Social Media Research and Development

Here is the research and development of our social media page - completed by Giorgio, Carrick, and Kaka

Research

Bruno Mars - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/brunomars/

Bruno seems to post very high quality images of himself with other artists. The lighting and mood of each photo is very regulated. Other posts that Bruno posts are ones regarding his music ratings as well as promotional videos for his other songs and collaborations. The photos of him do feel rather personal as per the fan comments which are mostly very positive of Bruno Mars despite being professionally produced by someone else who is creating the content for Bruno. The comments provide a way for fans to interact with Bruno and other fans where they can connect and share thoughts. Livestreams which Bruno often does help him to connect with his fanbase and learn what they want to see from him in the future. Bruno's social media account promotes new music and releases through posting photos of collaborations with other artists as well as promotional videos with the music in the background. This social media has influenced me by showing consistency in both the lighting, mood, and clothing of the artist.

Categories of Bruno Mars' posts can be summarised in the following:

• Personal: Shots of live performances, recording sessions.
• Promotional: Grammy wins, concert clips, music video highlights.
• Humour: Playful interactions between Bruno and other artists.

Craig David - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/craigdavid/

Craig also posts very high quality images of himself in a cheerful mood. Most of the time it's just him but sometimes he features another artist he is collaborating with. The lighting and mood of each photo on Craig's page is also very regulated. Craig posts other posts too which include recent highlights of concerts and memes that were made using images and videos of Craig in a recording studio. The posts don't really feel all that personal as it is usually just very corporate posts that are pretty obviously produced by someone else who works for Craig. The captions of each post are very long and do not feel like they were written by Craig himself. However, on one post regarding a book he is publishing, many fans felt that they could relate to Craig as evident in his comment section which is one post that feels personal to fans. Fan also seem to write their favourite concert memories in the comments of the concert posts which gives an opportunity for Craig to interact with his fans as well as fans interacting with other fans. Craig's page shows that even though most of the page is corporate and is very obviously not run by Craig, fans are still able to relate, interact with one another and feel connected with Craig. Craig's profile picture is of him being thankful to God based off where his eyes are looking (up). His bio talks about how he feels and expresses it through emojis. His link is a link tree that are related to Craig.  

Neyo - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/neyo/

Neyo's page again feature high quality images of himself, but this time his page also features a lot of other posts that are amateur or are snippets of podcasts or behind the scenes places where Neyo shows himself to be vulnerable, opening up and talking about success and his personal life. Neyo's captions highlight his relatability to his audience and feels like they are written and posted by him which makes the connection between his audience and himself personal. Neyo's fans are often encouraging him and asking questions. Neyo's profile picture is consistent with his branding of being a mysterious masculine man which is shown through his clothing and pose. His bio is very straightforward in promoting his new media product and the link is placed perfectly under the bio. 

Development

Below is a very rough sketch of our social media ideas that we will most likely base our page off.

We went with these posts because we want to show that JMUSE is down to earth, connecting with his fans in order to ensure he is in touch with his base and relatable. Fans will find this interesting and intriguing as it takes the corporate and industry parts of his work out of the picture so fans can solely focus on him. 

Bio and Link

Here are a list of bio ideas that we came up with:

• Reaching for the Stars! 
• "LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN" OUT NOW!
• "Leave the Door Open" OUT NOW!
• Nothing Lasts Forever
• Looking for Love
• Just making the muse
• Living on a dream
• I have a dream
• Bookings at jmuse@bookings.com
• BOOKINGS AT JMUSE@BOOKINGS.COM
• Book me at jmuse@bookings.com
• Linktr.ee/jmuse

We decided to include these two to use in the social media page biography as we believe they are most relevant and are in line with what most artists of all genres seem to do. This encourages both fans and business enquiries to seek more information and listen to his music. The linktree is where fans can find songs and other fan resources. 

Here is the result

Personal Posts

JMUSE's ideal persona is authenticity with his fans and followers, which is why we decided to go with pictures that he took of himself. As he is a teenager, it is expected that a lot of his pictures would be amateur which is why they may be a little bit on the lower quality spectrum. However, some of the pictures that I'd like to post do look a lot more on the professional side and we would like to incorporate some of them. Below are pictures we want to post. 

These photos were taken by Jaden, Nathan (our friend from school), and Giorgio. 

Here are the photos incorporated into posts with captions and hashtags. 

