Audience Feedback

As you can see from the audience feedback that the people that viewed and evaluated our music video were very impressed. The feedback that we gathered was that the audience thought that we stuck to the conventions of girlbands. We found that what we always intended to achieve from the music video we did. We found that the standard that we achieved with the music video was to a professional standard and we are very impressed with the feedback we achieved and we are very glad that people think that all the hard work we put into our music video paid off with the posotive comments.

Website Evaluation

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

The media cover that i created for one of my ancillery tasks develops and we have tried to conform to the conventions of real media products. This is because we created a girl band in which we wanted to follow the conventions that other girlbands follow, this was so that our band would be professional and look as if it was an already famous band.

We tried to stick to similar fonts that other girl bands used, this was because then it would look professional. Also we researched first into other bands and artists magazine covers. We used a big central picture in the middle of the website, this was so that it would follow the conventions of other girl bands websites.This image that we used was taken on a professional camera, this was so that it was more like a professional girl bands website.

We have put our name in bold writing across the top, this is so that it is one of the main focuses of the website. I have put it in pink femanine writing this is so that it looks more like a professional girl bands website.

I have stuck to the typical conventions that other girl bands have, this is by putting links to social networking sites such as Myspace, Twitter and Facebook along the top. Also there are other links along the top such as About us, About The Band and Tour Dates. This is so that the public will be able to get to know the band and know more about us and feel as though we are a real band and not just made up.

Also i believe that the website serves the purpose that it was made for, this was to promote the single release and promote the video. The paragraph that we have written at the bottom on the home page does this, and the link to the video for beautiful dirty rich also promotes the music video.

How effective is the combination of the main product with the ancillery tasks?

Although we used a different genre for the magazine cover as we have for the music video i think that this works well to compliment the music video. I feel as thought the magazine cover and the finished website make the band seem more realistic and as if the member are real famous people as apposed to just a fake band. I believe that it adds the effect of realism to the band. I believe that the website makes it so that the audience get to know more about the band

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this ancillery task we did not gather specific audience feedback in the form of writing, this is because we felt as if a conversation style would be more appropriate. Throughout the feedback that we gathered we found that the audience thought that the website served its purpose and made us seem like a real band. They said that the website looked very girly and we achieved what we wanted to and stuck to the conventions that we said we were going to in the research and planning. The only negative comments that we got was that they said it would have been better if we had included more images, however we did not do this on purpose as we did not want to overload the web page and thought that it looked better and more realistic as plain and simple.

How did you use meida technologies in the constructions, research and evaluation stages?

For the actual creation of the website i used iWeb this was because we tried to use sites such as Piczo, however we found that this did not work well for us. Therefore we found that there were more tools on iWeb and we would be able to create the website to the best of our potential and make it look exactly as we hoped through this software. In the research stages we decided that we would use safari on the apple mac.

Finished Website

Research Into Website

For our last ancillery task we decided that we were going to make a website, this was because i have done a2 ICT and we feel as though i have the skills to make the website to the best of my ability.

Before i began making the website we had to research into other websites of other girl bands to see what the conventions are and to see what skills i needed to use to make the website look professional and as if it was the website of a famous girl band.

I researched into the Pussycat Dolls website this was because throughout our music project we have tried to emulate them a lot.

As you can see from the print screen above the main image on the website is of one of the main members of the Pussycat Dolls. We are going to try and emulate this by using an image of us as the main focus of our website.

From this image you can see that the name of the band is also a main feature of the website. This is one of the main features on the home page. I feel as though this will be a very good thing to emulate so that the viewers of our website will know what the name of our band is from the very first glance at the home page.

I also researched into the website of Girlicious this was because we have also emulated some of the features of the music video from the Girlicious videos, some of these being the use of a bar in the video, and also the basic walk forward in formation.

From this image you can see that the same conventions are used in the Girlicious website also, the features of the image being the main focus of the website and also the name of the band being in bold and big writing i what we are going to try and emulate.

Both of the websites that i researched these being The Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious have both used colours that stand out and do not clash, this then makes the website look professional. Also we are going to use more girly colours so that it looks like a girls website however we are still going to make it look professional.

