Friday 26 March 2010

This is our music video, however we could only add the video by youtube at the moment who have removed the music for copyright reasons so we are trying to find ways to upload it with the music.

Thursday 25 March 2010

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29479683/Tainted-Reality

Tainted Reality

Wednesday 24 March 2010

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/

Saturday 20 March 2010

We have now officialy finished our music video and very pleased with the final result. We feel that the storyline is understandable and that you get a real sense of what sort of band we intended them to be associated and interpreted with. We have panning shots, closes up and mid shots which help to establish the band and alternate between each shot. I feel we have achieved the look we were going for which was a more of an 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.

Monday 1 March 2010

Music Video Crit .

After finishing the first lot of editing for our music video we took part in a crit which would create the chance to improve out music video and even refim if we were in dire need to. We recieved some positive feedback and was given several suggestions on how we could improve our music video........

*Improve on the narrative. for example have more of a storyline and why the band decided to do what theyre were doing.

* Close up shots.

*Shots from a wider varietty of angles.

Friday 12 February 2010

Now we have finished filming and editing we will take part in a crit to see what we can do to improve our Music Video, so far from the feedback we have already recieved we need to work on close up shots and the narrative, so we are planning to reshoot in a weeks time a few more shots to include.

New imagaes of the Girl band ........ Tainted Reality











Tuesday 9 February 2010

Monday 18 January 2010

Cd analysis

From the Blondie Cd cover it created the impression of portaying a really bold statement . The contrast between the white and black works well and highlights the costumes completing the layout and design of the CD cover. Black and white also represent the highest level of contrast. and compliment each other because the human eye is more sensitive to those two colours. When creating our Cd cover we intend to have really bold colours that work well together to explore a more better impact when being viewed by its audience. The Saturdays CD cover removes all colour away from imagery except from the colours within the dresses which is significant to image of the band because they all have their own individual colour. The only remaining colour within the image seems to be edited by exploring the brightness and contrast to alluminate the colour more and to highlight the contrast between the lack of colour and the bold burst of colour.
The Sugababes Cd cover is is plain compared to the others and focuses mainly on the black and darkness within the imagery. The band are positioned almost symetrically and angled which is something i would like to try with my Cd cover, the simplicity and symetrical approach seems to work well by highlighting the band as being equal.




Saturday 16 January 2010

Spice Girls Poster analysis


I came across this poster of the Spice Girls, I decided to look into because it seemed to almost juxtapose what we wanted within our poster to sell Tainted Reality. Although it is bold and very observant when becoming eye catching it comes across to hectic and crowded with all of the writing almost as if it has tried to squeeze into one poster. The bold colours stand out so well because the black and pink contrast well against each other creating a bold and dramatic outlook of the Girl Band symbolising that they want to gain they're audience's attention. The matching outfits symbolise a closeness within the band and creates the stereotypical approach of what most Girl bands conform with, they're styles connect with each other and sometimes involves certain characteristics and personal things to interact with they're personalities. The constant use of black within the image seems to create the symbolic idea of creating a bold statement and normally associated with rock and roll introducing the simplistic leather black outfits they are wearing.


Blondie Poster analysis

Because we decided to use the song "One way or another" by the female artist Blondie or also known as DebbieHarry, I decided to look into posters focusing on her because i wanted to see the different aspect and styles used. The colours are very bold and the black introduces and bold punky and rock style where as the yellow is symbolistic to "Blondie", The bright yellow clashes with the the blue and dark makeup but still creates a noticable and intruiging response when looking at the poster. The bold title contrast with white and black similar to how I want our poster to be like, I personally feel the contrast between white and black are two strong colours to focus on, highlighting certain aspects and lighting within the imagery.

Friday 15 January 2010

The Saturdays Poster analysis

I decided to look into this poster by the Saturdays because it seemed a modern approach to todays society and younger audience. The symbolistic approach of having matching outfits but with different styles to introduce individuality within the group







Wednesday 13 January 2010

Change !

Basically 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.

Friday 8 January 2010