Videos

The purpose of these videos is to convey unto the audience JMUSE's progress and behind the scenes in filming the music video. This provides the audience an opportunity to get a sneak peak at the final product. This will hype up the fanbase and excite them so that they will not be disappointed by the music video. Below is the process of making these videos.

Giorgio used capcut for to search for templates and utilise them to create the videos. Very short and simple process that took less than five minutes.

Below are what the final videos look like.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by JMuse (@official.jmuse)

 

Here is the link to the post above - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHD30IVpOPn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by JMuse (@official.jmuse)

Here is a link to the post above - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHD4m8ApuUR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

Award Post

This post is a screenshot of a billboard music award top 100 which showcases the main song of our album being in the top 8. This post has the purpose of getting fans excited and talking about JMUSE. The process was not hard, all I did was copy paste a previous billboard, cover up the eighth song, and replace it with JMUSE's song. All of this was done on Microsoft PowerPoint.

Here is what it looks like on the instagram.

Reflection:

I found this particular part of the project to most certainly be interesting. I'm not one to use Instagram as I deleted it almost a year ago. However, I was able to quickly learn how to use Instagram again, albeit in Tagalog because that's what language my phone was set to. So that made for a very interesting learning experience. This helped us to better understand the processes that real artists and their teams go through in order to provide fans and fanbases with the content they wish to see. It also really challenged my brain to think of relevant hashtags that would go on each of the posts. I found trying to navigate this new Instagram user interface that I'm not familiar with a unique experience. What I found being easy was the uploading and caption making. Although, some captions were a bit hard to write as I had to try to put myself in the shoes of JMUSE. I'm quite satisfied with what I've learnt and what I've achieved by completing this task. I hope it is worthy of all its credit. Although I did at one point have to change the password of the account as I logged onto it one afternoon and found that it had been infiltrated by an external party. That matter was quickly resolved by me. 

Branding Research

Here is the research and development for the branding of our artist - completed by Giorgio and Carrick 

Bruno Mars

Brand Identity

• Bruno seems to have a timeless and retro feel about him. He's smooth and mixes R&B, funk, and pop in his music albums.
• Bruno puts on a luxurious as well as stylish external persona which embodies a sort of old-school modern swagger.
• Bruno also puts on a romantic yet playful act while not forgetting to show his emotional side in love themes.

Persona

• Bruno is charismatic as well as confident, mixing mystery and charm at the same time.
• He's a hopeless romantic just like JMUSE who expresses his vulnerability in love and relationships.
• There's something very witty and humourous about him that can sometimes switch to being deep and sentimental when required.

Image Creation

•  Bruno is often, if not always, seen in silky shirts, golden chains, and fedoras or other hats which emphasises the vintage aesthetic .
• Bruno's magazine and album covers are always seen to have bold colours, vintage styling, and high energy poses of Bruno.
• Bruno's social media as well as visuals keep a mix of polished glam as well as laid back fun.

Fan Engagement

• Bruno has a tendency to speak in a relatable, fun, and charming way.
• Bruno engages with his fans through humour and nostalgia through comment sections on his social media pages.
• Bruno keeps things exclusive so as to entice his fanbase

Visual Consistency

• Bruno uses some fonts inspired by retro designs with warm yet rich colour palettes and upper class aesthetics.
• There is a consistent use of throwback and nostalgic images such as cars, suits, and neon lighting.
• Bruno includes a mix of smooth, romantic, as well as playful moments on his social media pages.

Inspiration

• Bruno's vulnerable yet confident and charming personality
• Bruno's style of continuing the retro style in the modern era with regard to the clothes he wears
• Bruno's style of speaking and engaging with his fans which they find relatable and playful

Reflection

This part of the project was pretty easy as it didn't really require much effort to talk about and analyse Bruni Mars' style. I learnt a lot about Bruno's branding and what kind of conventions that may come out of this such as the colour palette and the mood of the visuals and photos. What I did find difficult was how I was expected to expand on each topic which I'm not all that good at. I'm glad my friend Giorgio was here to help me figure out what to say and what to look for.

Classwork: 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. 

