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

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For this project we created the new pop girl band-All That Glitter. There new album 'All that glitters in not gold' features the new single 'No Sleep Tonight'. For the video we chose to parody different genres such as country, boy-band, rock and grunge. It is set in the style of someone flicking through the TV channels before the TV breaks. We included different intertextual references such as the MTV sign and signature boy-band dance routine in order to appeal to a new fan base. Furthermore we finished the video we an adapted test screen showing All That Glitters.

Music Video

In our music video we were able to incorporate traditional and conventional forms as well as being able to challenge them particularly in relation to gender roles and women's involvement in satirical music videos.

Parody Videos
The key idea of parody videos are to entertain the audience either through exaggerated charceterisation or intertextual references. Previously parody videos such as The Wanted's 'Walks Like Rihanna' contains many different intertextual references in order to appeal to their audience. This is done as fans will spot references to other videos so will continue to watch the video to spot this again. These references are key to a successful parody video as it keeps the audience engaged. We wanted to include this aspect in our video. As we were parodying genres we decided to include references to certain bands, cultures and characterisations.

N SYNC-BYE BYE BYE

THE WANTED'S PARODY

Genre
We decided that we wanted to be a conventional girl band but with a rock feel to give us our own individual style/sound in the industry. The industry is filled with traditional girl bands yet we wanted the rock feel to make us stand out. From girl-band inspiration we looked at Little Mix and The Saturdays. They were our main influences when it came to personality, styling and music choices. However, we also looked at rock groups such as 'The Pretty Reckless'. The styling for this band was very dark so created binary opposites from our girl-band research. We used 'The Pretty Reckless' as an influence as we wanted a girl lead grunge band to tie in with our concepts of feminism. Whilst the styling of this band were quite dramatic compare to girl bands such as Little Mix they are still quite minimalistic. Although we were parodying grunge we didn't want to be too over the top as we thought it would ruin the comedic effect so focused our grunge research on the simpler grunge band. Furthermore the sets for the Pretty Reckless videos were minimalistic yet effective. We would be able to emulate similar settings with our limited space and budget whilst still keeping a grungey edge.We incorporated the mannerisms, positioning of girl-bands but used aspects from the rock genre when it came to choosing a song and creating the band's signature styling.

In our media project styling was a very important part as it would help to define our target audience. We had previously looked at the current female performers their costumes and how they appealed to their target audiences. We found that nowadays artists have become more provocative and there are fewer female artists appealing to the 'tween' audiences. Miley Cyrus is a common example that our discussions would come back to. She was previously a classic Disney star that would mainly target 6-13 year olds yet her recent escapades mean that she would now be classed as inappropriate for the younger demographics. Catherine Bennett is a new singer aimed solely at children. After analysing both types of artists and videos we decided that we didn't want to be as extreme as Miley Cyrus as that would make our key demographic very niche, however we didn't want to be as childish as Catherine Bennett as we felt it would deter older audiences. We decided to use conventions from both artists, as well as similar performances, and combine them to make a band that was suitable for 'tweens' as well as appealing to 18-25 year olds.
As far as the styling of our band we needed costumes that would suggest we were for an older market yet not sexualising our image like many of the current girl bands in the charts. We decided from our song that band's music genre is pop with a touch of rock- a genre not really feature in the charts. This new genre meant that we needed to  create a whole new look.


Semiotic analysis

From our research we found that the top ten features of a effective music video are:

1. Instant impact- within a few seconds the TV guide appears already making the audience question what type of music video it is
2. Non-Linear editing- We cut the the music throughout. We use discontinuous editing especially at the end of the video to show the TV breaking.
3. A strong sense of development- The scene changes from just a girl band on TV to all the different genres making up the video and the girl-band eventually breaking the TV screen.  
4. Strong Sense of artist development- As the new genres are introduced the video keeps going back to ATG showing that they are the focus. Clear unity from the costume/styling along with the signature glitter
5. An engaging performance- Dynamic and enthusiastic performances in all genres throughout the video
6. Binary opposites- The genres, outfits, backdrops, lighting and camera movements are all extremes
7. Visually striking- The different sets connoting different genres
8. Provoke a reaction- The desire to watch it again to see the different genres
9. Different layers of meaning- how comical women are rare in the music industry and how this type of video is rarely made by women
10. References to pop culture-the genres satire all the different genres appealing to a wide group of people.

