Question 2 Draft

Question 2 – How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Each of the media products I have created vary in terms of their role they play. The brief required me to create a music video alongside two ancillary tasks, by creating a digipak and an album advert. I ensured that there was a consistent theme in the font, colours and layout and the overall style of the album which can slightly match with the music video. With these features, it creates a sense of ‘brand identity’ of the artist which will help the artist be recognised more easily by the audience.

I created a house style which is running in both the digipak and the magazine advert. There is a similar layout with the font sizes varying. The colours are consistent with ‘Red and white’ gradient. The images have been given a black and white filter to it, this is because there will be a sense of ‘mystery’ and emotions in both digipak and the magazine advert.

There is a theme of emotions flooding in all the media products, hence there is such as ‘mysterious’ feel to the ancillary tasks and the main media product being more of a ‘find out more’ once the album is purchased.

The digipak is more than just selling the CD, it’s created to inform the audience on the music artist. Furthermore, it gives more of a sense of belonging for the audience rather than downloading songs/album/EP’s instantly with nothing to relate them to, it may also make the audience feel incomplete. Within the digipak, there is a thank you message from the artist to the audience saying their support has got them there and thanking friends and family for being supportive throughout her music career, in addition this can build this relationship between the artist and the audience and allows the audience to feel as if they, like the artist, have achieved something by being as supportive as fans. Therefore this digipak perfectly fits for the intended marketing purpose.

The album advert is there to persuade the audience to potentially purchase the album. It created to fit the promotional method to sell the digipak. The non-direct image of the girl with her eyes closed depict this instant mysterious and sad emotion, furthermore the favourable reviews supports he purpose of strongly advertising the artist and convince the audience that the album has been critically favourable and therefore suggests that the music created by this artist must be of a high standard. The reviews given are from different newspapers ranging from broadsheets for example ‘the guardian to genre specific music magazine for instance ‘Spin’. Using popular and acclaimed newspapers would create the album being a more respected and more of a creative asset rather than a typical manufactured pop album where a lot of marketing is focused e.g album launch, promotional method etc…

The sole purpose of a music video is not to sell the song but to get a suggestion from the audience for them to not only be interested in the song but the artist as well, which can then convince them to listen to other music by the same artist hence a digipak is produced for them to access other songs.. The target audience of this music genre are classified as mainstreamers and aspirers. The target audience would watch my music video watch their favourite music artist perform or listen to their favourite song and for entertainment/escapism.

As the music video is the key task of this course, I had to ensure that it’s suitable and ensures to reach out well to the audience and for them to enjoy the music video I had to research about the target audience. The sole purpose of my music video is to entertain the target audience and allow them to watch the artist perform while listening to song, this will also give them more of a visual towards the song. I have definitely achieved the aspect of performance and entertainment in my music video through the use many camera shots, angles and movements, locations and the use of a ballet performance.  In order to create a sense of direct address with the audience and make them feel like they are part of this. I achieved this by using frequent eye contact when the artist is singing to the camera. This clearly invites the audience in and maintains focus on the video.  However another purpose the music video can fulfil is a better understanding of the lyrical meaning behind the song and how it can be visually linked. This has been my main goal through the project, however there has been some difficulties in portraying a narrative via a ballet performance, hence why visual lyrical meaning is used, for instance ‘tears rolling down’ has got the ballerina performing a step where her hands are the tears and they are going down. Having a music video enables the audience to understand the artist is moving forward from her unsuccessful relationship and that she is ‘crying for no reason’.

Looking at the those three mediums, they link in strongly as each of the three mediums promotes each other, for instance the music video promotes a song from the album and the album advert promotes the digipak. In addition, the main products and the ancillary tasks follow the same conventions in order to stay within their genre of music and keep a fixed house style.