Girls Aloud - Jump - final

Final Digipak

Front cover panel1

 

Back cover panel2

panel3 

inside Left panel4

inside middle panel5

inside right panel6

Final Magazine Advert

Evaluation Question 1 - conventions

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

Evaluation Question 2 - Combination

how effective is the combonation of your main product and ancilary texts?

Evaluation Question 3 - Feedback

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 4 - Research

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evauation stages?

Rough cut 6

We thought this was going to be the final piece... obviously not.
During feedback we got told that the alcohol (vodka) towards the end of the video was not a good example to set our target audience - the tweenager. So we are going to swap the alcohol for ribena juice as there is no label to say it is an alcoholic beverage.

Behind the scenes

Digipak Photos

These are some pictures that we are going to make into a small booklet to add in the digipak!

FH - creation of the digipak (under construction)

 This was our original idea for the front of the digipak, as soon as we made this (as a very,very rough cut!) not many people liked the idea and had a lot more advice as to what we could do with our idea, therefore we came up with linking sweets with the digipak -

back

front

This was an idea that people liked, but it was not enough. It was nothing that really related to Girls Aloud, the font was too 'swirly', Girls Aloud used blocked letters.

These below are our back cover with the song list - Feedback told us that, our first version on the right, was not really standing out, it was dull and although colorful it was not bright SO we took the original back cover, put up the contrast and erased the 'sweety' background layer off of the actual sweet which has the song titles on. We showed our final version again and got a lot more positive feedback. 

final

first version

This is our panel that folds inside - We thought that this would fit well with our 'sweety' theme as when open it will be on the outside with our front and back panels.

Front cover

This is our front cover so far which we are going to edit as Mr.Burrowes flagged up that we have too many unnecessary logos for Twitter, copyright etc. The DVD logo is the only logo that we need on the front out of the logos that we have and we are going to scrap completely the Twitter logo.

These are our inside panels! the background balloons have also been used on our magazine advert! This is the order of which our inside panels will go, Feedback from our media classmates has been very positive apart from one comment, baring in mind he is a 'metal-core' obsessed male student, that the panels are too bright and in your face, however personally (from a girls perspective,

) it is very 'plain' although personally the high contrast of the balloons give enough color and brightness giving anchorage that the five girls are bubbly, girly and fun!   

FH - magazine advert

This is the magazine advert that I put together from some 'expectations' from our target audience.

It was a risky way to put the advert together but what i did was show my video and then asked the audience what they would expect/like to see in a magazine advert that is going to promote our video!

The background is one picture of balloons copied six times and with that I have put up the contrast and lighting on to blur the image to make it less obvious.

This was the picture I used to crop the picture of the balloons. Below is the section i cropped, i also used this crop for the inside pictures of balloons in the digipak, I did not however ajust the lighting in the digipak photos, just the magazine advert ones purely so that you can not tell as much it is the same picture six times.

with the lighting also adjusted we have our final balloon effect for the magazine advert background!

The idea of having a single picture of each girl was a young girl (aged 15) came up with! she suggested this so that each girl could express their individual colours! I thought this was a brilliant idea. So this was how we made our background and came up with the layout of the pictures of the girls. Another piece of advice from another student (aged 17) was that we try as hard as we can to keep just the girls their colour, and have the background of them white - I took this on board and thought it worked very well aswell as fitting the codes and conventions of high lighting to give the 'glamorous' look as that is common in the pop genre.

Representation in music video

The way the artists in our music video are portrayed in the way they dress and how they behave is all influenced by the girl band genre and how easily the main target audience can relate to the characters. The audience most influenced by how the characters in the girl band dress and act are the young females aged around 10-13. We have aimed for a cute style of dress for the main female characters along with quirky style which is common representation in band music videos. The colourful onsie’s and multi-coloured tights reflect how we have appealed to our target audience and also followed in the girly style of outfits commonly found in this genre.

The band the Spice Girls were the first ever girl band where the characters had their own unique style and personality. In previous girl band history all the characters dressed the same and didn’t seem to have their own identity. Each one of our characters has their own unique identity. See post:http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2781413377890299659#editor/target=post;postID=4718168981448311473

This gives them I way to have their own unique presence within the music video as they keep to their own personality indicated by their specific colour and temperament.

Other aspects of the video also where included to keep that youthful, fun and sweet vibe. This included the use of glitter, bubbles, pink and white balloons, feathers and pillow fights. These are all signifiers aimed towards a younger audience appreciated by the young, girly and innocent individual. The bright lighting used to highlight the girl’s faces is also a common feature in pop videos to bring out the glamouress aspect to the video.  