Here is my teacher showing me how to edit the videos together

(Behind the Scenes Photos)

Here are the raw videos from my group members:

1. Jaden's angle https://drive.google.com/file/d/11CKWqL1nqOPA506LUNcQrfY_Civexm13/view?usp=sharing 

2. Kaka's angle https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wT2QJdlSGjbNEMTrONaIN-7TTbbhKBGH/view?usp=sharing

3. Carrick's angle https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yiB2wsqNT-jkHzgDT5IHhDIZIwnqeulS/view?usp=sharing

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/transparency. 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 decided to do this on my computer because that's what I'm used to. It's easier to do because I can precisely cut whereas I'd have to see through my finger to do things just right. I think this has helped me better understand the editing process. It's opened my eyes to how complex it is to edit these types of videos together and trying to get the videos to line up perfectly so as to have a seamless transition between camera angles. This will help us in our project because when it comes time to edit all the scenes together, it won't seem like we've been thrown into the deep end. This experience will ensure that we will at least have an idea of what to do and how to edit the project together. With regard to simplifying the process, I don't think there is. Perhaps having a clapper board would make it a lot easier but I think it was pretty simple. I found that it was pretty interesting to do as I'm used to just throwing random clips in sequence and making a political ad out of it rather than taking different angles of the same scene and putting it together that way. 

Shooting 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.

Lesson description: my teacher gave each group in the class a verse from "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles. We had to plan a scene which included various camera work and edits. The goal was to learn how to properly film different scenes and edit them all together.

Here is the product of our work:

Here is a presentation of our pre-plan and a bit of analysis on how we got the final product:

Reflection:

My role in this was to take behind the scenes pictures and help with coming up with some ideas. I very much did not like this as we had just come back from a nice long holiday only to come back to doing this work. We did have a bit of fun as we were filming it but the planning was the most laborious part. However, I do think this gives us an idea about how we should sort ourselves out in the filming stage of our main project and that we can take ideas from this and from our friends and apply it to our main project.

Filming Schedule

 Here is the filming schedule for our project - completed by Giorgio and Carrick

No.	Scene	Date	Location	People	Props	Equipment	Other
1	1 Jaden's House	16th December 2024 (Subject to Change)	Jaden's House	Giorgio - Director and Cameraman	Old Telephone	Camera BT Speaker Light	Location is far from our houses
				Carrick - Ast. Director
				Kaka - Ast. Cameraman	Grape Juice and Wine Glass		Traffic is a big issue
				Jaden - Actor
2	2 Bus Stop	17th December 2024	Sentral Parkir Kuta	Giorgio - Director and Cameraman	Headphones Bus		Having to go off peak times to ensure an empty bus
				Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
				Jaden - Actor
3	3 Beach	18th December 2024	Pantai Nunggalan	Giorgio - Director and Cameraman	Ice Cream Umbrella		Have to work around private arrangements
				Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
				Jaden - Actor
4	4 Bar	19th December 2024	Soteria Restaurant	Giorgio - Director and Cameraman	Beer Bottle and Glass Car Rain		Have to work around private arrangements
				Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
				Jaden - Actor

Self Reflection:

I found that this really helped me to get organised and have a set plan for filming. My friends also agreed to this schedule which was very helpful in getting this project done in a timely and efficient manner. The sooner we get simple tasks like this, the more time we'll have to complete the bigger tasks of filming, editing, and discussing. Something I found difficult is trying to format the spreadsheet to be neat and easy to read. I'm used to Ms. Excel but for some reason I decided to use Google Spreadsheets to complete this task. I utilised the search feature to find the things I'm used to just seeing and using in Excel. However, we chose to completely disregard this schedule due to the fact that I was going overseas and Giorgio was unavailable for most of the time. We chose to do all the filming spontaneously as our personal schedules weren't really well mapped out. We decided to do it when 3/4 people were available or free on a day of our choosing.

Location Scout and Risk Assessment

Here are a few locations we've looked at as well as the potential risks of these locations - completed by Carrick and Kaka

Self Reflection:

Given that I live pretty far away, I found that travelling between the locations very annoying and time consuming. Most of them are far away and it consumes a lot of my motorbike's petrol. However, I found it fun having to assess and secure the locations as that's what I find very interesting. Discussing these locations with my friends was also very easy as we all just kind of agreed with the places as we thought they were all very good and suitable. What I found difficult was just trying to get to each individual location and meet up with my friends. Some of them were late which was a bit annoying as I had a bit of a tight time schedule. All in all, I think these locations will serve their individual purpose with ease. Upon further reflection, we didn't end up using most of these locations to shoot our music video due to distance and time restrictions on all of us. We had to find more local places to shoot.

