Pre-Production Research
The brainstorming process included in-depth research on other R&B artists so that we had an understanding of our genre. We did this by looking up artists that first came to mind when we thought of the label. Some that came to mind were Lizzo and Bruno Mars since they are some of the most popular R&B artists currently. When going in-depth with their labels, we would discover others that landed as “R&B” signing labels. Within this research, we would look in-depth at artists that were trending and well known, then others that were more underground to understand the difference in publicity and marketing they used. We found that the more popular artists would have more publicity on their social media revolving around their career, music, and upcoming albums. However, those that were not as well known had platforms that were more personal and seemed to be run by themselves instead of a marketing team. Because of this, my team decided that we enjoyed the more humane touch to those smaller artists, so we incorporated it into our own artist.
Creating a Background
We did this by creating social media pages that were more personalized, like having more simple captions and more randomized posts that were not centralized around his career, but more just an aspect of their personality. Looking back, I loved this approach because most of the other artists that were presented took a more “big-time” artist angle. The idea of the artist being just another teenager on the internet is something that has surfaced a lot with recent social media trends helping artists grow and them being able to have control over their own careers.
Music Video Process
We wanted the music video of our project to reflect this minimalistic nature and slow speed through camera movement and editing. Throughout our video, our artist is dimmed by our lack of light with a bright oranda/yellow light in the corner of his desk. This is done to show the sadness that captivates him and the anger that fuels inside of him. In this opening scene, there is also a subtle easter egg of the music video of the “Only You” logo in the corner. When he goes to open the window, there is a shift in the lighting when he sees the other couple crossing the street like he once did with his girl. This causes him to sit and reflect on his past with her until he finally gets inspiration on how to close his song. The journey of the video was to watch the mind process of a male songwriter who has just gone through heartbreak, considering most heartfelt breakup songs are usually shown through the female perspective. We wanted to give a twist on this to show that guys are also still allowed to get sad and mopey over heartbreak since a stereotype in society is that men don’t show emotions.
Marketing
An important aspect we wanted to add to the merchandise for our website was a connection to the new resealed song. We did this by selling products that our customers could use while or after listening to the music our artist makes. A hoodie is an article of clothing that couples tend to share: a boyfriend usually lends his hoodie or crew neck to his girlfriend. Since after a breakup, one wouldn’t want to keep that article of clothing anymore, we thought it would be essential for them to own their own. In addition, the perfect place to keep track of all your feelings and midnight emotions is by writing them in a journal. This made hoodies, crewnecks, and notebooks our key merchandise until our artist takes off to really connect with our audience, keeping a simplistic design to go with our theme on top of it.
Production
During production, we had to clear out the room of the girl whose bedroom we were using and close any outside source of light. We did this to help the effect of emptiness and to have the focus on only the individual at the desk with the lamp. We had multiple shots of the same action of his writing, coming from a wide shot to a medium to a closeup, to help create this sequence of events. Once the blinds were open, we allowed the entire room to fill with light and now show the revelation of him moving on and finding his conclusion. Filming went smoothly, with the actors acting sufficiently and listening to the direction in a professional manner throughout the production process. In post-production, I used color correction to make these colors pop more and help add to the exact tone I was looking for.
Presentation
During our presentation, we wanted to keep the slides of our PowerPoint with the same theme as our artist, minimalistic. We did this by having more plain slides and having minimal words to just bullet what we wanted to say. Even with a small amount of text, we were able to elaborate more vocally on what our marketing and publicity strategies were for our artist in order to entice music labels.
Reflection
Throughout this project, I learned the intensity it takes to promote an upcoming artist, seeing it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. My group did not create a website, but I wish that we had created one to further branch off into new platforms and understand how to manage that type of technology. Matching a song with a video storyboard was also something I was unfamiliar with since the editing process has to be so exact to match with the lyrics of the song. I also learned the importance of managing a group. Since I was the only one who had television and film, I had to teach the rest of my members how to properly shoot the music video and the importance of storytelling. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of working on building an artist from scratch, it gave me and my team the creativity to make something from the ground up and let our imagination go to a new level.
