Question 1:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

Charlotte Andreas

As a group we created a main production of a music video which was imitated by The Saturdays ‘Missing You,’ along with two ancillary tasks which consisted of a magazine advert and a

digipak. There are many areas within our production that relate to real media products enabling us to make comparisons easily.

We believe our media product has achieved strongly in the genre of pop and our target audience, by including glamorous looks and costumes. We were able to meet the expectations that are fulfilled

by any pop girl group by including colour sequences and storylines into our video.

We mainly used forms and conventions of real media products by using camerawork, editing techniques, intertextuality and

exhibitionism.

We used forms and conventions of real media

products through similarity...As like The Saturdays and Girls Aloud we made our first

connection to real media through our appearance. Glamorised hair styles

Co-ordinated outfitsHigh-heeled shoes

Poses and choreography

Our camera work and editing decisions also meant we were used

forms of real media products.Our camerawork has an impact on meaning. Movement, angle and shot distance all play a part in the

representation of a pop artist or band, close ups and action shots are most likely to be used.

With editing the most common uses involve multi exposure and fades. We took this into consideration and used a variety of interesting exposures which would keep our audience pleasured. Below shows

a way in which we achieved this creating interest and representation of our genre.

Speed Adjustment

Cross-Fade

Slow-motion

Lip-Synching Repetition

Perform

ance dire

ctly to

camera

Choreography

Intertextuality

Like many real media products, we included intertexuality into our video. This occurs in the anti-climax section of the song in the scene whereby Emily and Joe are at the table together. c

Here, we do our own twist on a scene from Citizen Kane, whereby the married couple are slowly seen sitting further away from each-other in each section of a montage. We felt this

nicely represented two people losing the closeness and intimacy of their relationship.

ExhibitionismThe more powerful and independent female artists over recent years have gone that extra mile by looking sexually provocative and being accused of inviting a sexualised glaze. We have definitely included exhibitionism in our music video by wearing short dresses and using extreme close up angles.

Although we are not extremely revealing we have followed the theme to attract a wider audience as like our followed girl band The Saturdays.

Some real examples of exhibitionism

Question 2:

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

Laura PinkneyA2 Advanced Portfolio Evaluation

The Front Cover Combined with the Main Product.

The Nature ThemeIn the main product, we heavily used nature as our location and often for our props. We were inspired to do this from the original video whereby the band are in a much warmer outside setting. When it came to deciding for our front-cover, we felt it would be effective to make the theme of nature consistent, but give it a much more glossy, glamorous and girl-band type look. To achieve this, we sharpened and warmified the image, to make it look more edited to fit with the connotations of a front cover.

Outfit decisionsIn the main product, we have two outfits; one (shown to the left) is a casual look, and the second is the formal black dress. We felt it was important to include both as we wanted the typical glamorous look combined with one that was more ‘everyday’ and relatable.

For the front cover, we met half way in the middle but going smart casual. We felt that this was the best combination as it incorporated both styles included in the main product and at the same time meets the expectation of what an audience would expect a girl-band image to look like (heels, glamorous hair and make-up etc).

The incorporation of single shots into the ancillary task.

In the main product, we insured to include plenty of solo shots of all four girls within the group as we felt it was important to show individuality alongside the unity that generally occurs with all girl groups.

We decided to do the same in the ancillary, whereby in the digipak we include biography pages.

Here is an example of how we linked the two.

We think that this is effective because...

It makes the theme of individuality consistent throughout both texts.

It fits with the expectations of a girl – group, whereby each member often gets a specific focus.

More specifically, The Saturdays themselves don’t actually include this specific focus in all of their products, giving ours a sense of originality.

The incorporation of comedic and light-hearted elements in both texts.

One of the digipak booklet pictures that run alongside the biography pictures.

A screen grab of the very end of the main production just before the music fades.

A s part of our band image, we wanted to portray a young girl group who are glamorous yet carefree. It happened purely by accident for us to achieve the ‘laughing shot’ in our main product. But when it did, we felt it nicely would fit in at the end to give the video warm and a light-hearted edge.

So, bearing this in mind we felt it was important to combine this element into the ancillary task, and this is how the leaf picture was created. We feel that this very effective because it has that comedic element we wanted without being so far stretched from the normal expectations of a girl band.

The incorporation of group images and co-ordinated positioning in both texts.

Why is this effective?

