Q1.

How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social
group or issues.
For our advance portfolio we made a music promotion package for a Sufi rock artist our genre was
Sufi Rock. Our music promoting package is divided up into three media forms, Music video, digipack
and a website to promote our artist which will help her reach out her target audience.

Sufi rock is a common genre in the music industry in Pakistan as well as India. It is a sub-genre of
rock. It is a combination of rock and classic Islamic Sufi traditions It is sung in our national language
Urdu and regional languages Punjabi and Sindi. It is also one of the most common genre used in
Pakistan. Often in Sufi rock videos tradition and culture play a very important role. Traditional
clothes and jewelry are seen worn by the main actress/artist and often the music videos are shot in
outdoors with a good reflection of nature such as trees, barren lands, birds etc. The lighting is often
very subtle and warm and often shot in daylight. Moreover, many conventions are shown that den
notate a connection with God such as mosque, Sufi dance, praying etc. Lastly music instruments
such as sitar, Tabla are shown in many music videos and they reflect culture.

Most of the Sufi Rock artists in Pakistan also follow the same convention such as Qurat Ul Ain
Baloch, Ali Azmat etc, which show mid close up and close up shots in their music videos which
we have also followed.

For our music video, we followed many codes and conventions which helped build the narrative as
well as the performance. We showed a village girl who was married and a young age, wanted to
study but instead became a victim of domestic violence and later show her overcoming the
obstacles and escaping from there. Being the art director I made sure that the artist as well as the
actress would both wear traditional clothes a long with makeup, traditional shoes and traditional
Jhumkas. We made sure we chose a location outdoors with trees and grass everywhere to give a
rural feel.

To connotate her freedom, escape and connection with God, we showed a typical symbol that the
girl was tying a knot to a tree and praying for her life to get better, and at the end we also showed a
Darvesh Sufi dance of the actress dressed in white clothes which is very common convention found
in Sufi rock music videos. Artist was throughout seen in different eastern clothes, as we wanted to
promote Pakistani art and rich culture.

We have also broken a convention of Sufi rock, often in such videos the main actress and actor live
together in harmony with a happy ending of them being together. However for our music video we
have broken this convention, as we have shown that the girl has found her happiness alone once she
escapes from her husband.

Through our music video, we wanted to address the major social issues that are part of our country,
such as child marriage, domestic violence, and importance of education. We carried out a extensive
research on these topics. It is estimated that 21% of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of
18. Child marriage in Pakistan is connected with tradition, culture, and customary practices. This
issue has plagued our nation for far too long and it is the duty of the educated youth of this country
to step forward and try to tackle this issue. Although our music video has not make a huge impact on
this issue, it is a step in the right direction.Due to early marriages these young girls often even
become victims of domestic violence and are unable to even raise their voices. Talking about early
child marriage , 53.7% of married girls between the ages of 15 and 19 years never went to school.

Through our research we got to know that these issues are mostly found in rural areas therefore we
decided to target specially often from rural areas who are victims of such activities We have given
importance to women empowerment of how much is it important for them to get freedom and to
escape such horrible lifestyles. Through our music video we have given them a chance to raise their
voice and take just one step ahead for a better life and don’t leave hope.

Q2.How do the elements of your products work together to create a sense of Branding?
Branding and promotion are two very important elements when it comes to promoting an artist as it
helps create a unique identity and a star image of the artist.

We came up with name “Noor ul Ain” as our artists

name, it is a Persian name which means the light of
the eye, It holds great significance as the name itself
gives guidance. So we took the name and with the
meaning derive a tagline from it, that we used it for
our website. “Let the music be your guiding light”.
Secondly we wrote this name in a calligraphy style
font in Urdu, to give it a culturally feel as Urdu is
one of the main Languages of Pakistan.

Website is the second element which brands our artist, on the very first image we placed a Close up
shot, giving the audience a feel that they are really close to the artist. In order to create a better
relationship of audience and the artist we decided to add her biography in which we briefly wrote
about her early life before coming into the music industry. Moreover, we also added a tab of Gallery
in which we uploaded various pictures of our artist from different events. This all helps the audience
to know the artist better and about her personal life which creates a star image of her.

Furthermore, we also created Merchandise for her fans which includes caps, T-shirts, mugs and
headphones which will also help create her brand identity, as wearing her products will be
considered very valuable and precious once her identity is famous among the audience.
Lastly through the website and the social media pages we are engaging the audience for
interactivity, as fans can easily know what our Star “Noor Ul Ain” is up to. We have also given the
option for subscribing for updates on the website which will allow the audience to participate and
know about all her events and public activities.

Digipack also plays a very vital role, as it the medium in which the cd is sold, so it is very important to
make it visually interesting with hidden codes and conventions so the audience is willing and curious
to buy it. For our digipack we used earthy tones and cracks as our theme as we believed this
connotes the “Mitti” of Pakistan which reflects our cultural. Secondly the cracks also reflect the
broken “personality” of a woman when she goes through difficult times. On the front cover we have
a close up of the artist looking directly into the camera for a Direct Mode of Address with the
audience.