Classwork: Camera, Mise-en-scene, Sound, Edit, and Storyboards

 Here is classwork we were assigned to do individually where we learnt about camera angles and shots, mise-en-scene, different sounds, edits, and storyboards

Here's a presentation I put together to lay out what I learnt in class

Self Reflection:

I found that these technical elements were pretty easy to get a grip of and understand. This will greatly help me with my project as it won't be the blind trying to create a work of art now that I know all this new knowledge. I must say that when I first saw these technical elements that I was a bit overwhelmed. I'm not used to all this new terminology thrown in my face, but once I got my head round it it was pretty easy to memorise. I hope that I am able to apply this new knowledge in my project. This helps me tremendously in trying to figure out the different things I'd need to discuss and apply with my friends in this project. I feel the only real easy thing was revising these terminologies and seeking to further find a better understanding of things.

Screen Test

To find a star for our music video we need to conduct a screen test. Here is a video of our class's group audition - we did this as a class - completed by Giorgio and Carrick

Advantages

The advantages of conducting a screen test like this is that we had access to over 20 people in the same room, which allowed us to see the various personas of each individual in a very time and cost effective manner. Not only that, but 90% of the potential stars knew the lyrics to this song which made things a whole lot easier too. People also were able to come out of their shell as this style of group screen testing made it so much more comfortable for everyone involved. 

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of having this style of screen test is that we could not analyse in detail all 20+ candidates. This made it a little bit more difficult to try and see which candidate would best fit the persona that we're looking for. Another thing that would be a disadvantage is that the personas in this video may have been overexaggerated as they were performing with friends. This may not reflect their individual or solo performance which is something we must consider. 

Considerations

There were some people we considered for the role of the star in our music video, one of them was shown at exactly 3:00 (the one with the glasses). He personifies exactly who we are looking to cast in our music video. His name is Jaden Mutty and he perfectly encapsulates the kind of persona needed. We like his style in front of the camera: very outgoing, open, not shy, and not afraid to be himself. There were others there we may want to consider but so far he's the best of the lot. There were some there who weren't even lip syncing to the same song, perhaps they were too shy in front of the camera and we do not want to cast anyone like that. 

Self Reflection:

We found that this was all we needed to find our star. It really helped us to see people's different personas in front of the camera which would contribute to the decision that we made in choosing our star. We were all included in the screen test to ensure that we had the right member of our team to be our star and as it turned out, we did. Jaden was the best in our team in overall performance in the screen test. I didn't even try because I did not want to get picked as the star for our team. I definitely do not have the persona for that. What I found difficult was trying to think of advantages to this method of casting as I'm not all that used to this process. Thankfully Giorgio was able to help me in this part of the blog. I found it very easy to determine the disadvantages as I was not all that happy with this style of casting, especially having to be part of it. 

Song Research

 Here is the research we did in detail on the song "Leave the Door Open" by Bruno Mars in 2021 which we chose to do for our music video - completed by Carrick and Kaka

Here's a brief background behind the song by Bruno Mars which we quoted from https://silksonic.fandom.com/wiki/Leave_The_Door_Open#Background_and_release 

In an interview with New Zealand radio DJ Zane Lowe for the Apple Music podcast Beats 1, Anderson .Paak said the song required a lot of "patience and delicate" to create. He added, "A lot of meat went into this song." Mars lamented the lack of live performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding "While I'm writing songs, that's a part of my whole thing. It goes to like, 'I can't wait till people hear this.' And it's also, 'I can't wait to play this for people. I can't wait to be with my band.'"

In late February 2021, Bruno Mars and Paak announced on social media platforms the formation of their new band Silk Sonic and group's first studio album An Evening with Silk Sonic. On March 5, 2021, shortly after the announcement of An Evening with Silk Sonic, "Leave the Door Open" was released as the first single of the aforementioned project alongside the "Silk Sonic Intro".

We chose this song because it fits the persona of our potential star, and it's a very mainstream song which will allow us to unleash our creativity into this passion project. We agreed that its a song we can all listen and jam to which will make the progression of our project so much easier. Not only that, but original singer sings in an American accent. People with American accents are easier to cast in Indonesia as most Indonesians who are fluent in English speak with an American accent, making it more believable to people watching our lip synced music video as it wouldn't really fit or be right if someone with a British, Australian, or local Indonesian accent were singing. Furthermore, it helps with the social media as we are able to seek a wider audience, whereas if we chose a Christian song, we would have to cater to a more niche audience which is a lot harder to do in our case.

