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.
To look in to the design of the web site I though it would be best if we looked at Lady GaGas web site as well as other girl bands own sites such as the Pussy Cat Dolls and The Saturdays, I found a massive difference in all three- Lady Ga Ga's was very weird with strong black backgrounds and all her pictures where in black and white, this contrasted greatly with The Saturdays who had a light blue background and it was more cute, girly and friendly rather then powerful and different. This is obviously because both different artists stand for very different things for example there are many different hypocriticial sides to Lady GaGa she is both : - Feminist - The picture of her in the out fit of raw meat to show the way that women are viewed by men and the way she empowers women to be different and unique and does not care what people say of her. - Anti feminist- The sexy dancing and skimpy out fits and the way she is half naked in most of her videos the typical way of some of her pictures and videos. Where as The Saturdays are more family friendly entertainment they still try to look good but more 'beautiful' rather then 'sexy' which opens their music up to a greater target audience, they are more smiley and cute rather then pouting and using cliche items such as red lip stick a, where as Lady Gaga has a big picture of her red lips and the black and red theme of the website are also colours which are sexy and can also have negative conotations such as brothels which relates to sex, proof that sex sells in some way or another. The Saturdays have a nice light blue background, again a colour which is open to any target audience both male or female and of all ages, to make it more girly they have pink bits as well as loads of other colours to make it bright and attractive.
We also observed how other bands who are sort of in the middle of Lady GaGa and the saturdays like The Pussycat dolls and Girlicious, and they used pink colours and one uses a siloutte of the band members and other uses a close up picture of the three of them which we intend to use. Also commonly all the ones I have looked in to have links to other social networking sites such as Facebook,Twitter and Myspace as alot of these music artists have there own profiles on those as well and they have links to those.
As you can see from this still we took from the our recordings, we have two pink backgrounds we thought that the contrast of two different pinks was very affective and also girly which is what we were going for , so we painted the two flats and positioned them pointing in on each other slightly with the spot lighting centerd, also pink outfits we though would look really good against the background so thats what we went for. >>> THE PINK PAINTED BACKGROUNDS
Also the money we printed off our selves , although its not a proper print out of an Americandollar as this would be breaking the law its a fake version that would be suitable for use in our music video so it looks real enough but isn't the real pattern and also some of them are in black and white to add a contrast to the piles. A lot of fake money was used in both our video and Lady GaGas video as the main theme of the song is mocking these socialite life styles where they are filthy rich and money ain't an issue. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Also we ordered a fog machine, to give our video that extra edge and add a special affect to the music video.
For costumes we planned to be as matching as possible whilst still looking different, we wanted a lot of wearing black and quite unique looking, and wearing heels always as well. Target Audience For our target audience I thought it would be for the best as we are this target audience for many people in the music industry out selves as to go for a young R'n'B and pop music. Similar to most girl bands the whole idea of getting the female viewers to admire and inspire to be like you and getting the members of the opposite gender to 'fancy you' was the typical r'n'b group convention we tried to follow. Also with song choose we thought by doing a song by a popular artist this also reaches out to the younger generation of teenagers.
AGAINNNN... although to be better prepared this time we booked the Northwood Campus Dance Studio we went to use it and there was still exam desks out :-|. To save time we used the Drama studio again but this time on the Northwood Campus, which is slightly better as the lighting is really professional and the spot lighting is powerful, also there was mirrors for us to practice our routine together and yet again black floor and carpets to give the blacked out background illusion we desired originally. The camera seemed to be a lot clearer and more precise pictures when used in this room, I believe this was due to the lighting used- We set it up so it was spot lighted for where we were to perform the choreographed routine which we had previously made. We recorded the dance scene from three different angles all though it turned out it was all looking best on the face on scenes so this is what we found we used most of during the editing process. One member of the original actors couldn't attend as she had been in an accident, but we managed to carry on as it had to get done and had been planned previously! And it still looked as good with just the three actors so it was not a major concern.
Again we was all dressed similarly in black , although I wore grey leggingsinstead of black because for the first part I was doing the miming and was in the middle so it looked quite good for one of us to be different and also broke up the background.We also did small solo parts to add in which we found was quite popular amongst other girl groups videos.
During the editing we found it most difficult to get the track over the top fit perfectly to the words and stay in sync to the words our mouths were miming although after carefully cutting and trimming each clip individually we made it work and looked very professional.
