Word count = 1,312For our project our primary audience was females through audience surveys and research into the actual Olivia Rodrigo’s audience, due to this throughout our music video we looked at stereotypes of femininity or how girls should look/behave. Our mise-en-scene for most of the narrative scenes and the cake scene contains mostly pink items such as the tablecloth and party decorations, and our protagonist is seen wearing lots of makeup and has long hair which is feminine (Judith Butler). On the other hand, we looked at countertypes of femininity by having the protagonist is dressed in predominantly black which is not typically feminine. Another way we looked at stereotypes is through the outfits in the performance where the singer and guitarist outfits who are both wearing tight clothing and skirts which shows off their legs, and the singer having a reviewing top. The way we looked at countertypes was by the drummer wearing an oversized suit and similarly wearing jeans in the bedroom scene which we used as a way to divert the male gaze (Laura Mulvey) which depicts women as objects.
Part of our secondary audience is male, in the music video we used the Elvis Costello cameo as a way to inform the audience of the songs origin as well as helping it appeal to another audience of older generation x men to help get a four quadrant audience. Rick Altman argued that each genre within film offers a set of pleasures, one of these pleasures is intellectual puzzles. Altman wrote that this pleasure was from the audience trying to decipher the plot which in this case would be the younger portion of our male audience deciphering who Elvis Costello is and why he is in our video.
We constructed preferred reading (Stuart Hall reception theory) of our hero's journey (Campbell) from the Proppian architype of false hero to villain through inspiration from other music videos such as Paramore’s ‘Misery Business’ and P!nk’s ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’ meaning that only people that recognise these videos will fully get the message we are trying to send with ours.
The narrative of this music video centres around our protagonist a teenage girl being bullied at school, this is something that a lot of our primary audience (15-24 females) can identify with as it’s something they may have experienced, having recently been or being in high school where as our secondary audience of older women could identify with also having been in high school in the past, therefor fits into personal identification. Throughout the music video after she gets bullied the protagonist (hero - Propp archetypes) starts changing into a more alternative version of herself, as the changes we can see her gain more confidence and agency with how she presents herself. This could fit into escapism as part of Uses and Gratification theory as the people watching the video could imagine themselves becoming more confident in situations where they find themselves being bullied.
Having two of the main characters be partially of middle eastern decent (Ambre and Leila) was also a way for our video to be more diverse and help crater more or an international audience. It could also be taken as a way of standing with these groups during a difficult political climate in that are of the world.
In my twitter page I made sure to use an abundance of slang such as "my roman empire" or and emojis in ways that only make sense to generation z in order to connect with younger groups of people as only they would understand (Stuart Hall reception theory).
In the music video our title of BRUTAL is written in spray paint, this is linked into the digipak as a graffiti style font is used to write out the different song titles on the back and the album title on the spine and sticker. Images from the video that are either in the actual video or from behind the scenes of the video shoot are used throughout the digipak such as us posing in front of the graffiti we were next to during our performance scene. The social media also used pictures from the music video photo shoots as the banner and profile photo creating a synchronicity throughout the three platforms. The emojis used throughout the social media posts such as the rock and roll hand symbol and guitar emoji along with lack of proper punctuation and spelling all show her rockstar/rebel element which is shown in the music video by showing her as not caring about the rules like those of grammar.
A way that the real Olivia Rodrigo creates a sense of branding in by having a signature colour of purple, we were inspired by this and made our Olivia's colour pink. I used this as a way to pull my three products together by having a consistent use of pink throughout, in the video one example is her pink hair, on my social it shows her pink phone and the banner background is pink, On the digipak is clear with it being the colour of the title and background and spray-paint.
Our music video was highly intertextual (coined by philosopher Kristeva describing the continual relationship building between text) with two other music videos from the early 2000s (Misery Business and Don’t Let Me Get Me) which were also primarily set in a high school featuring teenage girls. This helped us engage with the olde side of our primary audience of 15- 25-year-olds. Our music video also included an Elvis Costello look alike which is a link to how Brutal's base is similar to a song by Elvis Costello, this helps us engage with our secondary audience of generation x adults. Another small Easter egg (referenced above) is that in the scene where Olivia is ripping posters from her wall, we can see a poster of Taylor Swift which she had some internet drama with. On my social media I engaged with audiences by reposting their memes and tweets about Brutal as well as having a competition where I challenged the fans to post a cover of Brutal and I (as Olivia Rodrigo) would repost my two favourite ones. Another way I engaged with audience is my following some trends that are big with my primary audience such as ‘My Roman Empire is…’ and using the disco ball emoji.
In my research into video conventions, I looked into multiple different artists one being “Misery Business” by Paramore. What I looked at from that video was their use of a school setting (although we only used this for one scene) and their background for the performance scene where they had a graffiti style backdrop, we also got some of this from G-IDL's “TOMBOY” video as they also incorporated graffiti. Avril Levignes videos were also a source of inspiration for clothing as she can be seen wearing a counter hegemonic spiked chocker in “Skater Boy” which we used to challenge the conventions of what a girl should dress like.
For my research into digipaks I found P!nk to be a big inspiration especially for her album M!ssundaztood which was edgy in the front panel and also featured graffiti and had a simulacrum of the main bad girl in an early 2000s film. However, for the sticker i placed on the front panel i went for a more childish less edgy circle instead of making it a rectangle. In addition to this i looked at Melanie Martinez's digipak which the use of colour incorporated.
For my social media i very much went with the conventions of what a young woman pop stars social media would look like taking inspiration from similar artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Maisie Peters and Gracie Abrams in the down to earth quirky style of presenting on the internet using emojis and personal pictures.
(Taken from my twitter)
