Critical Reflection - Essay

• How do your products represent social groups or issues?

• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

• How do your products engage with the audience?

• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Right from the start, my colleague Dan and I came together with the mutual intention of creating something that visualised a strong message. We wanted to explore an issue that holds a grip against a generation, one that is well-explored and fruitful to develop. Within the target audience we sought out to associate with, we spent some time researching what could be a hard-hitting and compelling topic.

Throughout the past, different generations of youth have been plagued by various situations; only proving the statement of how history repeats itself - the only change being the mindset and adaptability of each group. During the 1900s, the most investigated topic was reserved only to war, leaving any other issues negligibly documented due to the capabilities of the era. Nowadays, more personal issues are explored to a greater extent. Youth, especially, is exposed to a multitude of harmful circumstances - not just limited to large scale world events.

This generation is able to express themselves with much more ease in comparison to those of different eras. As a society, people are nowadays much more willing to hear others and to communicate - as they know they’ll always find at least a small majority that they can relate to. This is an important factor to take into consideration. There’s always a demographic for whatever a brand wants to express, it’s just a matter of how they reach this audience. Death Grips, as our main example, has gathered a steady following, their work amusing the idea of self, overdose and general disamay within life. We constructed our own brand based off of this, furthering the idea of a problematic or distressed person trying, just trying, to find their way back to where they started, prior to the mess they’d been exposed to, by their hand or of other’s.

In our music video, we explored the theme of a teenager going through a self-inflicted, heavily consequential venture. Inspired by the lyrics for No Love, we expressed our main character, Eduard, to play a role as representative of young, troubled teenagers attempting to find themselves through self reflection. As reality sinks in, he is faced with the truth - his avoidance through substance and wrong turns has caught up to him, leaving him in distress and ruin. Eduard, albeit innocent-looking, has found himself in a hole he’s dug himself into. This represents the social group of those in a similar situation - in this case distinctly contrasted through the means of the critical and angry accompanied jump cuts, editing and music.

Our research into different bands allowed us to get a grasp for the branding of both the more traditional and the more obscure genres. Comparing Grimes to Death Grips, for example, we are presented a deep contrast within branding. Their separate conventions boil down to a) a more minimalistic, edgy appearance and b) a heavily niched aesthetic focused on intricate visuals. The two brands however, both explore social issues, which are fairly similar at times. This shows that a message can be portrayed in a multitude of ways, while simultaneously advertised to a multitude of demographics. I feel that through a minimalistic, visually appealing aesthetic, we are able to reach the target audience we were going for. All the elements of our production incorporated together and created a strong feel; ranging from our simplistic, distinct Instagram page to our jarring, disorienting music video.

Teenagers and those struggling with self reflection and reality tend to ground themselves through something that they can relate to, which they find comforting, even amidst chaos. This applies to all audiences - it’s the simple naturalistic want of a human to feel acknowledged, to be able to reach out and find a hand similar to their own. In the case of our darker aesthetic, this still applies, though to outside audiences the appeal might not be apparent.

For example, whilst getting feedback for the raw montage of our MV, we had varied subjective responses to the music. Some people mentioned that, while they did like the visuals and montage we created, they didn’t particularly enjoy the music itself, stating it was a very acquired taste. This is true, and goes to show that we do indeed target a specific audience, not a general mass.

Similar to our Instagram page, our digipak is fairly minimalistic and dark. Our supposed “brand” is consistent here, allowing for our audience to recognize us, even those who are not familiar with our work. The name “Devanthum”, which we use to identify ourselves, has the typical demeanour of a post-punk, hardcore, or simply just obscure brand. It’s simple to remember and catches the audience’s attention alongside the work we amassed. In regards to the target audience questionnaire we made, and the responses alongside of it, I feel that we managed to reach the majority that dominated each question.

Our audience engages thoroughly with the work we have produced. From the feedback alone during our raw montage stage, the responses confirmed that we had managed to create the vibe we initially envisioned. I believe that people are able to find a piece of themselves that relates to our character, to our aesthetic. Everyone has something that plagues the back of their mind, this is a fact of being human. There are instances to some, where their reality becomes so infused or encumbered by this plaguing feeling or thought that it becomes almost impossible to differentiate between what is real and not. Jean Baudrillard and his hyperreality theory could play as a convention to our MV, in the broad sense. Our character has lost himself, he is attempting to regain his “consciousness” and to snap back to what he’s left behind.

Our audience, though of course, might not be at this extent of state, can conceptualize on a more philosophical level the feeling that is portrayed. The research and time we poured into this coursework proved to be successful in regards to incorporating and communicating the right message to the right audience.