Also i researched into Lady Gagas website this was because this is the artist that we are trying to emulate as it is Lady Gagas song that we are using. Lady Gagas website website was a massive contrast to the other websites that i researched. This was because Lady Gaga used a lot of dark colours and based her website around the colour black. This was a lot different to that of the Saturdays which used a light blue background and a lot of girly colours that made it look a lot more femanine. Although we were trying to emulate Lady Gaga we decided that our website would be a lot better if we tryed to make it look more girly as were were not a single artist, we were a girlband. So we decided that using the colour pink would make our website look more girly and girl band -ish. However because we were emulating Lady Gaga we decided that we were going to use a black background to make it so that we were sticking to the conventions of Lady Gaga.

Evaluation For The Music Video


After finishing the project of the music video. I feel as though my involvement and performance in all aspects of the making, editing and researching into what we were going to do, i have done to the best of my ability. I feel that although me personally was only involved in the acting of the video for the first minute, i feel as though i fulfilled my skills to the best of my ability by doing the majority of the recording after that. Also i feel as though as a group we worked together really well when it came to the mis en scene and the costume design, we all worked together to make the scenery, which included painting the flat boards that we were going to use as the background.

I feel that in our media product we really tried and succeeded in following the conventions of the other music videos that we had researched from other girlbands. I feel that we really adapted our styles of dancing and the way we dressed and looked to the style of a real girlband. We wanted to go for the style of real pop stars, we tried to achieve this in the way that we dressed, this was through the way in which we all wore black at one time, so that we all matched and none of us clashed with each other. Also then we all decided that we were going to wear pink, this was good because then all of us were matching and then the whole picture was bright and it looked ery professional and as though we were a real girlband. Also we tried to achieve the "popstar" "famous" look by the hairstyles that we chose, we researched into other girlbands and found that they tended to have long hair which was then either curly striaght or wavy, no two girl members of the band ever had the same hairstyle although they were all always very different they always matched.

Therefore we emulated this and made it so that all of our hair matched but none of it was the same so that we would achieve the proffesional popstar look.

I feel as though in the actual recording of the video and the contents that was involved in it was also very professional and we worked well with the equiptment we had and produced some really good footage that is of the standard that we wanted.

Also the way that we have started the video with the walk forward in synchronization , this is very typical in a girlband and this makes it look very professional and well stuck to the conventions. Also we ended themusic video with a walk backwards away from the camera, i feel as though this was a very well thought and clever way to end the video, we thought of doing it as a walk away from teh camera because at the very start the opening clip was a walk towards the camera therefore this was the opposite and worked very well in the way that it was the opposite and a way of ending and closing the music video.

We decided that titeling was a very good way that we could make our video look more professional, therefore at the end of the video we decided to close the video with a black screen and a font that came up which is of the style that we feel is very Lady Gaga -ish. We thought that it was a nice way to end the music video as it showed the name of the song title we had used and also came up with all of our groups names, this then showed the viewers who created and took part in our video and who did all of the making and producing of the music video.

We asked people to view and give feedback about our music video. All of the feedback that we recieved was all posotive. We made sure that the people that we asked to evaluate our music video was all in the age range of our target audience this then made all of the feedback that we recieved more relevant and appropriate so that the feedback would be necessary for us to improve or to see if we met all of the requirements that we wanted to. Also we tought that it would be a good idea to show some people of an older audience, this was because then we would be able to see if it appealed to those of an older audience although it was aimed at the younger generation. We found that a lot of the older audience did like the video and thought that it was very well edited and put together really well. All of the feedback showed that everybody thougt that the music video was very professional.

I think that we chose 2 very good ancillery tasks that really matched the music video very well. I think that making the magazine cover and the website it really made the band seem real, i think the ancillery tasks really complimented the music video very well. This was because they were a good combination and it makes you knoew more about us as individuals and more about the band than you do from just watching the music video. The internet was the main media technology that i used in the creating of the music video, this was because sites such as YouTube came in very useful when i was researching into the concpet of girlbands and the main conventions of girlbands and music videos at the very start of the project. Also youtube enabled me to use the embed code so that i could embedd the videos onto my blog as proof and evidence, also then this shows what videos i have used as research in my project.

For the actual creation of the footage we used the handy cam from school however we found that the footage was not very clear and of the quality that we would like it to be therefore we decided that it would be best if we used Kirstys 12 mega pixel camera this we feel made our video look a lot more proffesional and of a way better standard than if we would have continued to use the handycam camera from school.

