Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real

media products?

Our media product does use, develop and challenge forms of conventions of real media products.

Firstly for our music video, we watched loads of other popular girly music videos to give us an idea of

how to film it. As we started from scratch we needed to know exactly how a girly music video

should be filmed, what we should aim for it to look like and what we could include in it to make sure

the audience know what it's supposed to recreate. We looked at music videos from other girl bands

like girls aloud, pussycat dolls and the Saturdays which gave us inspiration. When we looked at a

Saturdays video "Up" it showed the fun, bouncy and girly images we wanted to portray, however

didn't have a story line; there were others that didn't show the stereotypical girl band image in

certain videos like "Don't cha" by the pussycat dolls. This video shows femininity but doesn't show

girly-ness or the typical girl band conventions and so from this we decided to create a narrative for

our music video. The song that we chose called pull shapes sounded fun, girly, 50's like; therefore

this is what we wanted to show. The aim for us was for the visuals and music to match, we planned

to show the girly-ness by making everyone in the band dress up with their hair and makeup done

and in 50's clothing. For example, tight skirts, dresses, loose tops, long hair, curly or straight etc;

everything was planned to make it look as "retro" as possible to fit the sound of the song. Our song

was medium/fast paced, hence wasn't a sad song, it was fun, bubbly, about dancing and having a

good time. This is what we wanted to portray in our music video, we did this by creating a party

scene to show the dancing and having fun part from the song which matches well with the visuals

that we created; however we develop and challenge our visuals as we put a creative twist on it. The

lyrics go well with the dancing as the song is all about dancing and having a good time, but with that

we add a story where there is a girl who likes a boy who doesn't seem interested, they get into an

argument, then the good guy who likes the girl comforts her, they then dance together and have a

good time. This develops forms of conventions of real media products as we changed our initial

ideas of a typical girly music video and created a more serious narrative to appeal to our target

audiences. We also challenged forms of conventions of real media products as it is normally the girl

who likes a boy but the boy is with another girl, however we wanted to change it and subvert the

stereotype and show that the girl is in control rather than the boy always getting the girls; this

shows that the girl is a strong female character that younger girls could look up to. Our visuals

doesn't completely match the lyrics throughout as there is a serious story line and the entire song is

about dancing and having a good time. However this makes it more appealing as the audience have

more to watch rather than just a party scene and people dancing. We managed to create a story

that portrays the girl as in control with a conflict scene and the visuals matching up to the song in

the end when she dances with the good guy; this is when the visuals and lyrics match up. The band

performance goes well with the video as the band members are dressed in 50's clothing and are

doing 50's dance moves to the song, it shows femininity, independence and everyone having a good

time; the band performance and music match up. We didn’t have modern girly band look and we

did not want to have the band featured as much as the story, which goes along with some indie

artists as it is random and not everything makes sense because it doesn't need to, but then the style

isn’t seen much with the 50's hair and makeup, its sticking to the 50’s style of the song and the

atmosphere created which made it look 50's like; which was an instant idea that we came up with.

So therefore our final media product develops and also challenges real media products.

The second product is the advert, the first draft was generally just a hand drawn

copy not of any standard that we could have used we just wanted a basic concept of

what we wanted to create. It was just a drawing of the 3 band members on stage

with spotlights and a microphone; we also drew the characters look how they would

in the video.

The second was a closer image to what we wanted to create, but compared to other

adverts. Other adverts looked a lot more professional, more attractive, appealing

and eye catching to look at. Our pictures were random which looked a little odd

as it didn't show us a group, it showed us individually. We wanted our

personalities to be shown individually to show that we are all different yet have

the same common interests such as singing, partying etc. We felt that this advert

didn't capture those individual personalities and instead made us look separate. It

ended up looking nothing of what we’re trying to create, we wanted it took similar

to other adverts that are trying to advertise celebrities or bands, this didn't look

the part. Although this created a way of showing against conventions like indie.

