Presentation

Tainted Reality

Our Music Video

This is our music video unfortunately when we uploaded it to YouTube the music was taking off for copyright reasons and we have been unable to upload a different version. We are still trying to find a different way to post it on our blog but here is our music video. Hope you like it.

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product justifies the media’s portrayal of the classic rock girl band and how by exploring different ideas we created a band that went against the stereotypical image of a girl band. The song ‘One way or Another’ that we took much consideration over, compliments the image that we intended our girl band to fit the criteria of. Our girl band challenges the conventions and typical stereotypes of girl bands and instead of conforming to the classic pop girl bands that seem to be so common in today’s society we wanted a change of style and a chance to justify why we chose our girl band to fit the stereotype of a rock girl band. By using research and mind maps to support our decision we agreed it was vital to support and challenge the “image” that created a response to the “girl band” image evoking our video to have the classic outfits that complimented each individual member rather then the traditional representation of the girl bands wearing the similar styled clothes. We discovered when researching girl band videos that they use a lot of varied colours and we decided to go against this standard image by choosing contrasting colours. However we did agree to use the traditional angles, shots and close-ups that are typically seen in girl band videos. By examining other music videos in which we specifically noticed certain techniques and ideas which gave us a chance to fit the conventions of what is needed within a music video and how we could develop our video further to fit those conventions or challenge them.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of our main product and our ancillary was very effective due to the fact that we created a theme that would run between each product. This help make our band recognisable to our target audience which was teenagers and young adults. It also enable us to build a strong image for our band. This theme was the use of the contrasting colours black and white, which made the images bold and eye-catching to our audience. Our products all compliment each other by the similar use of colours and positioning of images, we intended for our products to appear more visual than use text that would divert attention from the imagery. We deliberately chose images that revealed our bands faces so that the audience would be able to connect with them and feel familiarity with the band members.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback we learnt that we needed to present our girl band in a visual way. They felt that there was not enough close-ups of our band members and were not given the chance to establish each member. Another criticism that we received was that our storyline was not followed through enough and needed to be more specific, for example ‘why was the girls in that surroundings?’ and ‘why were they concentrating on capturing the male character in the narrative?’. We took this all into consideration and decided to reshot a lot of our video as we were not happy with the result. When doing this filming we ensured that we developed our narrative further and had many close-ups of the band members and instruments. After making these changes we received positive feedback from people as it revealed a more successful approach to the video and included the correct visual image to contrast with song lyrics. “Better understanding of the narrative and I understand what's going on”, “I like that the girls costumes match in each shot”, ”I really like the guitar close-up shots” this is just some of the feedback comments we received. Overall we are much happier with the final result and feel we reacted positively and productively to the feedback we received.


4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Before beginning our media product we researched music video’s on the site YouTube, it gives people a chance to access artist music videos. This provided us with ideas on how a music video is presented and what sort of image we wanted our video to have. We originally researched traditional pop girl band and decided that we would like to go against the typical stereotype and challenge the conventions by creating our own individual girl band. We felt this would appeal to a different market as well as the normal girl band audience. In addition to this we explored the different layouts of posters and cds by viewing them on search engines such as Google and Yahoo this was of course vital to our ancillary texts because we needed them to include similarities to other posters and cd covers. We also looked at specific girl band websites such as The Saturdays and Girls Aloud to widen our knowledge of the different media technologies they use to promote their image and to explore their presentation of how they interact with their audiences. We feel this really helped us create a concrete image of what we really wanted to achieve and develop. Once we had this we then downloaded our song ‘One Way Or Another’ from ITunes and played it on an IPod player in the background when filming our video to enable our singer to get the lip singing in syncing, which is the most recent way to download and play music.
When we had all our photos and filming we then went on to use video editing software such as I-Movies to edit and form our music video. In addition to this we also used photo editing software such as Photoshop to create our Poster and Digipack that was going to promote our band to our target audience. Overall we used a lot of new media technologies to help us constructed our bands image and video.

http://www.thesaturdays.co.uk/

Music video finshed!!!!