We then uploaded the footage onto iMovie on the Apple Macs at school. We found that this was the best software to use to enable us to fulfill the editing to the best of our potential, this was because it enabled us to crop the clips that we wanted to and also we could change the colours of each clip and also the duration, reverse the slips, speed and lighting on the clips that we felt necessary to do so.

As part of the research and planning for the project we created story boards, this came in useful as then we knew exactly what we wanted to do and what we were going to achieve in eaach recording session and in each location.

I believe that my indiviidual input into the media project was a necessity this was because i was the main recorder for the group as well as participating in some of the acting and also a lot of the editing. However i believe that all members of the group were very helpful and we all worked very well together and made each other succeed in what we wanted to achieve, which was a successfull proffesional music vdeo and very well made and thought out ancillery tasks.

The only weakness i feel that there was in the creating of the media project was the fact that all of the actors and performers for the video were not all available at the same times this made it very hard when it came to the recording of the footage. This is why we started with 4 actresses and ended up with 2 however i feel that we made this work to the best of our ability and we really made it look professional despite loosing 2 of the actresses.

I believe that we put a great deal of effort into the whole production and every aspect of the music project, this is because as a group our project took a lot of thinking out and planning, this was because we had outfits to organise and get together, this was because they had to all match but all be different at the same time but of the same colour at all times. Also there was the organising of times and booking of the rooms and locations that we needed to use. We also decided that we were going to hire a fog machine this was so that the video looked more professional and of a higher standard so that we could get the best marks that we possibly could from this project.

I believe that there are not many criticisms that i feel could of been improved with our music project this is because in the end the finished product is exactly what we could of hoped for it to be. The only thing that i believe could have made the time keeping and the time scaled in which we completed the recording of the footage would have been to ensure that the camera always had batteries and that they were always fully charged so that we did not have to delay on the recording because of this set back.

Overall i believe that the product that we achieved in the end was very well made and was of a very high standard i believe that we put 100% into every aspect of the research and planning, recording and the editing of the project. I think that what we have produced overall is a very high standard and very good quality.

Completed Music Video

Above is our completed music video.

Finished Magazine Cover And Evaluation

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

Our finished magazine cover both challenges and conforms to the conventions. This is because as our music video conformed to the conventions of girl bands so well we decided that it would be a good idea to challenge the conventions in our magazine cover. We researched into magazine covers that girl bands featured on and we found that it was mainly lads magazines such as FHM, we decided that this was not the look that we wanted to go for therefore we decided that we were going to conform to the conventions of rap magazines. Throughout the research that i did i found that most girl bands feature in teen, glamour or lads magazines. Therefore we then researched the conventions of rap magazines we decided that we were going to conform to these as this would then be something different to what we did in the actual music video. We stuck to the conventions throughout the layout and the fonts and colours used. I believe that we did this really well and achieved what we wanted from this.

How effective is the combination of your music video and your ancillery tasks?

The combination of the magazine cover adds effect to the music video this is because it adds the effect of realism to the girl band. It makes the band seem more real and as if it is an already famous girl band. The magazine cover brings the band and the members of the band to life. This is because with more tasks done about the band it makes us seem a lot realer and more famous. Although we decided to conform to a rap magazine instead of the normal teen pop and lads magazine covers. I believe that the magazine cover that we have created compliments the music video and achieves what we wanted which was to advertise the band and to promote the album that the band are releasing.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

As a group we did not create any specific audience feedback sheets for people to fill out about our magazine cover however from the sheets that we created for the music video we found that they all thought that we stuck to the conventions of girl bands. We did do some oral feedback on the magazine cover and from this we found out that some of the people that evaluated our magazine cover thought that we could of tried to conform to the conventions of magazine covers that other girl bands were in and not try to experiment with the rap genre. However they did say that what we have done with trying to challenge the normal girl bands magazine cover and conform to rap conventions did work well.

How did you use the media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

Different media technologies was necessary throughout the creating the magazine cover. This was because we needed the internet to research into the different magazine covers that we were going to try and emulate the conventions of. Also we needed to use the internet to upload the images onto the magazine cover from the photo shoot that we did with our friend from school. Also we needed to use word to create the magazine covers.

Would you change anything if you could go back?