For example when you see bands such as mumford and sons, it looked random

and different to normal adverts and at first this is what we wanted it to follow on the lines of, the

image we were trying to create as a band, which meant using examples from bands such as Spice

Girls and All Saints as a way of developing media products for our own use. However didnt look how

we wanted it to look so changes needed to be made.

We found a useful software called picmonkey, and this enabled us to create a

more suitable image/advert to what we wanted to create. This image to the

right is our third draft, it was our final but we felt that it was missing

something and needed something. However, this looked a lot better, it

looked more professional and showed us a group and looked like an advert

should. It advertised us well with our band name, our tour dates of when

and where the band will be touring and ratings from magazines which we put on using picmonkey.

We used a website called photo bucket to give us the mosaic look which we felt looked

good. The picture of the band made us look together and band-like, it showed our

personalities by the way we were dressed rather than showing individual pictures of us.

We also had a photo shoot to get pictures which made it realistic as that's the way

bands and celebrities get their pictures to go on their adverts and CD's.

This was one example of what we wanted to create as a media product by having all

the girls in there, it was created out of pictures of themselves posing; which is what we

ended up doing. We wanted a lot of their own personalities to show through as well as

the groups image.

This is our final advert which we are extremely happy about, it shows us together

as a group with our band image big and bold which is easy to see with our song

written under it to advertise the name of the song. It also shows where we will be

performing and when. The creative flare to our advert was our autographs that

was placed where we are standing which we thought brought the advert together

ad made it look different and unique from others. The picture of the band

members together show the love and friendship within the group which creates a good group image,

the image also shows our personalities by our clothing and facial expressions in the photo. We felt

that this looked a lot more simple and looked better that way, "Less is More". There was less

information which was good as it wasn't very visible in the other adverts and looked much more

professional and better looking without. We felt that we developed media conventions as we kept

adding and developing to make it look different to other adverts by advertising ourselves more than

the tours which we noticed were on other band adverts like The Muse for example. We also

challenged the conventions of real media texts by adding our own creativity to it by putting our

autographs which we hadn't seen in other adverts; we felt that this created a girlier image and made

the audience feel closer to the band.

The third and final product is our flat pack plan, we mind mapped ideas of what we wanted our CD

cover to look like. We decided to put the main singer on the front of the cover with the band name

logo at the front which is split in the middle to open to the next flap, which is of the next band

member, that flap opens up, the next flap is of the third band member which opens down to reveal

the CD, all the inside flaps has a picture of a party. We physically made the CD cover to see what it

would look like, we liked the idea and made the second draft however there were improvements to

be made as the pictures didn't line up and it wasn't cut straight, however these were minor changes

that needed to be made.

The first picture shows the inside of the CD cover, we put pictures of party scenes on the inside to

capture the fun, partying image we wanted to create. The second picture is the outside of the CD

cover which shows the group members, we felt that this was different to other bands as they have a

simple open and close CD cover and don't capture each member of the bands' personalities which

we felt that our CD cover did.

This was our final digipak, a lot was changed and this was due to the fact that our advert changed as

we wanted the advert and CD cover to match each other. We decided to keep it simple by having

the CD cover open one to the left and one to the right to reveal the CD cover. We had the picture of

the group on the front with the group name on the front which opens to reveal one of the band

members, the next flat opens to reveal the other band member and the CD and other the CD is the

main singer of the band. The back of the CD is a picture of balloons with the names of the

soundtracks which showed the "party" of the CD cover as the band is supposed to be all about

having fun dancing and partying. We used, developed and challenged forms and conventions of real

media products as we used ideas from other bands' CD covers. We challenged it to change the way

the way it looked to make it more creative, girly and matching to our advert which made it look like

a package. All the images of the band and band members give the audience/buyer more of an idea

and connection to the band by knowing what each of the band members were like and the

atmosphere we were trying to create. So from what we have created, we wanted to develop what

we had researched for our products and also challenged them, by making it seem our own, we

wanted to be different from what we had seen from other bands, this is reflected in the products.

Outside of CD Cover:

Inside of CD Cover: