EVALUATION - Q2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We have created three products. Our main product is the music video, and our ancillary texts are our digipak, and Our magazine advert. The main purpose of these two ancillary texts was to advertise and promote our music video and the band behind the song.





Digipak



Magazine Advert

I felt that in order for the two ancillary products to effectively promote the music video, there had to be a clear sense of synergy between all three products. All of the products must also promote the band in some sense, which will further link the two ancillary products to the video. through my research i found that both of these objectives were clearly practiced throughout the music industry with professional artists promoting themselves in their videos, digipaks, and adverts. Professional products like these also incorporate a lot of synergistic elements, in order to have clear links between one another.


Our synergy was created by having an air of creativity throughout all of the products. The video is purely comprised of performance shots, all filmed in recording areas. this shows the audience that in the video the band is 'creating' the music. We carried this over to the ancillary texts by using cartoon drawings of all of the band members, and using a paper design for the background of both the digipak and the advert. These drawings on the paper made it look like both of the products were like doodles, which are stereo-typically done by artistic, creative people.

One way in which we have connected all three of our products is by using shots of the band. This not only promotes the band members, but creates some synergy between all of the products. This is effective as due to the band being unsigned and up-and-coming, using the band members as the main image throughout the products creates a band image.

The digipak is made up of the cartoon drawings of the band members, performance shots, and other information about the band and their songs. I felt these were both ideal to use as not only do the promote the band on every face of the digipak, but also creates visible links between the music video and the magazine advert. We used the out focus shot of the two guitarists and the drummer because we felt it had a 'behind-the-scenes' feel to it. this links to the note from the band on one of the other faces of the digipak, and the ending of the video were all of the band have finished playing and are laughing and relaxing. I also feel that it would make the band seem more relatable, which is an aspect of the indie-rock genre, having the band members of down to earth people who are of similar personality to their target audience.

The only way i feel we could have created more synergy is by either having some real photographs on the advert, or some cartoons in the music video. We were very capable of doing these, but we both felt that mixing the two would stop the products form looking very professional. i feel it works well on the digipak as the images are on two faces, whilst the cartoons are on the other faces. the cartoons and photographs are never mixed together. Other than this i feel we have created good synergy, and could not have combined the products more without deteriorating the quality of those products.

The use of the five cartoon faces over both the front cover of the digipak, and on the magazine advert worked very well in combining the two products. we decided to move around the images and text in order to use the space better, and not leave large spaces which are blank. With the use of these cartoons we were allowed more freedom in the design of both of these products, compared to using an actual photo. Blur's best of album, from which we took inspiration from, also uses the four separate faces, and whilst the kept them in the same placement for the digipak and the magazine adverts, they moved the images around for their special edition album. Even though the album cover had been changed, the cover is still very easily recognisable.

Another way in which we have tried to create synergy is through using the same font throughout all of the products. the font we used was Eccentric FX. This can be seen in the opening to our music video, the magazine poster, and throughout all of the text on the digipak. We have done this in order to create a level of uniformity between all of the products, and this adds to the synergy of all of the products.

This is done all the time throughout real media products, but one that stands out for me is the use of it on Oasis' Definitely Maybe album. They use a stylised font in order to make it look like it is handwritten, and this same font is used on the album cover, the disc, and all the posters and adverts for the album, in order to create synergy.

Another way in which we tried to create synergy was through the use of colour. Having a colour scheme which was consistent over all of our products would make all of the products look related. We chose to have a basic colour scheme, which is mainly white. We also made sure there were very few bright colours in the video, as the digipak and advert are predominantly white and brown. This was in order to keep an air of simplicity about all of the products, which also links to the recording studio and the lack of narrative in the video.
An example of where this is done in real media texts is the Arctic Monkeys album 'Whatever people say i am, that's what i'm not". the album cover and poster are in black and white, and most of the videos for songs on the album are also either black and white, or set in dark, dull areas. The reason we chose to make the ancillary texts to be very plain and simple is because we felt that it would look very strange if the video was very colourless, while the poster and digipak were full of bright, vibrant colours.

The main brief was to create a music video, a digipak, and a magazine advert which promoted a band. This means that it was extremely important that there were lots of synergistic elements between all of the products, with the band at the forefront of all of them. After watching our music video, the audience should easily be able to recognise each band member on the album cover and the digipak. The simplicity of the cartoons, and the isolation of all of the members of the video help to do that. Because of this we feel that the combination of these media texts have been very successful in promoting the band, and creating a band image.