Firstly, the unity of girl-groups is something that is essential in a girl-group. It is expected that the girl group will perform together and pose together, For us, it was finding that balance between group shots and solo shots, but by incorporating more group shots we felt it really emphasised the closeness of the four girls.

The choreography in the main production gives a professional quality to video, so by posing in specific positions it just adds to the consistency of that professional look we are going for.

The effectiveness of the back-cover.O

ur

back-

cove

r.

Th

e S

atu

rday’s b

ack

cove

r.

Firstly, we feel that it is effective because it is completely different from any existing media product that The Saturdays currently have out there (as you can see by the images above).

But in terms of it’s effectiveness when combined with the main product, it comes down to the consistency of the themes which run throughout both. So fore example:

1. The nature location: We used it again, but the fact that we used a completely different location to the one used in the main task makes each shot look so individual.

2. The Outfits: As mentioned before, the outfit in the ancillary task combines all outfits in the main tasks, which provides a lovely connecting link between the two of them.

3. The unity of the group: This pose is probably the most close one there is throughout both the ancillary tasks and the main product, but again it really symbolises what the group dynamic is like and again is another reinforcement of the unity of the band.

4. The light-hearted element: This is another example of a picture whereby we haven’t adopted the stereotypical ‘posed and serious’ look, and again links to that image in the video at the end whereby we are all laughing and having a good time.

The effectiveness of the Magazine Advert and why it will help to sell the Digipak.

The contrast between the black and white background and us four girls in colour is extremely eye-catching.

The colour co-ordination of our outfits provides consistency and unity between the four girls but also an element of fashion (which is very important amongst female girl bands).

The icons here show the audience where they are able to purchase the music, therefore informing them where the digipak is available as well as the song in digital format.

The name of the girl-group and the title of the song is helping with the identification of the group. They are feminine in italics and also following the same colour scheme that we have on our clothes (linking it all together).

Like the digipak, the magazine advert has consistent themes of nature which acts as a link between the two.

Question 3:What have you learned from your audience

feedback?Jodie Butcher

• Receiving feedback from an audience was very important to us as it told us what was good about

our music video and ancillary tasks, and what was not so good.

• It also meant we were able to improve the product as a whole.

• By having people tell us what they liked and didn’t like about the

product meant that we could adapt and change it to meet their needs as this is the most important thing

to do.

The importance of feedback

Our target audience & whyMusic Video• Our target audience for the video is females aged

14-30 and males aged 16-30.Ancillary Tasks• Our target audience for our magazine advert and

digi-pak is mainly females aged 14-30. We decided that after carrying out research, we would not include males in our audience as they are just not into girl band adverts and biographies like females are.

The feedback• Each of us carried out our own target audience screening & specific focus on

different people to get as much feedback as possible.

• The majority of the feedback we received was positive.

• Although we did receive some non-critical negative feedback which gave

us ideas on how to improve the product.

Feedback• The feedback received from this

group of 5 people we questioned was mainly positive.

• Here is an example of some of the feedback we received:

• ‘I wouldn't change anything but would add more group scenes as it shows the unity of the group.‘

• This quote is from Sophie Hulbert (far left) and tells us that they would have liked to have seen more group scenes. Therefore what we did was switch some individual shots we had with shots of all the girls together.

Did we target the right audience?

• The main thing we learnt from our audience feedback was that we targeted the correct audience, although there were a few exceptions as most of the boys enjoyed the music video but not the ancillary tasks.

• 'It doesn't really appeal to me because it is aimed at a feminine audience and I am fairly masculine. I wouldn't purchase the product in the first place as the song is not my taste of music but I do think it is a professional product.’ - Tom Gallagher

• This information was quite useful to us as we then realised that we should focus on targeting mainly females for the digi-pak and magazine advert and both males and females for the video.

Music Video Feedback

Music Video• What do you like most about the video?• People mostly liked the variety of flashback shots of Emily and Joe as it

made the story more realistic and entertaining.• What did you think the story was about? Was it clear?• Everyone we asked understood the story and found it very clear.• What do you think needs to be improved and why?• A lot of the audience commented on the acting and thought it could have

been more professional as the actors didn’t portray enough emotion.• Do you think the video is professional and why?• Everyone thought it was professional and some people actually preferred

it to The Saturdays original video as it represents the song and its lyrics more.

• Does it appeal to you and would you enjoy watching it again?• Understandably it didn’t appeal to everyone, with it appealing more to

females than males. Although the males found it entertaining and wanted to watch it again.