We intend on challenging the traditional conventions of this music video by making our star a young teenage Indonesian who is fluent in English. This allows us to further develop our star into a person who produces this style of music. Our star being so young but with so much life experience is what will make our star stand out. He's intelligent, but dumb at the same time. This encapsulates a lot of teenagers who are heading out into the world and they are the kind of people who we are targeting with our music video. We want our star to be seen as a role model, someone who our audience can learn from. "Mistakes made by our star will not be repeated by our audience" is what one of our friends said should be our key focus of our music video.

Self Reflection:

I found that researching the original music video helped us to make decisions on how we were able to learn from and differ from the original. It showed us many different genre conventions and guidelines to follow which was really helpful. What I found interesting was how we are able to change such a simple song's meaning by altering a few major parts of the music, such as the star. This really helped me learn more about the song's meaning as I'm not all that familiar with this genre. I found it pretty easy to deduce meanings and work with Kaka to do so, but I also found it a bit difficult with regard to trying use my words to say what my mind was thinking. Luckily, I was able to seek advice from my friends who were able to help me. 

Storyboard

 Here is the storyboard for our project at different locations - completed by Giorgio and Jaden

The storyboards were planned out the way that we wanted them to be. Giorgio and Jaden discussed this together based off the notes we all made as a group to try and bring a message to the audience of a man who gets rejected on a date by a girl. However, our teacher had some feedback to give us. One major thing he told us was that the chronology of our storyboard didn't make sense and that there was no meaning to it. We listened to his feedback and took it all on board. He suggested that we include a scene where the girl comes in and sees that the star is a bit crazy, and then runs out and finds another man. This made a lot more sense than what we thought of so we decided to take that on board. Unfortunately, our teacher set out a deadline which didn't leave us much time to insert and fix these changes to our storyboard. 

Self Reflection:

I didn't really want to contribute to this part of the project because I'm neither good at drawing and discussing ideas that would fit our genre conventions. My only main contribution to this is noting down our teachers feedback on this. I found that both Giorgio and Jaden worked very well together on this and I think that they are fit to lead this project for us. I find it extremely difficult to understand what the main theme of this storyboard is but I intend on asking a lot of questions. I think that this will greatly help our project in the long run as we've previously made the mistake of doing a project without a storyboard. This made it hard on everyone as we had to come up with a lot of stuff on the spot which is an absolute pain to do. This will definitely speed up the filming process and help the editor get a good idea of where each piece of the puzzle fits. Upon further reflection, we had to revise this storyboard as some footage became corrupted and we weren't able to reshoot it. 

Lyric Sheet

 Here is a copy of the lyric sheet we annotated to give us a better idea of each scene - completed by Giorgio, Carrick, Jaden, and Kaka

Here's the lyrics to our song that we printed our and annotated. We thought that by doing this we'd be able to get a better idea of how we would be able to use it to help with our storyboard. We decided to do this as a group so we'd all be on the same page when it comes time to produce our media product. We found that though it was time consuming, it's essential to ensure that we get a good idea in our head as to how each line will play out on screen. 

Self Reflection:

This lyric sheet really challenged us to put our thinking caps on. We all worked together to come up with ideas of the different scenes. I think we went a little bit ahead of ourselves with some of the ideas but overall I think we're headed on the right track. I particularly found it a bit difficult to wrap my head around this as I don't really watch music videos, especially of music that's been produced recently. A lot of this stuff and the stuff we discussed was a bit foreign but I did my best to try and understand it. However, I found it easy to just listen, write down, and discuss ideas that I thought may be relevant to the project. 

Moodboard

Here is a mood board we put together that encompasses the theme of our music video - completed by Giorgio, Carrick, Jaden, and Kaka

Self Reflection:

This moodboard that our group put together will help guide us while we're filming and editing the music video so as to not go off track with the overall theme. This will also help us for various shots and scenes to avoid making critical mistakes and errors that we won't be able to fix after we have filmed the different scenes. It's also provided us with a colour palette to stick to that will help in the edit and the mise-en-scene. We made this on PowerPoint and used Pinterest to find the pictures which was very easy to do and access. We all had an qual part to play in searching and compiling these pictures. The only thing I found a bit difficult was trying to keep my mind on staying with an agreed theme.