Early Planning & Research: Girlbands

My group contains Jessica Wilson, Charley Packham and I, so when it came down to track selections and ideas, we thought one of the best things to do was a girlband. As Charley and I were both picked to be part of the band for our 5ive video remake, we thought that it would be great to be in the band for our final project too, as we seemed to have the right skills for lipsyncing.

Brainstorming ideas and researching current girlbands.
After searching through various iPods, seeing various lists on Google and watching various videos on YouTube, we got the gist of the main styles/groups of different girlbands: the pop mainstream 'sex appeal' girlbands, the slightly more indie girlgroups/duos and the pop/rock or rockier girlgroups/duos.

As our first idea, we thought it would be easiest and most effective if we did a mainstream pop girlband. With a wide choice of song selections and many bands such as Girls Aloud, The Saturdays, Pussycat Dolls, Sugababes and Girlicious to look at for inspiration, we thought that mainstream pop could be ideal for our project.

After listening to many songs on Spotify and YouTube, Charley found the song Puppet, by The Saturdays. We thought it would be great to do a video to, as it's not released, and the theme of puppets could be great to translate to screen; we could all be puppets on strings, similar to NSync's video for It's Gonna Be Me.



However, after speaking to our teacher and discussing this idea further, we realised that if we did a song by The Saturdays or any other famous mainstream girlband, the first thing our audience would do is compare us to the real groups. Our video would just contain all the mainstream pop video conventions: beauty shots, slightly tight clothing, heels, sychronised dance routines... and it would just look like we were copying The Saturdays instead of being a new different girlband. So after a lot of thought, we have decided to not do this song, go back to the drawing board and go into a new direction.

Going less mainstream and more rocky.
After looking at more girlgroups, we found that more rockier or indie duos were more fitting for us; we could create a new artist identity and as there are only 3 of us in the group, the sound of less voices on the track could look more authentic when we're lipsyncing. We found groups like The Veronicas, The Pierces, Uh Huh Her and Soho Dolls could be more fitting and ideal.
We also found that a lot of the girl duos included were striking and almost binary opposites, with one being blonde and another having black hair. This was true with The Pierces and Uh Huh Her, and has also been the image for older bands too, such as The Runaways with Joan Jett and Cherie Currie being the two frontwomen. We thought that this could be something we could easily recreate, as I have dark hair, and Jess and Charley are both blonde.