Media Evaluation Answer.

1. HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE
COMBINATION OF YOUR
MAIN PRODUCT AND
ANCILLARY TEXTS?

2. For my main product, I have created a music video which I had to
promote by creating two ancillary products, a digipak and a poster. When
using synergy and linking these different mediums together to get one
complete product, I had to consider different aspects of each of them and
how they can be tailored to match each other but still look good. Aspects
to consider are colour, font, themes, images and visuals, and references to
each other.

3.  The products I have created have been made with the
rock genre in mind, they have been moulded to fit that
criteria, which is ultimately the key way of making sure
that these separate mediums come together to create
one well woven pieces of work. As the main product of
my work is the video and this targets audiences of the
rock genre, it makes complete sense that I would decide
to render ancillary products which reflect the rock genre
too. This in turn would mean that my digipak and my
poster are appealing to the same audience as the music
video and thus helps the products as a single entity to
appeal to my audience.

4.  From the start, as can be seen in the ‘Initial Ideas’ section of my blog, I
looked at well know album covers to come to a definite idea of what I
wanted in my final didpak cover to look like. What I found was that
there was a simple, glyphic like image in the centre of the cover which
related in some way toward the rest of the artists’ work. I liked this idea
and I also decided that I wanted something round on the front of my
digipak, this is because from the images seen above, shapes are easy to
create and work effectively. For example, the circle holds everything
together in the YMAS cover, the colours, the title, the band name and
even some shades. And so, I solidified the idea of having a circle on my
digipak cover.

5.  After developing a plot for the narrative section of my music
video, and coming to the conclusion that it would focus on
money and inequality, I realised that coins would play a major
synergistic role across all of my products. My music video was
designed, in both the narrative and the live performance
sections, to feature money or references to money and so, the
idea of a round coin on the front of my album cover further
allowed me to progress with the idea of a circle on my cover. But,
in addition to the music video affecting the cover, the cover
affected the music video. The deep black colour, that was used to
contrast with the coin on the cover, started to look odd when
held next to the colourful music video and so called for some
action to be taken. As colour was not used for any purpose in the
music video, and it is a rock video, I felt that making the video
black and white helped take away the horrible contrast between
the colours of the video and the black and gold of the digipak
cover.

6.  When I started work on my poster, I took heavy inspiration
from my two existing products, to keep the genre of rock
consistent all the way through. I had the coin, from the cover,
in the centre of the poster and the dark colours, from both the
cover and the video, from top to bottom. However, the solid
black on the poster looked very boring because it was simply
adding nothing to the poster other than instilling the idea that
it is of the rock genre. So, after scanning the internet for
something interesting I could add to the poster, I found a scuff
mark effect which added a kind of wear and tear kind of look
to the poster. This made the poster look even more rock,
because people from rock bands are typified as violent and
angry, by making it look like there has been a scrap/fight.

7.  As a result of the augmentation the scuff brings, to making the poster
look more like something you would see in the rock genre, I decided
that I would transfer this technique to the digipak cover thus bringing
the two ancillary products even closer to looking like each other.

8.  As there are only two member in the band
Royal Blood, who I was making a music video
for, I had to decide whether I wanted to keep
the band at two members or increase it to a
conventional four or five. After a lot of thought
and no closer to a decision, I moved on to
adding the finishing touches to the coin I was
making for the front cover of the digipak and
the poster, I found myself subconsciously
embossing the image of the two band
members of Royal Blood onto the coin.
Because of this I made my decision to have
only two band members in the video, to match
the coin, and thus my music video became a
reflection of my poster and cover. Having the
coin embossed with the image of the two band
members provides a direct link to the real band
and thus adds some actuality/intertextuality to
my ancillary products that the video lacks.

9.  Lastly, to keep continuity between the two
ancillary products, I opted to use the same
font for the poster that I used in the
digipak. This is a good way of making sure
that nothing looks out of place and the
two product are distinguishably a pair. The
upper image is taken from the digipak
front cover and the lower one is taken
from the poster. As you can see, bar colour
and blur, the images are the exactly the
same. Having this font extend from one
text to the other allows audiences, who
view my products as a single body, to
come to the unequivocal conclusion that,
with the help of theme, images, text, etc,
that they are of the same genre. Which is
ideally the aim of this project, to use
convention, challenge them and avoid
them completely to depict the genre I am
trying to represent correctly.

10.  Overall, I think that the use of conventions and the transference of
conventions across my work has helped me greatly to represent
the rock genre. From analysing same genre album covers, to get a
good idea of what to put of the cover of my digipak, to
smoothing off ancillary texts, with the use of the same font to
establish that they are of the same genre and work together, I
believe that I have efficiently used all of my texts to play off of
each other and to create the right theme and genre that I was
aiming for, the colour of the poster and digipak was able to seep
into the music video and ultimately helped to fix the colour
problem that I had. The scuff mark effect coupled with the dark
tone and colour of all of the texts helps to solidify its place in the
rock genre. The narrative aspect of the video, which most music
video goers have come to yearn for, was a pivotal point in
starting the train ideas that lead to the final outcome of the main
product and the two ancillary texts. And thus, to reiterate, I believe
that the use of each individual text to further augment, develop
and better the others has been done very well and I am very
pleased with the final outcome for each element: Digipak, Poster
and Video.