If i could go back and change anything i would make sure that i created more magazine covers maybve i would try and create on e that followed the conventions of a girl bands magazine cover instead of going for the rap genre. Although i believe that the rap genre worked, i should have experimented more and found out which was the best one to use.

Research Into Magazine Cover

I researched into a lot of different magazine covers to find out what the conventions were and if there were any similarities in the different magazine covers from the different artists. I mainly researched into rap magazine covers this is because my target audience for my music video and project as a whole is the younger generation who are into r'n'b music and rap music. In almost all of the magazine covers that i viewed and analysed i found that they all used bold writing so that it stood out and was one of the main focus points of the magazine cover. Also in all of the magazine covers i looked at there was a very large, bold and striking image which was the main focus of the page and this was what was the main attention of the reader of the magazine. Us as a group plan to emulate this by using one of the photos that we took in the photo shoot that we did. We took these pictures for the magazine cover and tried to make them look as much like a professional girl bands photo as we could. We are going to put the picture as the main focal point of our magazine cover so that it is eye catching and grabs the viewers attention straight away. Also i noticed on the magazine covers there was always a bar code, therefore i will use an image of a bar code off the internet and use it in our magazine cover to make the cover look professional and as if it was the magazine cover of a real famous girlband. The price and date is also apparent somewhere on all of the magazine covers that i researched therefore this will need to be a necessity of my cover. I mainly researched into the rap genre of magazin covers this was because although our music video song choice was not of the rap genre in the photo shoot we went for a gangser style photo by wearing brand names such as adidas and also we wore string vests which are associated with the rap genre. This therefore is the genre of magazine cover that we are going to go for. Another feature that i noticed on the front cover was a striking interesting fact, quote or snippet about the artist that featured inside the magazine this is to make is sellable and so that people want to buy it to read more. Also from teh research i found that it will be a good idea to mention other artists on the front cover, this is because advertisement is good and it is what makes the magazine sell.

This image above is of one of the magazine covers that i analysed. As you can see from this image there are powerful colours that are used and they do not clash. The plain black background that has been used makes the yellow and white writing stand out very well. Also the centre piece of the magazine cover is the image, this is the same as what i am going to go for, by putting the image as big as possibel and the main focal point so that it is eye catching. Also i am going to stick to the theme that is being used of only using 2 or 3 colours throughout so that the magazine cover does not look to crowded and over packed. However in this magazine colour a dark colour has been used with the black, i will try and go for more girly colours such as pink and white, this is because the song we have chosen and the dancing that takes place in the actual video is not rap like the picture we have taken therefore i will try and make it more femanin and girly and more like a girl bands magazine cover by using prettier colours such as pink. Whilst i was researching i found this magazine cover, this is the sort of thing i am going to achieve with our ancillery task. This is because there are minimul colours used, they are girlier and brighter colours than that of the magazine cover that i spoke about earlier in this blog post. Also i like this magazine cover because i think that we could emulate it well as this also features a girlband like we are.

Target Audience

For our target audience we decided that we were going to use this as the young generation interested in r'n'b. This is because we are young and they will be able to idolize or look up to us as a girl band. Also by the way we dressed and danced we are trying to attract the male sex, this is because we have followed the same theme that the other girl bands have followed which is "sex sells". Also by using a song by a very popular artist at the time we have decided that this will then attract the fans of Lady Gaga. Therefore we are trying to aim this at the teenage generation and the younger target audience.

Costumes and Mis En Scene

For our video we thought that the mis en scene that we use is very important to make the music video look proffesional. For this we thought that we were going to follow the all black theme throughout the video as this is what a lot of the conventional girlbands use. However we thought that in the video we needed to add a bit of colour as this would contrast nicely with the black that we used throughout the starting of the video. We decided that as we were a girl band we were going to try and make it more girly by going for the colour pink. Therefore we decided that we were going to paint 2 flat boards pink so that we could then wear the clothing colour pink and it would match with the backgrounds that we painted to use. We decided that we were going to use a different colour pink for the clothing as we used for the backgrounds, this was because then there would be a contrast as i think that it would look better and look more proffesional.

Me, Kirsty, Christie and Charlotte decided before we began the project that we were going to use fake money because the theme of the song that we are using is the idea that money is nothing, as in the video Lady Gaga burns money as if it is meaningless.