On the Eighteenth of February we planned to record the first part of our music video. Although we faced a problem the Dance Studio which we indented to use initially was being used for exams on the Northwood Campus, thankfully there was a drama studio we could use at the Foxley Campus this similarly had dark curtains which could be drawn around the room to give the black background affect which we first planned of. The room lead to our advantage as there was four podiums making up a stage in there which we though could be useful and look more professional if we separated them and staggered them to give the impression of separate podiums for us each to stand on. We had a few practise runs as it was slightly different to how we planned with the small stages in place we had to account for getting of those within the small set routine of the poses ( which we felt were very stereotypical of a girl band which was the genre we aimed to conform to! ) and also a slow walk of the stages to wards the camera in typical girl band style. It surprisingly took us about two hours just to get that tiny pieced of filming, which we hadn't planned for because we had to keep doing retakes as we saw on the first scene some of us were out of time and not in the cameras view as much as the rest, we sorted this issue by moving the camera and actors further apart. Also for lighting we turned of the lights within the drama studio and brought of six really large strong light lamps and pointed it on the scene and put two in the background, we found that we had to put the bulbs in these two pointing outwards as it was washing us out because of the contrast settings on the camera and the power of the bulbs. Also black blankets were used to cover the smart board in the background which didn't have a black curtain covering it like the rest of the room, the setting wasn't perfect but after alot of thought and moving things around we managed to get it all to work and to the standard of which we first intended.
After we finished recording we took it back to our class room and we uploaded the footage we had recorded on to the Apple Mac computers and on to iMovie, we though this was best to to our editing with because after researching and using trail versions of other editing soft wear such as Studio 14 and Adobe Premier we realised that iMovie suited what we were aiming to gain best, and after having used it previously in our AS Unit I felt I had more experience within this programme then starting fresh on a new one and not having a clue where to start :). As originally planned we wanted lots of flashing colours and slow motion for the start section (20 seconds or so) of the video. Also the saturation is edited and a grainy effect was added to the video for the start as it made it look more rustic and as the quality on the camera wasn't perfect we though it would be better to go in the total opposite direction and have the first scene more grainy and rugged effect, also iMovie enabled us to slow down the clips so the walking was more to the beat and slow motion affect. Also when we are 'posing' in our positions when we first go to change we added a jumping affect so we moved quite a few times, which I felt looked quite professional :-D
Story boarding was the best option for us to plan our video as we already had the may key themes and ideas of what we wanted in the video for example we knew that we wanted close ups , and dancing from different angles. Also featuring alot of money for example setting it alight similarly to what Lady Gaga does in the actually Beautiful Dirty Rich video and the location of a black background which we would use the Northwood campus's Dance studio- Also the lighting in there was convenient as we had dimmer lights and spot lighting.We don't exactly have any artists within our group so stick men where our best bet to give a basic depiction of what we need to do within the shots there was also information boxes such as lighting , duration of the clip , sound and mise en scene. Below I have scanned the Story Board pictures. how ever some may be different from what you may see in the video as things may not have worked out or looked correctly at the time :
I CREATED THIS PRESENTATION TO EXPLAIN AND ENPHASIZE OUR REASONS FOR THE VIDEO WE HAVE CHOOSEN TO DO. TO SEE IT IN GREATER DETAIL . CLICK PLAY THEN ZOOM IN TO READ OR WATCH THE VIDEO :-D
The theory of the male gaze developed by Laura Muvley is the concept of how an audience may view the people.( for example casting in films , models or music artists)The three different prospectives on which it can be seen is a males view on a woman, a woman's view of her self or even the way one woman views another. The features of the male gaze includes cameras and lighting lingering over females body's emphasing curves and other things which represent women in a way of which a male would view them or view parts of the body which he would prefer. This from a feminist point of view makes women appear like objects and are over sexualised as 'Sex Sells' in music videos and films or even on the cover of magazines men will be more likely to watch or purchase if there is a picture of a sexual woman posing on the front or a gorgeous actress in the film and sometimes these women and pictures have very little to do with the product its self. The theory shows that some women indeed enjoy being looked at for there beauty and can be admired both by other men and women for this for example models or in beauty pageants in American society's. The gaze can change directions as women can also look at other women in this same way for different reasons for example for comparison of clothing or there body image.