Our record label also is considered very important, as the name Aatish means
fire which is an element of nature, it symbolizes passion, and compulsion .It is
also referred as our “inner light” .It has a very indie feel.

Overall, we used orange and brown colors throughout as they represent culture
and is a common color palette which is used in many Sufi rock cd covers in
Pakistan.

Q3.How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as
real media text?

There is no point of making a media product if there is no audience engagement, therefore audience
engagement is an essential element which determines the success of a media product. Before
making a media product we carried out a survey based using Google forms on what people of
Pakistan prefer to watch in a music video. After the survey we figured out that our target age group
was between 18-25.Moreover, we got to know that sufi rock was one of the most popular genres
that people listened.More than 80% of the people who took the survey declared that they
watched most of the videos Online and on Television.

Our survey also told that audience preffered narrative as well as performance, by adding this we
engaged the audience.Through the concept of Sufism, we had the aim of educating people living in
rural area, our media product was not only for entertainment purposes but also to educate and gave
a lesson to our rural society. The importance of love and relationship with God is shown to attract
awareness and also promote our religion.

For the distribution of our media product, our record label company “Aaatish” plays a very crucial
role as it will make the product reach out to the audience. It is an independent music record label
company that will promote the artist. The agenda of the company is to promote media products for
entertainment purposes as well as address social issues and help reach out to people.

The music video will be uploaded on YouTube and Vimeo. The music video will be available on all
social media platforms on the artists pages and as well as the pages of the record label company.
Moreover, we will also release on other media mediums such as Television on music channels such
as ARY Music and Indus music and on radio, so we can increase the reach of the audience. We all
also contribute in print media as we will publish posters in newspapers and music magazines for her
new album release. Lastly the digipack will be available in the market in all cd stores nationwide.. We
also have the website where we not only have the music video but also the facility of getting
audience feedback and news all about her upcoming concert and tours.

Q4.How did you integrate technologies-software, hardware and online in this project?
 Digital technologies are developed once technological convergence starting
taking place. They are higher in quality as well as cheaper and make
production very easy. It has allowed us to make a very well converged media
product that includes a music video which is video, digipack which is print and
website which is online. These are three different media forms which we
made in one project.

Camera has played a very crucial role for all three media forms, it allowed us
to do photography which we initially learnt while we made our foundation
portfolio. The camera we used in the project is Nikon D5200, and Nikon
D7200.We used it to make a High definition video so our audience can enjoy
the good quality. For shooting our music video we used two camera along
with tripods to get steady shots without any jerks, we used two camera to
save us time as we easily shooted same scenes using different angles and
shots. We also got to know about White Balance and colour temperatures
which we used and tried to maintained throughout the music video.

Throughout the project we needed to use computers, laptops, cellphones, as they were very handy
.We used them for extensive research, communication, for updating our blogs and writing about our
entire journey behind our media project.

Softwares were also used which helped us with compiling our stuff, as well as
uploading it. We used softwares such as Adobe Premier which was used to
help make us a music video and join it all together, we had to make two cuts of
the music video, first was the rough draft and then after the jury and feedback
we made our final music video. Secondly we used Adobe Photoshop for the
production of our digipack in which we did editing added features and
different filters to our pictures.

Our Blogging platform was Weebly, where we wrote about everything from
the start of our music promotion package till the very end. Weebly allowed us
to write all our experience along with evidences in form of images, videos and
links and included many features such as slideshows, links, button etc.

To make our digipack and website look more appealing we used various fonts
which we downloaded from the website called Dafont which gave us multiple
fonts to play around and become creative. To create logos we used Adobe
Illustrator, which allowed us to play with letters differently and finally coming
up with a beautiful calligraphy style logo.

For the making of our website we used the website “WIX” which is an online
website builder which had multiple features to play around with and had many
templates which we could use for our artists website. The website was very
flexible as it had many options.
YouTube was another platform which we used for uploading our videos and linking it to our blog and
reviewing real media text. It was a platform which made both viewing and uploading very easy. It
was one of the platforms where our audience mostly sees music videos. We used YouTube not only
to upload our videos but also to view other music videos with similar genres and artists so we could
find the common codes and conventions. We then used these codes and conventions in our music
videos once we saw videos on YouTube.

Social Media platforms such as Facebook and snapchat really helped us as there we got to reach out
to our audience, got the surveys filled and also got a feedback from the audience on our music
video. To make surveys we used Google forms, which really helped us reaching out to the right
audience

Furthermore, we used presentation softwares such as Prezi, Powtoon, Vizme, and Microsoft
PowerPoint to make presentations so that our blog looks creative and doesn’t get too monotonous.
Making presentations on different platforms really helped enhanced the quality of our work.

Lastly, Google was used as our search engine, without it finding secondary data would have been
possible, as because of it we got various ideas and inspiration.