The Final Products

 It is currently... 4AM in Spain. Very jetlagged.

But! I have finished the entirety of my portfolio project, I can finally rest in peace. I will attach all the resources for the project on this post, so if you're Cambridge—that's pretty important. If you're not, feel free to view my stuff.

This is nick.isnt.here signing off, forever.

—DEUCE

Social Media(s)

    @fridaytikiclub

    @sunshine.ftc

Digipak (vinyl, front/back)

    

Music Video

    Instagram

    Youtube

Critical Reflection

When creating Friday Tiki Club’s (FTC) latest music video for Sunshine, our main goal was to create a fun and laidback piece which invokes feelings associated with nostalgia and youthfulness. Through an informal approach to production, FTC’s latest piece doesn’t take itself too seriously and reminds its audience that it’s important to have a good time and to take it easy, a concept which is central to the band’s brand identity.

Being a high school band, it is not surprising that FTC’s music consists of adolescent issues and topics, especially in their song Sunshine. In the song, the lyrics revolve around the singer missing his ex-partner, his “Sunshine,” and how he has to now cope with them being in a new relationship. Predominantly, the viewers of this piece would be high schoolers aged 14-18, although the song could be relatable to older audiences in college or in their 20s. Like most songs in the indie rock genre, the song has an upbeat, energetic quality to it which is sought by this younger audience and therefore this is reflected in the content of the music video itself through “candid” clips of the band having fun in between main performance clips, and in a more general sense, randomness, creating the sense of levity and escapism the target audience seeks. Overall, however, the music video doesn’t take itself seriously, which is I believe is key to accomplishing this effect.

When initially planning the production of the piece, creating this sense of “amateurism” and levity was a concept deemed highly important to the band and their established identity. So when discussing the required components of the project, the part which created the most conflict was the social media marketing. To them, they feared the idea of being “highly commercialized” through this medium, so due to this, we had trouble establishing a posting pattern for their social media page. Since they are known for making infrequent posts, a sudden change in this posting pattern would seem unlike the band’s established identity, so we initially compromised on posting once a week. This fell through after the second week, however, therefore I decided to finally create a dummy account for the page to promote the music video, @sunshine.ftc on Instagram. 

To preserve the band’s laidback brand, most of the posts are in the form of memes or have short captions to create this sense of “amateurism,” although the sacrifice in doing this was consistency and a lack of posts. If I could improve any aspect of this project, it most likely would be this component which I should've planned more thoroughly from the beginning. The band, however, likes the social media page, which I suppose is more important in a sense since I am working to satisfy a client (the band) in the scope of the project’s music video production prompt.

Outside the context of the Cambridge’s project requirements, however, I would argue that the project successfully engages its audience in a variety of ways despite its weaknesses. As mentioned, the energy and excitement created by music video is a convention of indie rock, arousing an overall positive feeling sought by the audience. Among other conventions, though, is the appeal to nostalgia culture which is accomplished by recording the entirety of the piece on a VHS camera. With the rise of modern media romanticizing the late 20th century and early 2000s, newer generations have garnered a new appreciation for things retro and “indie”—“The good old days!”— leading to a large consumption of media influenced by this timeframe. VHS, which was popular in the latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s, happens to be in the center of this nostalgia culture—the romanization for this form of media so popular nowadays that various VHS-effect filters have been created to emulate the effect of using a VHS (albeit, not very good)—so what better way, I thought, at appealing to this culture than using a real VHS camera to film my piece? 

Other than various case studies of VHS being used in indie rock music videos such as Tame Impala’s Is it True, Beach Fossils’ Down the Line, and Eyedress's Jealous, past experience from using the camera supported the notion that it would be a good choice for the Sunshine music video. In my previous project, Skateboards and Monsters, the piece was also influenced by nostalgia culture and was recorded on VHS, too, an aspect which was widely celebrated by the audience when it was finally released. Due to this, I also thought it would be perfect to use in this project since the target audience for both pieces are nearly identical: teenagers who listen to indie rock.

For the digipak, I decided to go for vinyl which is a common collectible for fans of nostalgia culture and music lovers alike. The design on the vinyl has two sides, the front being a darkened picture of Seb recording his guitar solo for Sunshine—representing their serious side and dedication—and the back, a picture of Jake making a funny face—representing their fun and laidback side. The minimalist placement of "friday tiki club" and "sunshine" at the corners of the cover design also further emphasizes their dedication to their music by drawing attention to the image of Seb himself, and on the back, the barcode serves as a mockup of what the vinyl would look like if it were in an actual record store where it would be sold as a 7-inch record—the most common form for vinyl singles.

Overall, the project takes an informal approach to develop the band’s brand identity through a laidback production ethic, creating a sense of “amateurism” and levity through the development of these different aspects on social media and in the Sunshine music video.