We have finished our music video and are much happier with the way it turned out second time round.We feel that the storyline is understandable and that you get a real sense of what sort of band they want to be. We have panning shots, closes up and mid shots which help to establish the band and alternate between each shot. I feel we have achieve the look we were going for which was a more indie/rock girl band instead of the typical pop girl band. I believe this will appear to a wide audience and is a change to the normal bands you see. We hope that you like it :D

The Crit

We had the crit last week and discovered that our music video needs alot of work to be able to gain the grade and look that we originally wanted. As we knew already we need much more close-ups of the band as it is there first music video and we need to introduce them to the target audience. Also we need to make more of the narrative to break up all the performance shots we have. We developed a storyline in which the guy is caught flirting with all three of the band members and the girls decide to tie him up. We decided that we would like to end the video with a pan down of him sitting there on his own and the band members leaving him. We have done the reshooting and plan to do as much editing as possible to achieve a much more polished and sophisticated look. When doing the shooting i tried to get as many angles as possible and a variety of different shoots as i believe this is what our music video was missing. I hope that i will be able to put all these new shoot into our music video and create a much better video than what we have already.

We have done our filming and editing and will be taking part in a crit that will give us feedback onour video and digpacks. This will enable us to see what others think and see what changes we need to make to improve ourmusic video. We have already shown it to a few people and seen that we need to include more close-up of the band members to help establish the characters and more of a narrative. We have planned a reshoot in a weeks time and hopefully achieve all the shots need to make our music video of high quality.

New images of Tainted Reality

These are some new images of our girl band 'Tanited Reality' we tried to make them similar
to our previous pictures as we think they represent the images that we want to portray for our girl band. Due to our lead singer leading the band we had to recreatethe pictures with new lead singer. We are happy with the way they look as we feel they show the image of the band as rocky and sexy.

Poster

This is our poster that we have created to advertise our bands album. We feel that this goes well with the digpack and the theme of the band. We are pleased with how it looks and like the fact that you are able to see all the band members faces. We feel like the band portrays a rocky and sexy image that we were trying to achieve and particularly like the fact that none of them are smiling. It is quite a plain poster which is what we wanted as we just wanted to introduce the band first. We played with the contrast of the black and white as we wanted it to stand out. I feel we have stuck to our theme of the bands image which is black and white and that the target audience will be able to identity them.

Digpack

This is our bands digpack which will include the album and a DVD of the music video. We are very pleased with the design as we feel it represents our band theme and fits the look that we were trying to achieve. It has the clear theme of black and white but also has a girly pattern which helps the band identify with its target audience. We included two images of the band as we want their audience to really get to know the band members faces and personalities. We played with the contrast on these pictures to make the colours attract attention and stand out. We decided on the idea of putting the guitar image in as it show the audience that they aren't just another pop girl band and have more of an egde. The image also represents their personailty as it's rocky but girly with the pink stickers.

Analysis of Posters

I really like the look of this poster as it is bright coloured and captures the audiences attention. This Madonna poster is based 0n Andy Warhol's pop art work, this works as it represents her pop images and shows her Marilyn Monroe image at the time.

As we are doing a Blondie song 'One way or Another' i decided to look into there posters and see what styles they used to represent there band. The colours used are very bold and eye catching and clearly portray thier punky and rockystyle. The bright yellow is symbolic of 'Blondie' and the audience instantly knows that it is associated with their band. The bold colours clash and make the poster noticable and eye-catching to their target audience. I particulary like the black and white contrast as it stands out and highlights certain aspects. I would like to use this contrast in our poster as we have used this throughout our music video.

I like this poster of Beyonce as it clearly shows her face and has a very simplistic look. I think this allows the audience to really get to know Beyonce's face and represents her as an artist. I prefer the simplistic look instead of something that is too busy as the artist can be lost within the poster. I think that we will try and produce a simple poster that will allow us to introduce the band to our target audience with a clear picture of each band member. This way the audience will be able to recognise they faces any where.

Change !

Our singer has pulled out so we are going to need to make a change within the digipack and reshoot certain part of our video again, we have found a replacement person which has only set us back a little bit so we intend to do the best we can.

Storyborad

To Do List

We have done some filming and editing but we need to add to what we have already and finish some of the shots.



Shots that we have yet to film:

• Corridor Scene
• Projection of words such as lyrics
• Some more with the White Background
• Some more with the Black Background
• Laying down shot with fabrication
• Girls walking towards the camera
• Choreography
• Camera moving shot, (multiple shot by using a DSLR camera)

We are hoping to achieve these shots within our next scheduled film. We had most of the equipment required already and hoping to gain the others soon.