We also hired a fog machine to make our music video look more professional, we wanted it to look as though we had put a lot of thought into the way that we wanted it to be recorded and we thought that the fog machine would make the shots look a lot more affective.

Also we decided that for the costumes other than the pink costumes that we were going to use we decided that we wanted the rest of the music video to be mainly in black, this is because it is seen as sexy and provocative. Also we wanted to be as matching as possible with the
colours. However we did want to be wearing different outfits as we thought this would look more affective than having exactly the same matching outfits on.

Research Into The Website

We decided that we were going to create the home page for our website for one of our ancillary tasks. I decided that it was going to best if i researched into the bands and artists websites that we were idolising through our music video. This was Lady Gaga, The Saturdays and The Pussycat Dolls. As i was researching i found that there was a major difference between Lady Gaga's website and the Saturdays, this was because Lady Gaga's was very dark and all of her pictures were in black and white, along with the heavy dark black background. Her website was very weird and dark and mysterious. This contrasted that of the Saturdays, who had a light blue background and their images and colours that they used were very girly and exactly what you would expect a garlands website to be like.

I think that they are so different because the views and belief of the two different acts are very different. Lady Gaga aims to be very different and controversial, this is shown through her feminist side with the picture of her body covered in raw meat - this is to show how women are viewed by men, and she is showing that she does not believe that it is right, and if men are going to treat and view women as meat, then they she will dress like it. However there is also the anti feminist side to Lady Gaga which is all of the images and videos where she is barely dressed. This shows that she does not mind about men looking at her dressed in barely nothing.

the Saturdays aim to be more family friendly and by aiming their image to be more friendly and beautiful as apose to being sexy makes their target audience range a lot wider. The fact that Lady Gaga's main image is her with red lipstick this shows that she is sticking to the theme of sexy, and relating her pictures to do with sex as the red and black colours that are consistent through the website could be to do with brothels and sex, this shows that she believes that the sex appeal that she sticks to works and sells this is why show uses it.

18th February 2011
Recording and Editing

We started some of the recording today but due to the fact that we couldn't use our original setting that we wanted to which was the dance studio at the Northwood campus due to the exam desks being up. Therefore we decided that we were going to use the drama studio at the Foxley campus, this similarly to the dance studio at the Northwood campus had dark black curtains and was a similar setting so we would be able to achieve what we wanted to from the room.

When we got into the drama studio at Foxley, t worked to our advantage as we found that there were 4 podiums that we were going to use, this was good as we could make our music video look more professional and then this would also be following the conventions of a already famous girl bands music videos. As we first originally did not plan on using the 4 separate podiums we decided that we were going to have to practise our little routine that we had made up as when we choreographed it we did not plan to have a confided space that we had to stick to. We had to make sure all of our poses that we did were confide to a small space so that they could be performed on the little areas we had each, however we found out that we did end up looking more professional and more like a garland.

This part of the filming did take us longer than anticipated, it took us about 2 hours to gain this little piece of routine footage as we kept having to re shoot the footage as we were not happy with the way it turned out the first times. Also we found that with there being four of us it was difficult to get take where all four of us were doing it perfect without any mistakes.

We decided that because there was not stage lighting in the drama studio we were going to try and create our own lighting, we did this by turning off the main lights and positioning 6 strong lighted lamps around us to make it look like spotlighting, we found that we had to position some of the lamps pointing outwards as if they were landing straight on us they were washing us out and making the colours look weird.

Also there was a smart board in the dance studio which we did not know was there, therefore we had to cover it up using black blankets, this was because there was not a black curtain covering it like the rest of the room. As this was not our original filming location, there was a lot of things that we had to do to make it to the standard that we first wanted, but in the end we were successful.

After we had finished recording we decided that we were going to edit it straight away so that we would not have lots of footage to edit all in one go if we waited until all of our recording was done. Therefore we went back to our Media class room and uploaded the footage onto the Apple Mac Computers, we decided that we were going to edit the footage in iMovie, this was because we researched into other programmes such as Adobe Premier and Studio 14 but we decided that we were going to stick to iMovie as we used this for our AS Media project and found that this was the easiest to use, and we were already familiar with the software.