Final Thoughts

I'm almost done with everything, I just need to complete up the digipak design and write my Critical Reflection essay (thank you for not making it a video again, Cambridge). Currently, I'm wrapping up the project while in Spain, so hopefully I can manage the deadlines while navigating my trip/environment. 

I digress, however.

My experience with the whole project this year was definitely better than last year's portfolio project. Since we had the option to choose what type of video we wanted to make, I definitely felt like I had more control of the situation and was able to choose a genre I was good at: music videos. Filming with Friday Tiki Club was a mess at times, showing up late, arguing with plans, etc. Luckily, however, the whole music video for Sunshine is supposed to be a mess and I feel like I did a pretty good job at channeling the chaos into an entertaining and exciting music video for the band. Out of everything though, I feel like the most inconvenient aspect of the project was waiting for the band to finish mastering the final version so I could include in the music video. The other day, however, at last I received the final version of the song and did a simple Alt-Drag clip replacement on Premiere to swap the audio. Due to my trip, I made sure I at least uploaded the final music video somewhere online so I wouldn't have to worry about anything not exporting or etc.

Overall, I'm a bit worried about how I'm going to complete the final aspects of my project while I'm away, but luckily I got most of the major components out of the way and in general I'm happy with the current status/quality of my project, although I'm not especially proud of the social media component which I'll talk about in my CCR.

Hope y'all are ready for Sunshine....

Final Draft!! (I'm pretty sure)

 Okay, next day... I am done.

Well, not quite yet, but basically. I edited the entire video and virtually have the final product. All I'm waiting on is the final draft of the song so I can make appropriate adjustments to the project sequence for the final FINAL version of the video. I sent the song to the band members and they seem to love it.

Maxx:

    yo imma be honest 

    i was really skeptical about how 'this was gonna go

    and you absolutely surpassed my expectations

    thank you

    i’m still working on the final mix and mastering it

    but that’s just awesome

Sergio:

    in love

Jake:

    dead as hell

    its so good

Hopefully their reactions convinced you... jk but I'm very happy with the result and what I learned from this editing experience is that next time, I need to re-composite the VHS footage so that the audio is in sync with the footage. What I realized is that every is about 6 frames out of sync so next time I will edit the audio so that it is easier to match the audio with whats on screen.

P.S. I will not post the video just yet! I must wait until I get the clear-to-go from the band that this music video is indeed the "final version" of the song.

Next up: I almost forgot the digipak!

Okay, now we can actually edit

 Now that we have the final song, we can finally edit the music vid. Funny that I'm speaking in the future tense, since as I write this post I am nearly done with the music video. The editing process for the video was pretty straight forward: show performance clips when new verses of the song are introduced, and use "random" clips for everything else. And trust me before you say anything, this process does not yield a lazy result, and in fact compliments the band's branding very well. What it does well is it shows that the band is serious towards their work, while also reminding that this whole project was meant to be fun experience which we all had fun producing.

So far, the video looks really good. I'm excited for you guys to see it when it finally comes out. 

P.S. I'm glad I decided to remain patient and only start editing the music video after receiving the final draft of the song since the original version had a completely different timing than the song I have now.

Got the final draft of the song (hopefully)

 Finally... I think I have the final version of the song, and I gotta admit, its way better than what I expected. Firstly, it sounds nothing like the original song that the band sent me (maybe that's why it took so long to master the final version), and second, I understand why Maxx is studying music in Berkeley now. The song overall has good use of layering and effects which truly make it sound like modern indie rock and can even be played in at a party in the state its in. Maxx says he might add some extra touches for the final video, so what I have now may change. Luckily, it seems like the pacing of the modified final version will match the one I have now, so I can edit with a peace of mind knowing the timing of the clips will still match between songs.

I will refrain from embedding the song in the post this time, so I guess you'll have to see what it sounds like when the music video comes out... 

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Created an Instagram for "Sunshine"

So I finally gave in and made a social media page for the song's release, @sunshine.ftc on Instagram. As the project comes to a close, I realized the importance of being able to manage the band's social media outlets rather than relying on them to do the posting. Through this, I also have more control marketing-wise and I can post efficiently without having to wait on the band to do so which allows the band to run a more efficient campaign since posts are more consistent in frequency and style.

When deciding what I should post on the page, I decided on using memes to engage the target audience since the band is known for not taking things seriously as mentioned in one of my previous posts. However, there are also some posts showing short clips of the music video out of context to remind the audience that the release of this song is actually a serious endeavor and will not yield a mediocre release.

   

An important aspect to consider when making promos for the music vid is to make sure not to give away too much to the audience in order to maintain hype for the project. To to this, I make sure to only use footage clips rather than clips from the actual music video since they are in less context. I would also like to mention that since this project is not only for the sake of AICE Media, but for Friday Tiki Club as a band in general, I followed various people using the account to create exposure and have people follow back for updates regarding the song. Currently, there are 40 users following the account and hopefully more to come.