In terms of a music video the Male Gaze is present in the form of conformity in our video, we tryed to dress as pop stars similar to that of the Pussy Cat Dolls and from our view we are using the theory of the Male Gaze as we can see that this look is admired and works for alot of famous people, bands and singing artists. We used black clothing which in its self is quite a sexual colour as it is the opposite to innocent with both tight fitting clothes which maybe could be seen as revealing - however this look works for all girl bands as men fancy them and me as a female I admire them so this is the approach we took. For example in this picture above which was taken from a lads magazine, as you can see she is portrayed as a sex symbol - the picture has even been edited to great lengths her body is completely changed from what the original picture looked like to make her more appealing to the male eye; although we have conformed to the gaze we haven't gone to the great lengths like this and actually changed the way we looked to appeal. I disagree with pictures like this as it makes normal women with normal body's feel insecure as know one can ever look like that but males have such high standard as pictures like this are used for advertising and threw in their faces every single day in all adverts as well as the music industry.
This is the picture i intend to use for the main album cover and the start page on the website. When we think of a suitable name for the band I'm going to rite it in pink fancy writing across the bottom part where it looks like a photograph.
All these pictures where edited slightly the usually crop and saturation heightened and one blurred and another turned pink on Picasa 3- this is because I find this program easier to use then the others I tryed as Coreal Paint Shop Pro can be confusing if it is a first time using it. Picasa offered me all the basics I needed to make these pictures look professional and to the standard a girl band would use.
We had our friend who does a photography class take these pictures with a proper photography camera. She took the pictures even though we decided the out fits , positions etc.
Above is a video of us making up the choreography, Below is the reasoning and research findings
We did alot of depth research in to the type of things that these artists put in to there music videos. Props - They are used frequently in the videos as both advertising ( Big Sexy Hair hair sprey in the 'Like me' video') and as part of the dancing routine. For example Chairs are used by Pussycat dolls in more then one video and Girlicious are also sitting down in the corner of a boxing ring. Similarly Lady GaGa sits at and on pianos in here videos.
All the artists I've mentioned have used a ballet bar at some point in at least one of there videos. As you can see we took pictures for our Album Cover and to upload on to the website , we all had black clothing on and a ballet bar : So we are quiet clearly conforming to the normal conventions of a girl band already.
As i mentioned previously about the locations of the videos being in a boxing ring both bands also used this : Although being able to record in a professional boxing ring is something out of our reach as we have already looked in to it - we could try and find a location which has similar connotations to a boxing ring?
The dancing in girl band music videos is not usually very tame. As 'sex sells' the females in music videos are usually wearing little outfits and dancing provocatively; here is a perfect example:
Not only is the song lyrics in the above video quite rude they are also semi naked dancing sexily around the male singer and with fire around them. Also their clothes are all black and matching in some parts. I also noticed that in every single pussy cat dolls video there is always a part where they are always walking forward in a row with the same foot forward- Almost like a march , I feel this walk is very empowering to women , although some might say what they are wearing and singing about is derogatory; i believe some aspects of the video represent the power within a female and her body holds power over men as the Pussycat dolls look irresistible in there videos.
Similarly Girlicious have matching skimpy outfits , all wearing black and doing the classic 'walk forward' which is used by almost every girl band. Also like Pussycat dolls they all take an item of clothing of at some point in the video. Also the location in this video is a boxing ring again i feel this is empowering the women in the video saying they are fighters and feisty which i think is a good trait to have as a young women. Ironically though Girlicious use alot of the Pussycat dolls themes and moves and even look similar as a band even though the song is about being an individual.
This below is a picture of our ballet bar that we will be using in our video.
Lip Syncing is a term used to describe something used by alot of artists both on stage but mainly in there music videos. Its also known as mimeing- it can be used to live up to musical singing ablity as their voices on the album can be auto-tuned to make them sound better. When some artists sing live it is clear to see that they have been auto tuned because they can sound very different ( which is why most of them prefere to lipsync. ) With Lady Ga Ga this is easy to tell the difference because her voice live is alot more harsher with broader tones.
Notice her voice sounds alot nicer in this second video where she is lip syncing.
Its also used in performances where there is going to be alot of dancing and the vocal wouldnt sound proffesional is the singer was out of breath and panting down the microphone. How ever fans that have paid to watch there favourite artists perform arnt impressed when they find out they are faking it pretending to be live. Also this allows adverage people who cant sing to pretend they can :
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
, where as Lady Gaga has a big picture of her red lips and the black and red theme of the website are also colours which are sexy and can also have negative conotations such as brothels which relates to sex, proof that sex sells in some way or another. The Saturdays have a nice light blue background, again a colour which is open to any target audience both male or female and of all ages, to make it more girly they have pink bits as well as loads of other colours to make it bright and attractive. 