The cheeky and fun shots of the girls smiling, winking and laughing towards the camera invites the audience in to almost have as much fun as they girls are having at that moment in time. We have used a lot of shots of the girls looking straight into the camera, which makes the audience feel more involved with the video and the characters portrayed. This is a common feature found in music videos.

BOTH - back in Girls Aloud's first days..

The album The Show is one of the first albums released by Girls Aloud in 2004. The digipak includes a simple cardboard sleeve with the CD placed inside. There are aspects from this digipak that I have included in my own digipak; this includes the front style, a group shot and the design of the sticker. This picture was obviously created cheaply and without much thought. The large white space above the heads of the girls makes the picture look very blank. The writing of the band name and the name of the album is also the same font which makes the cover look very amateur. The largest amount spent for this digipak was on the outfits for the band members, the customised directors’ chairs and lighting. The editing and design for the album was clearly not a focus point in terms of cost and effort and overall looks quite tacky and rushed. My digipak will include a much better layout and design.

Target audiences

The key primary audience for Girls Aloud is around the age of 13-22. This is a similar age group for other girl and boy band audiences. The artists tend to focus more of the teenage audience to sell their songs as well as other merchandise. Girls Aloud have branched out to selling merchandise such as cosmetics, their own false eyelash range and hair products. They have also done advertisements for KitKat and Nintendo. All of these products are all aimed at a younger female audience which condones the idea that they advertise themselves to a younger audience of around 15-24. Similar artists who share the same target audience include Katy Perry and Britney Spears who tend to adapt a sweet and cute looking image, but also wear provocative clothing to attract their male audience. Girls Aloud does have male audience that needs to be taken into consideration, however it is not in the majority percentage of audience.

Girls Aloud secondary audience is aimed at a tweenage audience of around 10-12 years old. This age group tends to look up to the artists and sees them as role models, wanting to be like them, act like them, dress like them etc. It is clear from tweenage girl magazines such as Bliss and Shout that artists such as The Saturdays, Rihanna, Katy Perry etc, are heavily advertised with posters being promoted and their everyday lives and celebrity lifestyle also being a focus point to the selling of the artists. Girl groups such as Girls Aloud have an added pressure of being role models to this particular audience as they can be seriously criticised if their image is seen as inappropriate to the younger audience.

FH - mag ad research

.....

FH - role of narrative

Recently we have decided to put narrative into our music video as before the only narrative was that the five girls were getting ready to go out, now we are making it a bit more 'umph' and story into the video. We have come up with the idea of a 'boyfriend' figure who apears to be texting each of the girls therefore technically cheating them all together... but he doesn't know that they are all aware of this and are out to humiliate him. They did not know he was going to be at the same party as them so to pay him back Kate who is our blue coded girl pushes a cake in his face!
This narrative is girly and quirky and has a imaginative feeling that the viewer will want to or can relate to.

FH - comany indent

This is our comany ident - we are going to put this at the beggining of each vodcast we have as music videos do not have this included.
We filmed this at the party scene and it was actually our actress' that came up with the idea of spelling 'Haye Fattie' with food and then taking food to mess it up! we then edited it so that it was really fast.

Audio gone wrong...

As you can see with this rough cut the audio is not good at all. We used this from a track converted off of Youtube, we soon learnt our lesson and changed to MP3!

Rough cut 5

FH - feedback for rough cut 5

I took the opportunity to show our most recent rough cut to a class of mixed gender, ethnicity and age groups ranging from ages 11-18 (aswell as my middle aged teacher). This was a day at school were we mix the year groups together so i took 20minuits to explain our intentions and make clear that any feedback, negative or possitive, would be valued and taken deeply into consideration. It was helpful that I got feedback to work from as this is the primary audince age for our music video.

6th form (16-18)
Girl - "The cuts were great that they went with the beat although sometimes it was too quick to see what was happening"
Girl - "I loved how the girls weren't size 0 and were all different shapes and sizes aswell as not all brunette, it was like a younger version of the spice girls"

Blue tie (15-16)
Boy - "The actress' were fit! especially the one with purple theme"

Purple tie (14-15)
Boy - "It was far too girly and there was no story to follow?" - I explained that we had not filmed the narrative yet and to my response this young man would like to view the final piece for final feedback!
Girl - "The balloon room scene was interesting and went with the theme but went on for too long."