For the first 20-30 seconds we decided that we wanted a lot of flashing images and fast cuts, this was to create a shocking effect at the start of the video, therefore we decided that it would be best to use the effects tool on iMovie, this meant that we could change the saturation swell which would make it look better and more professional. For the first bit of filming that we did the camera quality was not the best therefore we decided that we would change the contrast and the saturation so that it looked more rusty and rough. We went for this effect so that it still looked very professional. iMovie also gave us the options in where we were able to slow down our clips, this for the walking towards the camera bit, made it look a lot more professional and made it look more like it was a proper girlbands music video.

2nd March 2011
Recording and Editing
On the 2nd of March us as a group decided that we were going to record the second part of our music video, when we got to school and was about to begin our recording, we faces the problem that our main location that we intended on using was being used for exams. This was the main hall at the Northwood Campus. However luckily we mangaged to gain access to the Drama Studio at the Northwood campus, in this room we were able to gain the same effect that we wanted from the Main hall, this was because there were large black curtains that could be drawn all around the room so that we could create the same dark effect that we wanted to with the main hall. Also there were proper stage and performance lighing in there so we were about to create a spotlight effect or dim or brighten the lighting so that it would make the video look more proeffesional, also we were able to enhance our better features using the lighting, this was then conforming to the male gaze that i mentioned we were going to in the previous blog posts.
Also in the drama studio there are massive full length mirrors that aided us to be able to practise our routines and make them very precise before we began recording it.
I think that because of the lighting facilities that we have in the Northwood Campus Drama studio, the quality of the camera and the video cam out a lot better and a lot more proffesional looking, we were very please with how well it looked when we uploaded the footage.
We set the lighting up so that it was spotlighted in the exact place that we were going to be performing the routine, we then set up the camera so that we were exactly in the middle and we were the main attention of the whole shot. We then performed out fixed routine from many different angles, this was so that we could see which one was best and we could the edit the footage so that there were fast cuts and slow cuts of us from all the different angles.
When we watched the recorded footage back after we had uploaded it to the macs, we found that as a group we liked the routine performed from a face on angle best, therefore this is the one that we used the most of in our actual video.
On the day that we recoreded all of this footage, Charlotte who is one of the members of our group had been in a car accident, this meant that she was unable to attend the recording session, but as it was a main priority that the recording and editing needed to be done, we persisted as we always intended to do and only used the 3 of us as perfomers in the music video. We found that this still worked and we were more than happy with the footage that was produced.
Throughout this recording we all decided that we were once again going to stick to wearing black. However Me, Kirsty and Christie decided that because throughout the routine Kirsty is doing the majority of the miming and is positioned in the centre, it would be best if she wore grey leggings, this was so that there was a contrast in the colours, and to mix it up a little, from always sticking to black.
At first we were going to stick to us all performing the whole of the routine together, but then throughout the research that we did we found that solo parts from different members of each girlband was very popular, therefore this is what we did, and we all had an indiviudal part so that our music video would look and stick to the conventions like all the other girlbands do.
As Christie is very good at the editing part, she did a lot of the editing whilst me and Kirsty included our input when needed and occasionly. However we struggled as a group to make the song track Beautiful, Dirty, Rich to fit over the top of the recording and to make it fit to the music so that it all worked and fitted properly. However after myuch cutting and trimming of each clip individually we found that we made it work and achieved what we wanted to from the start.

Laura Mulveys Theory - The Male Gaze


The theory that has been developed by Laura Mulvey on the male gaze is the concept of how people are viewed by an audience. There are 3 different perspectives of this theory, these are how a male views a women, how a women sees herself or how women view other women. All of this is how an audience views people in film, how they view models or even music artists.


The male gaze is where certain lighting and camera work is used so that an audience will be made to view the certain good features of a model, actor or music artist. the camera crew will use certain lighting on certain different parts of a females body to enhance curves or make it so that lighting lingers over a certain part of the females body that willbe attractive to men.


The Male Gaze theory will not be something that appeals from a femanist point of view, this is because the women in the films, music videos or the models are being seen as sex symbols and are only being used as objects for men to look at. However magazines will be a lot more likeley to sell with a semi naked attractive woman on the front as this will then appeal to the male sex. Also if a product or film is being advertised then it will be a lot more likely to rise in sales or views if there is an attractive woman or actress on the front cover of magazines or on the poster advertising the film.


