Click To Enlarge. Above is scanned uploads of the formal feedback questionnaires that we created. These are only a few but as it can be seen that all comments are very positive, its said that we have stuck to the conventions of a typical girl band which we was pleased to find out from fresh eyes and to see that we had achieved what we planned to and that the video stuck to its purpose. We gave out thirty questionnaires to people who were within our target audience to find out what they thought. And there were comments like this is what they would expect a girl band to do, and that it could be seen on YouTube and TV on music channels. There were also people commenting on there favourite parts of the video and many liked the dancing, which also made us proud to see that our choreography worked well and that it could be admired both from a dancing hip hop point of view and added to the video as well.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?
I think our finished website is very affective as a piece of media, it conforms and develops to the typical conventions that would be seen on the web site of a girl band. With use of colour for example we used a black ground and pink and blue writing, also the big central picture being the focus of the website, it is a professional picture taken on a proper camera and the clothes we styled in the picture all being black also conforms to the genre of a girl band website.
The name of the band being at the top on strong yet feminine written across the top is very typical of such a site which we aimed for. Also it conforms to the general setting of a website for all music artists and famous people as it has links to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace across the top. Also the links on the top of the page which would take to other pages such as 'About us' , 'Tour dates' and 'Release Dates' are all very stereotypical of a website such as this as the aim is to promote the girl band and for people to read positive things about them. Also I believe
it serves its purpose as far as a promotion tool for the single release of Beautiful Dirty Rich as there is a paragraph about it on there and links to the video.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
The website adds background story and information about the members of the band and makes everything seem more realistic. Also in the picture we wore clothes that are also in the video so it ties in nicely and there is mention of the video release and single on there so it is an effective combination.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Again similarly to the previous ancillary task mention the magazine, we did not feel we needed to get formal audience feedback as we know that the website serves it purpose, however we did again through form of conversation. Comments included that they liked how all three tasks used similar colours throughout, black pink and blue and the only thing they would change about the website would be more pictures and maybe more adverts for realism on the website. Therefore we learned that more things needed to go on the website, however we didn't want to fill up the page to much and make it look over crowed so we kept it on a minimal look and I personally felt this looked and worked best for us.
How did you use media technologies in the constructions and research, planning and evaluation stages?
To create this I used iWeb on the Appel Macs, after researching and trying to create one on online systems such as piczo and freewebs, we found that iWeb worked best and gave more tools that helped it look professional.
For research we used the internet and Safari again on the Appel mac to research in to what other girl band websites looked like so we could find the conventions and decide wether to follow or go agaisnt these.
We did wear name labels so you can tell whos who, but due to the quality of the camera you cant see them very well, but from left to right its : Emily Roberts , Christie Robbins then me Kirsty Shakespeare. Below is my written Evaluation of the main task, the music video.
In evaluation of both the finished product and my performance on camera and behind the scenes, I would like to say I did as well as I possibly could, I got involved with all aspects of the task such as recording, setting scenes, choosing costume, choreography, storyboard and production of both ancillary tasks. I think our media product uses the typical conventions of other real media products and conforms to these, we decided to adapt our selves, both our physical appearance and the way we acted our the presence within the film. We wanted to give off the impression of confident 'pop star' type people, we did this by the way we dressed for example we all wore black in some scenes then all pink in others, like The Pussy Cat Dolls do we all matched and it looked very professional and affective, also our hair styles; we liked to vary them using both curly, straight and up styles again similar to other girl bands do such as The Saturdays and Girlicious after our research we found that they all usually had long hair of different styles in the different scenes so we tried to vary this. I think the way the video starts and ends is very realistic and also very confirmatory to the girl band genre, the whole walk forward in slow motion idea is something we found was regular amongst other videos we found in research. Also the titling on the end of the video was quite professional and developed our music video in to something more realistic, as it comes up with a strong black background and a font which I though was very Lady GaGa and feminine and suited the video as a whole.
When we asked peers to view our video they all gave very positive feedback, they all enjoyed the choreography and as the majority of the people we showed were all in the age range of the target audience this was obviously more relevant feedback. Also we showed some older people such as teachers and our parents and they again had nothing bad to say, they admired the editing skills and one even said 'it just shows that anyone can make a professional looking video' which made us feel proud of the work we had done as this meant we had met our aim to make something that looks both realistic and professional.
I think the ancillary tasks, help bring the band to life, as well as the video we decided to do a website and a magazine cover, both of which we feel made the made more realistic as it wasn't just a one of video and the photo shoot for the website and magazine cover, brings more personality to each member of the band and I think its a positive combination, that makes the overall video more affective as a peace.