Red tie (13-14)
Girl - "The lip sinking is not on time and it doesn't flow through the video it is only in the beggining bedroom scene, possibly include more of them singing"

Green tie (12-13)
Boy - "How did you get the sparkles on the girls?! it looked really good!" - To this I explained about final cut programme and the effect of dazzle"

Grey tie (11-12)
Girl - "It was amazing and the effects of the colours (colour layers) were helpful to distinguish which girl had which colour"


As well as the feedback I recieved on wednesday (two days ago) I had some feedback from my friend Polly, her response yesterday was "I don't like how you use the constant colour layer, it looks like you have used it too much through out the video." SO I took this in to account and had a play with the effects on final cut, I came across the effect 'Colour Corrector' which instead of changing the whole screen colour, picks out certain colours on screen and changes just that colour SO I did this and showed her again today, I didn't mension I had changed the effect but she noticed and she much prefered the new effect, I also prefer it and I am pleased that we have used more effects as this is new to both myself and Harriet and we're both happy that we have widened our knowledge to the previously unknown!

Rough cut 3

FH - QR code

On my travels, to Huddersfield on the train during my half term break, i was reading the 'Sun' and found this valentines day advert for Marks and Spencer.

The full advert, QR code bottom left.

The QR code

On this advert was a QR code in the shape of a heart! this has inspired the idea of doing a QR code in a different shape to the typical 'square box'. The colouring of this QR code also stood out to me as it was pink and white rather than black and white.

Smell test mini-vid

Smell test 
For our digipak we are going to make it smell of a sweet esence like Katy Perry

Vodcast on Filming the charity shop scene

Yesterday we filmed our charity shop scene, we filmed in Sue Rider, Ilkley. Unfortunately one of our girl band members did not turn up, however this did not stop us from getting useful footage of the other four girls. We plan to film Molly (the member who did not turn up) in the charity shop in the next couple of days therefore meaning we shall have footage of all the girls.


Untitled from HarrietHarding on Vimeo.

FH - club scene preparation

For our club scene we are going to film on Friday 3rd Feb at The Yard in Ilkley, this is a bar that i work in and i have asked my manager if we are aloud to film and he said yes as it will promote our bar.

The only probem we may have is that we need to announce on a microphone that a camera will be filming so anyone that does not want to be involved will need to move outside while we film, however we do not want people to act different due to a camera been around them e.g. being silly in front of the camera, so this may be complicated. This is an example picture i found on google images to explain what i mean...
The setting is not an actual club but it has got a club atmosphere due to the DJ (Luke Tibble) and the lights look like what would be in  club as they are blue, red and green. If the bar is not busy we could get some really good shots that show the bar staff doing tricks with bottles and cocktails etc.

FH - Editing photos

We have been having some problems with getting used to Photoshop Elements 4.0 which is what we are editing our digipak pictures, we are getting used to it now though and the pictures are coming on very nicely as we are using phtographic effects/layer style which is putting a tinted colour over the picture of each girl so that we can represent their different personalities.

So far we have almost finished our front cover for the digipak and have done a warhole effect with a twist! Basically the digipak cover is split into 9 boxes, 5 of which have pictures of each individual girl, each with their own individual colour, and in the remaining 4 boxes we will have the band name, 'Girls Aloud', and pictures of sweets.

We have an idea for our magazine add (which shall be finished by the end of this week!) we used our original idea for our digipak as it was too rectangular but was the inspiration to our magazine add that we had no idea how to present so it worked out very well! we recycled our original idea.

Vodcast - Digipaks

Behind the scenes - sleepover and balloon scene

On January the 8^th of January we filmed the balloon and sleepover scene, the first two scenes to our music video. We started filming at 4PM and finished around 7:30PM.

Me, Faye and the girls involved in the music video helped blow up the 200 balloons for the balloon scene before we started to prepare anything else, thankfully we had an electric pump and didn’t have to use the whole 200 balloons as the room we filmed in was relatively small. It took a while and a lot of energy, but we filmed the room with white and pink balloons in no time. 

The filming with the balloons went really well and looked very impressive on camera. We actually used a small bathroom and covered the toilet and sink completely with balloons so you could never tell the difference. The girls falling into the balloons looked particularly impressive on film and the pink helium balloons also added an extra touch.  

Next scene was the sleepover scene where we used 200 feathers to create a pillow fight with pillows filled with lots of feathers. Filming this scene was a lot easier than the balloon scene as positioning and framing did not have to be as immaculate. I tried to include as much shot variation as possible in this particular scene.

I feel using a slow motion of certain shots will also look very effective. The feathers will look particularly good in slow motion. To get the bright light effect that most pop music videos use, Faye and I used desk lamps to brighten the girl’s faces, to give that flawless glow.

Overall filming on the two scenes was a success, it took a while and we had a lot of cleaning up to do afterwards, but was good fun and looks like good footage. We took photographs of filming throughout, and also took pictures of the girls for our digipak.

Rough cut 2

BOTH - Costume ideas

Ella – Girly

Kate – fashion rock

Lily – country

Luisa – preppy, sexy

Molly – 50s style