Laura Mulveys theory shows that some of the women actuallu enjoy to be looked at for the reasons that they are, this including their beauty and their clothing. In an American Society, the gaze also works through beauty pagents, where other women can also admire the other womens natrual beauty and the way that other women view other womeans natural look and the way the dress.


In our music video the Male Gaze is very apparent as we are conforming to the workings of already famous Girlbands, we are doing this as we can see what works and what is attractive to mena and what works for the bands. We are trying to look like popstars and a already formed girlband in the way that we dress and the way that we are performing and the pictures that we have taken.


Throughout our video and the pictures that we have taken we have used a lot of black clothing, this is because this colour is seen as sexy and slimming, from this you can see that the male gaze theory is apparent as we are doing it so that we look attractive to the male sex and the female sex that are going to be watching the video. We also made sure that the clothing that we were wearing was quite tightly fitted this was so that we were sticking to the conventions that the other girlbands were sticking to. Also these clothes are seen as quite revelaing, this look has worked for the famous girlbands for a lot of years so we are going to stick to the conventions.

The image that i have found above was taken from a lads magazine. From the image you can see that she is very scantily clad and from the positioning she is seen as a sex symbol. Also from the shape that her body is in and the way that she is positioned we can clearly see it is edited to great lengths as the position that she is in is not possible without a great deal of pain. This image has been changed greatly from the original to make her look more appealing to men and lads and to make her look a lot more sexy.

In our music videos and the images that we have taken we have conformed to the male gaze but not to anywhere near the level that this image has. We have not gone to the lengths of edititing where we are actually changing the way we look and taking away the oringinality from the image. We also decided that we were not going to conform to the male gaze to the depths of this picture because i disagree with the way that this image makes woman on a normal level feel. Images like this that are editied to this depth for lads magazines, will make all other normal working class women feel insecure that their body does not and will never look like this. However males now have such a high opinion about what women should lok like and this is all from images that are used in the public like this, and these are being thrust upon them daily so that a mans perspective on women is completley changed.

Lip Syncronization

As we are going to be a girl band, we needed to research into Lip Syncronization, this is also known as Mimeing. We had to research into the art of lip syncronization because this is what we were going to have to do in our music video, we wanted it to look professional and to the standard that all of the other girl bands do it. It is very important that it is done right as if it is to a poor standard then the music video will look very poor.

In this video we can see that Lady Gaga is miming, this is because she has to dance at the same time as singing which is a hard task to do. Also we can tell she is miming as when she sings live you can tell her voice sounds a lot harsher and broader and does not sound as if it is edited.

Story Boarding

As a group we decided that storyboarding would aid us to be able to record the video to a better ability. This is because we will have a plan of what we are going to do, we will know what shot is next and what order and locations we are going to film in after the other.

We found the storyboarding difficult as none of the 4 members of our group are good at drawing therefore we found that the storyboard did not turn out as good as we would have liked it to be. We had to draw stick people as that was the only way that we would be able to show the images that we are going to try and create.

The storyboarding would be the best options for us to show what we want to achieve from the project this is because it enables us to be able to sow the lighting, length of each shot, what type of shot we want e.g Close up, over the shoulder etc. Also the mis en scene and which members of the group will be in each shot. Also story boarding will allow us to show the locations that we are going to film each shot in. We will have to do different filming in all different locations and the storyboarding will tell us which locations we are going to record in first.

Making Up The Routine For Our Video And Taking Pictures For The Album Cover

As we are creating a girl band we thought that it would b very appropriate that we researched into the sort of things that girl bands include in their videos. This including the props that they use and the choreography that they include. we researched into girlbands such as The PussyCat Dolls, Girlicious and Girls Aloud, this was because this is what we were going to try and re create. Whilst we were researching we found that both Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious have both used a boxing ring in one of their videos. Also both girl bands have used chairs in their videos, we are going to try and re create this by using chairs in our music video.

Also we have found that all of the Girlbands that we have researched into have used a ballet bar at some point in one of their videos, we decided that we were going to use a bar to create the same effect in our video and in the pictures that we need to take for our ancillery tasks.

As you can see from the images above, we have tried to confrom to the conventions of the Pussycat Dolls, we are all wearing black clothing like the Pussycat Dolls are. Also we are using the bar so that we stick to the conventions that all of the other Girlbands stick to.

