to make it appear as though it were like the star was reminiscing over their youth. This was particularly advantageous too as we were shooting in a school which made it more easy to make the connection with youth. 

Additionally, as this was the first verse, I wanted something that could act as an introduction to the music video and help easily transition into the next verses. I felt like my idea for the scene allowed for a lot of room for whatever could come next as it could look like the rest of the star’s youth days. 

However, since we only had 10 minutes to work on 2 storyboards whereas other groups only had to work on one, I rushed mine and tried to get it done as soon as possible as I wanted to focus on communicating my vision. This resulted in my storyboard appearing less professional than I would have liked. I also now realise that perhaps I should have focused on the storyboard more as it would've helped communicate my idea better.

Here is the storyline for scene 5

Description: Actor walking under canopy with a smile on her face, camera turns to reveal rain and irony between song lyrics to mise-en-scene.

Since we only had roughly 10 minutes to storyboard, our sketches were simple and we relied more on verbal communication to discuss our ideas on the acting, camera angle and movement.

Production:

During our production process, we started by shooting the 5th verse as it required the rain as well as less people despite the fact that in the beginning, we were supposed to shoot under sunny weather to correlate with the meaning of the song, the weather had other plans and started pouring. So, we decided to turn the rainy weather into an advantage by playing on that irony to result in a light humorous video, subverting from the song’s original meaning. 

We filmed the 1st verse immediately after. For this verse, we gathered a few of our friends to act as background actors, talking and laughing, to create a natural and social atmosphere. This verse conforms to the meaning of the song about hope but later we unexpectedly found that this mise-en-scene made the star appear more isolated and less like the nostalgia approach we had hoped for. If we had the chance to reshoot the scene, we believe we could have overcome this issue by filming outside in the school field as the outdoors often connote freedom rather than isolation. 

Post Production:

All the clips we had filmed were piled into a google drive for us to be able to watch through each one together and start the editing process. 

Link: gdrive link 

Jocy and Regine chose one chorus each and they edited the clips (Regine did the 1st verse and Jocy did the 5th). We noticed that the start of the song (the instrumental at the 1st verse) had to be filled in with a recording, however we did not do that and only filled the singing part of the chorus, so Regine filmed shots of our friends in class to fill in that gap. With the editing itself, we didn’t have much complications other than being in a time rush because we had to retake the shots for the 5th verse a few times, however it wasn’t that much of a problem either as we got the editing done in time and the only thing we had to do over the weekend as homework was this blog and reflection.

Video: (embed it later on)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nTta4QIHX4KrqJzOETsw4U12qkgvSoF/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xTrsn6T9afKPWfPBn_x46zZLXMSYO6ZK/view?usp=drivesdk 

Problems:

• For scene 5, there were several shots where the timing to which the background actor had to act their part was off. The runner would come on the screen too late from what we envisioned. This may be due to the large distance from the place that she had to start running from, to where she had to be (the spot which was in the frame of the video). Additionally, with the rain, we couldn't risk the runner to sprint because the area was slippery and she ran without shoes (to avoid getting them dirty)

• We didn’t manage our time to record both scenes efficiently. During recording scene 5, we spent way too much time there due to the retakes and thus had to quickly move on to scene 1 where we had only little time left to record. This led to a lot of rushing and possibly a lower quality of the end product. 

• For scene 1, it was quite difficult to direct the large group of background actors. This is as we had to do a lot of coordinating in such little time including communicating the idea and what they had to do, as well as preparing their position in the frame. 

Solutions:

• To solve the issue in scene 5 with the runner not being able to cross the screen in time, we decided to instruct the runner to begin at a closer distance. instead of running from one end to another, the runner would begin at a midpoint (pool locker room). Moreover, our teacher advised us to verbally send a signal to a runner than to use a hand gesture since the original audio wouldn't be heard anyways. We believe these two combined helped us get our intended shot for the final video by making the directing process much smoother

• To solve the issue of directing the background actors in scene 1, I (Regine) found that it was best to explain to the actors our intentions and plans so they can carry it out. Since we only needed them to talk to each other and act like friends, I explained what the idea was for the scene and they picked it up immediately. Everything went smoothly then.

• For scene 1, we also did a dual-shoot technique where two phones were used at the same time so the scenes were the exact same during editing.

• We completely forgot to film parts to fill out the instrumental section for scene 1 so I (Regine) quickly went out to film establishing shots of the area (school building, classmates, etc)

Next time:

Our main struggle was managing the time to record both scene 1 and scene 5 within the given period of time. Thus next time, in the case where we have limited time but more than 1 task to do, we should prepare a thorough plan and allocate the amount of time we need in advance. The planning should help smooth the process of directing the actors. We should keep track of the time using timers. In addition to that, if possible, we should divide the team members to work on different tasks simultaneously (directors, camera operator, music operator, etc). Therefore, we can more or less finish at the same time, attaining extra time in case there are needs to fix or redo certain parts.

Self Reflection:

This was a fun little project we did to practice for filming our main music video. My teammate Sharon was absent on that day so I had to join another team which was luckily my group of friends. Besides a rather short time limit, and a bit of a rushed result, I think the project went well and we could all benefit from it in our main project.