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

As part of Group 3, along with Olivia Downes and Alicia Powell, I created the artist and brand for 'All That Glitters' which includes the band's official website page, the cover of the album 'Good as Gold', and the debut music video 'No Sleep Tonight'.

Our website is very conventional of pop girl band websites, as has a clear clean cut look and feel to it, with many photos of the girls themselves to create strong band identity. A consistent logo, font and colour scheme is used throughout, and also links with the other media texts created. The album used similar colours and fonts, and featured many different images of the girls from three different shoots with a variety of different costume and make up looks. Finally our debut music video for the single 'No Sleep Tonight' centered around a broken TV. It was a concept music video, created from five different performance shoots. We opened with the band in their true pop identity, dressed in gold, silver and black outfits with glitter make up on their faces, the 'TV' then switches channels to 'MTV Folk' where we see the same band dressed up as country artists and playing instruments typically associated with country artists. This happens a further three more times introducing a rock band in a dark grungy setting, a rap group and a boy band (played by the same three girls).

We were aiming to parody these genres, satirising and producing a comedic music video, which is something not usually associated with females in the music industry. We wanted our girls to be perceived as fun, relatable girls, who any member of our audience could be friends with, and so we decided that creating a comedic and entertaining debut video would create a band with a unique selling point. We also noticed that recently there has been far more 'funny females' gaining popularity through sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Instagram, for example Cara Delevigne and Jennifer Lawrence.

We hence created a mainstream artist and brand, and so drew upon forms and conventions already recognisable for female mainstream pop artists, however we challenged these in relating to gender roles, and female roles in comedy. We thought there was a gap in the market for a rock-pop style girl group, and so this would be our USP in the industry. The lyrics of our chosen song reflected teenage culture, as it was about boys and pursuing relationships, hence would definitely appeal to our teenage female audiences. Due to the flirty nature of our song and the cheekiness in delivering the lines, we aimed to also appeal to teenage males.

Aiming to target teenage girls, we researched groups such as The Saturdays, Stooshe and Little Mix. These groups all make it into the mainstream, and play on their relatability as down-to-earth girls, the close relationship between them, and their attractiveness, also shown within their fashionable attire.

As we were showing multiple genres across our video, we had to research and reference videos from all five of our genres. Prior to filming, we created a video detailing the genre conventions and video references we wanted to incorporate.

GENRE CONVENTIONS:

Aly & AJ- Potential Break-Up Song

Acting/lipsynching style and movements
Attitude
Costume style
Lighting
Use of plain and simple sets with just the girls and their instruments and microphones