Whilst we were researching we found that the use of a boxing ring was used with The Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious, although we are not going to be able to find the use of a proffesional boxing ring so that we can stick to that theme that is apparent. We are going to use 4 podiums, this is so that we gain the same affect of the looking down at the camera so that we are the main focus and attention of the video. the bird eye view looking down at the camera from the podiums will make it so we are the superior people in the video and that we are the main focus and main attention in the video.

Research Into Choreography

Whilst we were researching into choreography we found that most of the girlbands that we were trying to idolise dressed in tight skimp outfits and danced provocativley. This i feel is because "sex sells". For example in this video they are all dancing provocotivley and following the theme of sex sells.

When i was researching into The Pussycat Dolls i found that in all of their videos there was a part where they were all walking forward together in kind of a march, i feel as though this showed power within the female sex. From a femanists point of view they would say that this would be derogatry and would make them look like meat or just sex symbols to men. However i feel as thought the skimpy outfits and the provocotive dancing makes them look as though they are in control and the male viewers of the video can "look but not touch".

Also like the Pussycat Dolls, Girlicious also dress provocativley and dance as if they are also following the theme that "sex sells". Also throughout this video at some point in the video each member of the girl band takes off an item of clothing at some point in the video.

We found from researching into the girl bands that both Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious that both of the bands at some point use a ballet bar. We decided that we were going to use this as we wanted to follow the conventions that other Girl bands use to make our music video look professional.

This is a picture of the bar that we are going to use so that we follow the conventions of other girl bands.

Pictures Taken For Album Cover

These are the photos that we have taken for the album cover that we are going to make for the band. We have tried to stick to the conventions of the Girlbands that we researched earlier. We feel that with the facilities that were available to us, we fulfilled these photos to the best of our ability.

We editied these images on Picasa 3- this is because this is editing software that we are all familiar with. At first we did try to use paint shop pro but because there were none of us in the group that were familiar with this software we decided that it would be be easier to use a programme that we were all familiar with. We edited these pictures by changing the saturation, contrast and hightened. Also we turened one pink as we decided that pink is going to be the main colour for the website, this is then so that the images match the colours that we are going to use on the website so that the colours and themes are consistant and the website and album cover will look profesional.

We are going to use the picture that we have turned pink on the website, this is because the colours match the colours that we are going to use on the website, and also because we have made it look like a photograph, when we have decided on a name for the girlband we are going to put it across the bottom of the photograph style picture in fancy writing that will make it look proffesional.

We asked our friend that does a-level photography to take these pictures for us, this was because we wanted the pictures to look proffesional and of a high standard therefore we thought that this would be the best way of achieveing this. We felt that this way we would have achieved what we wanted from the pictures because they were taken on a proper proffesional photography camera. Although somebody else did the actual photo taking, we decided on the positions, lighting, scenery and outfits so that we achieved what we wanted to.

Contacting The Record Label And Asking For Permission


We researched on the internet and found out which recored label signs Lady Gaga, we found out that it was "Cherry Tree Records" that she works with. Through our research we found out that she has now moved from "Cherry Tree Records" and now works with a different record label. However when she released "Beautiful Dirty Rich" she was with "Cherry Tree Records" therefore we thought it would be best to seek permission from thoses. So we composed an e-mail giving the record label all of the information that they needed, because we would like to use Lady Gagas song in the back of out music video and we will not be publishing the song in any way or posting it on the internet, then the record company should be okay with this and give us permission.
This is a copy of the e-mail that Me, Kirsty, Charlotte and Christie sent to "Cherry Tree Records".
Dear Sir,Madam,
My name is Emily Roberts and i am currently studying A2 Media at the NEW Academy, Wolverhampton, England. My course enables me and my team to create our own music video. We have decided that we would like to use Lady Gagas Beautiful Dirty Rich as the backing ttack to our video, however copyright laws state that we mjust seek permission from the record label. We hope that you will be kind enoug to let use use the song, we assure you that the video will notbe published or posted on the internet in anyway. Please email back as soon as possible at robertse04@newacademy.org.uk.
Emily Roberts.

Also Kirsty copied and pasted the email into a question and answer box that was on the record labels site, this would enable us to hopefully get more feedback from the record label. This is the printscreen of the email in the question and answer box.