The media technologies which I used for research, was mainly the Internet, popular pages such as You Tube were a huge help for research in to the video as it enabled us to watch videos made by other girl bands, as well as embedded on my blog so we could watch them for reference when ever necessary, google was also vital within the ancillary tasks. For the creation and construction of the video we used both a handy cam camera and my 12 mega pixel camera as it gave a better quality picture, we then uploaded the footage on to iMovie, which we found was the best option to edit our footage on as it enabled us to crop,shorten, speed up or slow down or even reverse the clips at the same time as changing the affects and colours which came in useful. Also for planning we used media technologies as we used story boards and uploaded them via a scanner so they could be viewed better and where ever we needed them as well as for reference on the blog. I think my input in to the whole task as a whole was vital, although we all worked well as a group and that we all performed well at all stages of the project.
I think the only weaknesses we faced was the lack of definate performers for the video as we started with four and ended with two, we mandedged to make it work however and the video looked just as good from start to finish, I wouldn't say there is anything that we could of been done differently as we would have done it at the time we realised were the improvement could of been done as we wanted the best results as possible.
I also believe that we went through a great deal of trouble for the end results compared to other groups, as we spent hours planning out fits, booking and organising rooms as well as painting flats and sorting out the use of a fog machine for our video to make it look better.
In hiensite the only thing I would of done different would have been better planning, for example always ensuring the cameras had batteries, never forgetting clothes and being prepared for incase of the actors not turning up.
Over all I really like our product, I think we have all done really well and have produced something of good quality.
In evaluation of my finished magazine cover I will answer the follow:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I feel our finished media product of a magazine cover both challenges and conforms to the conventions of its type. It goes against the typical conventions of a girl band, as they would more commonly be seen on the cover of a lads type of magazine for example, FHM, and as we did research in to this we decided that as our video conforms to the conventions well that it would be interesting to do something a bit different for the magazine, there for we decided to do a rap magazine which goes against the normal conventions of which magazines you would expect to see the average girl group appear in , as I personally and my research also shows that they feature mostly in glamour and gossip magazines as well as teen magazines. However it conforms because we researched and identified the conventions of a rap magazine and conformed to them instead for example how it was set out the lay out, the picture we used and colours and fonts.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The magazine adds an element of realism to the girl band, the combination brings the band and its members to life and makes it more as if the band we have created. I think although there is a slight contrast between the genres I think the magazine cover serves its purpose as a tool to advertise the music band and the song Beautiful Dirty Rich.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We have not had any individual targeted feedback on this product, how ever people who have seen the article have all gave positive and comments have been said that it looked very realistic
and again that the combination of the two works well. The only criticism we had was that they personally would have stayed with a pop genre rather then venturing in to the rap type magazine, however they thought that we pulled it of well and the magazine was successful in its purpose. All feed back for our magazine cover was informal and in form of conversation were as with the video we printed of sheets and gave them to people to watch.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I think technology has been vital in all parts of the construction of our magazine cover, it was necessary to use Internet to research in to different covers, and to upload the images that we had taken by our friend during a photo shoot. Also in construction we needed it for the programs of word to use and different fonts.
Would you change anything if you could go back?
I think next time I would have made more than two projects, as for this I only created two renditions using different pictures and a variety of colours and as both of these were rap magazines, I would have tried one as a glamour fashion magazine, which would have involved taking different pictures in a variety of more fashion dresses rather then hiphop 'swag'.
Above is a screen shot of the magazine covers I looked through for my research for the ancillary task.As you can see all of the examples of rap magazine covers, all have very bold colours of the background with very large striking pictures of the featuring celebrities stretched across the page, we plan to emulate this using the pictures of our photo shoot. Also I've noted they all have bar codes, ad the price and date somewhere in one of the bottom corners and the titles seem to be. All the magazines I have researched in to so far, have been rap magazines and this is the genre of magazine I would like to go for as although the song might not be perceived as rap that much, the images we have taken for the ancillary tasks we have one where we are in Adidas and string vests so I think this would be conforming to the similar options above. Also the head lines in these all mention the music artists name and something interesting after it so that is something for us to take in to mind as we make ours we could put other names on the front cover as advertising to make people want to read on to the magazine.
The album cover above shows a typical rap mag cover, it has a powerful black background and then a theme of two colours from the font, which I think is something i will conform to, but maybe more girly colours and probably pink as it will match the picture because of the colour clothes we are wearing. The font is consistent throughout accept for some places where it is different colours where the titles and subtitles are relevant and some titles are in italics.
I uploaded the above picture as it will hopefully be similar as it features two girls on the front cover like ours will, with a plain background and the picture of us being the focal point and the headlines around.
After our last session of editing, we found that there happened to be like black theme then all pink theme, and although this was obviously because of the different recording days and editing and adding bits on to the end after wards we thought we needed more difference in the video there fore we decided to use a black top on a white background as this was a greater contrast and when edited this would be affective and professional. Also we found chance to use the ballet bar in the dance studio, which we had previously mentioned for our video similar to that which the Pussy Cat Dolls used in their buttons video.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