• Do you like the dance routine and group scenes?• People thought the dance routine could have been choreographed better

but we glad to see it in there as it was nice to see the girls altogether as a band.

PositivePositive NegativeNegative

Digi-pak Feedback

• Simplistic font – easy to read.• Girls are positioned well.• Nice warm colours• Girls look fashionable• Back cover is clever – good idea to face and walk away• Like how the text covers the tree on the bio’s so the focus is on the girls.• Glamorous hair & make-up.• Looks very professional

• 5 star rating looks out of place.• ‘Missing You’ on the front of the digi-pak should be moved up.• Pictures in the inside of the booklet are too bright.• Text at the top of the back cover is hard to read.

Magazine Advert Feedback• What do you like most about the advert?• The colouring of the advert was what everyone commented on, people loved

the orangey, pinkie theme and thought it made the girls stand out.• If you could do something to improve it, what would you do?• This was a hard question for people to answer, but they said the hair and

make-up could have been more glamorous and over the top.• Does it look professional and could you see it being a real advert in a real

magazine?• Everyone thought it was professional but most people said it did not have

enough realistic information on it to be in a real magazine.• Would you possibly come across this advert in a magazine that you read? If

so, which one? Which one would you expect it to be in?• Magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle & Glamour were mentioned which was

brilliant as these are the types of magazines we wanted it to be featured in.• Do you like the pose? If not, why?• The posed was loved by all as the target audience we asked said that’s how

they recognised the girls to be a girl band.• Do you like the font, text & layout? If not, why?• We had a mixed reaction to this question as some people didn’t like the font

in italics where-as some people loved it. Some people didn’t like the colour of the font as it is hard to read, where-as others really liked how it matched the colours of the girls shirts.

What we learned from our audience feedback

• By receiving feedback from our potential audience we learned a lot of important information that we used to

improve our product.• We learned that males are not in our target audience in terms

of the digi-pak and magazine advert as the ancillary tasks are too feminine.

• We also realised that we could target a slightly older audience then we first thought.

• Originally we thought our target audience were teenage girls aged 11-19.

• But since carrying out our research we discovered that older women were also part of our potential audience and

therefore we changed the age of our target audience to 14-30.

Question 4How did you use media technologies in the construction and research,

planning and evaluation stages?

Sophie Legge

We have used many different media technologies in our project...

New media -Blog

We have used Blogger to help plans and show the construction of our project and our research. This has enabled us to show everyone what we are direction we are planning to take our project and give examples of what has helped to give us ideas

New Media – Internet/Google

We also used the internet to gain more ideas for how we want our band to look and how we should arrange our photo shots for both ancillary tasks, for example poses and props. This was good to look at and help to use for our tasks because it gave us plenty of ideas and we could also use the pictures to show planning and research in out blogs and evaluation!

www.thesaturdays.co.uk

www.facebook.com/TheSaturdays

New Media - YouTube

We also used YouTube to look through various video’s to help our creative minds and see what styles and looks we liked. This also helped us to plans the look we wanted throughout our whole project and it also helped us to know what was possible and what wasn’t in terms of the equipment and outfits we could create. So this lead us to try for a casual looking video and follow the “girl next door” look and use props around us rather than make it over complicated.

New Media – Social Networking

We also used Facebook to help plan our meets and discuss various plans for our project. It made it easier to make plans and meant that it was all one big message as apposed to lots of texting and other media’s.

New Media – Email

This is also how we communicated with our teacher to try and get an extension and to ask of any questions we had outside of school. So this helped with our planning part of our project.

First Email

Email Response

Camera’s

Obviously we needed some to film our footage so we used (camera name), something we chose to do what not just used on camera but two at one point so we could get the meet on action and cut down filming time for example, the beginning of the video when Emily walks out of the door and when she drives away. This worked well and we definitely saw the benefits of using this.

Meet on action

Editing

We made use of “Adobe Premiere” to edit our work, this meant that we could not only just simply cut out footage that we didn’t need and put together various scenes. But we also used tools on this programme that enabled us to turn the colour saturation to black and white, also creating reverse shots (smashing glass) and speeding up some shots to get the lip-syncing in time. We feel we used the programme to the best of our ability and this definitely helped us in the construction stages.

Smashing on the floor

Reverse back together

Old Media - Magazine

We also used media like magazines to assess where we would think our magazine article would fit. This also was used earlier on in the process to try and establish the look we wanted for our girl band.