Our video is an amplification (Goodwin) as we create a new meaning to the song. . Instead of it being about boys wanting to get with girls we changed it to me how the fans will constantly be thing about the 'brand new sassy girl-band' and they will get 'no sleep tonight' as they will always be thinking about us.

Furthermore this is also disjuncture with our video. Whilst the video suggest we are talking to/about boys there are actually no boys at all in the video creating a contradiction between the lyrics and the image.

Our video heavily focuses around postmodernism theories as we take normal representation to parody it. We have deliberately taken texts to expose their nature as constructed texts and make no attempts to pretend that they are 'realistic'. We used post modern theories to relate our video to intertextual references to other music or media/culture that the audience will recognise.

We used Carol Vernallis theory of continuity editing to draw attention to the screen and what is happening. We used broken edits to draw in the viewers attention so that they would become more focused on the band. Furthermore we also used her theory of jump cuts. We used jump cuts continuously throughout the video to create a dynamic a d fast changing video to keep the audience entertained. We cut the video to the beat to reflect the experimental properties of sound.

Album cover

When we were planning our album cover we looked at different artists and the conventions of a typical album cover.
For the album cover we chose to use and develop the conventions of a typical digipack. By going against traditions with this media text it would undermine the product we were trying to sell as it wouldn't be able to full reach our desired target audience. Album covers can full into different categories across the music industry. Our first research task focused around girl-band album covers as they directly related to us.
During our research we noticed that most girl band covers have:

• Then as the central image- either full length or extreme close up 
• Their signature colour scheme
• The bands name central in their specific type face
• The name above the image of the girls
• The album name below the artist name
• The band name was often the biggest focus with album much smaller
• The girls in similar outfits to show unity

GIRL-BAND ALBUM RESEARCH MOOD BOARD. GIRLS GROUPED TOGETHER WITH THEIR BAND NAME ABOVE THEM.

Whilst our album cover was going to include many of the traditional girl-band digipack conventions we also wanted to stand out to make ours more unique. We looked into the different types of covers. As this was going to be our debut single we decided that we should have a picture of us inside of a cartoon or the bands symbol to make us easily recognisable by the fans.
One layout that we liked the most were the covers with emphasis on name and picture. We thought this was be a good basic layout for our album as it would make us stand out from the other girl-bands as well as clearly defining us as a band.

ARTIST+PICTURE. A SIMPLE DESIGN MAKING THE ARTISTS CLEARLY RECOGNISABLE TO THEIR PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND TERTIARY FAN-BASES.

From our research we found that not many girl-bands had previously done this design this meant our concept was original and would standout in the shops.
One group we noticed often followed this design was The Saturdays. The Saturdays have previously been the focus of our research when defining our band as they follow similar music and styling choices as us. We analysed their previously album cover to look at conventions and how we could use this to develop our idea.

ANALYSE OF ALBUM COVER

DEVELOPING CONVENTIONS 

We needed our album to show a strong and powerful band. We used to the album to create synergy to link all three of our media texts together. We used the same type-face throughout and colour scheme. We found that sticking to a basic colour or texture, glitter for ours, was very effective when creating a band. We got this idea from artist Justin Bieber- although he isn't relatable to our brand through the continuos use of purple in all aspects of his advertising campaign he has created a reliable image that is easily recognisable and can be related back to him.

As for the layout of album cover we used the concept of focus of artist and name. Whilst this layout has been done before it means it is recognisable by the public making them more incline to look at the album. We developed the convention of the 'natural' shoot to incorporate our signature glitter to create a strong brand.  

Main inspiration for the album

WEBSITE 

With the website we stuck to the traditional conventions in order to promote fan purchasing. Most successful websites include:

• Artist name- the main focus 
• Picture of the band/artist on the homepage
• Tour advertisements
• Tour dates
• Album purchases
• Store
• Links to their Youtube/Vevo page
• News about the band
• Biography's about the artist
• Gallery
• Links to facebook, twitter, Instagram, Pintrest ect...=INTERACTIVITY
• QR codes to scan
• The ability to message/get in contact with the band

We included all these factors in ours. We used the same font type as used in the album cover to create synergy and allow the brand to be easily recognised.

Throughout the website we use interactive marketing techniques to reach the our target market on a variety of different media platforms