evaluation 2 draft 2

 Evaluation Question 2 How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

An ancillary text is a media product that helps feed in/ support the main media product, in my case my main media product was my music video and my ancillary text would include my digipack and advert. It is important that my poster and my digipack link with each other and the music video, the reason this is important is because if they are not linked together for a few reason it will not work, first off it will not follow typical media conventions and we have decided that we are following the majority of the basic ones however we have made some of our own. Secondly people would get con used, for example if you had different people on all three then you wouldn't know whether they're part of the same thing or if they are three random things with the same name by coincidence, with confusion this would affect sales of tickets and cd's.

I have created two ancillary texts; these are a digipak where my cd would be housed in and the other being an advert for my digipak. It was important that all of my products linked together, the typical conventions for them to be linked together is having the artist in/ on all of the ancillary texts or if you were using a graphic design for example the Arctic Monkeys used a graphic design in all of their ancillary products for their album ‘AM’. The reason it is important for bands or artists to have these main images in common is because it allows people to know what the actual product is and then they can recognize what they’re looking at when they see the image/ graphic design used. The image that I have used is a close up photo of Alfie smoking a cigarette, this image features on the front cover of the digipak, is the only photo on my advert and also features in the music video at 9 seconds in from the start. The reason I have used this picture is because I took inspiration from the Arctic Monkeys album ‘whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not’ I took inspiration from this album because Arctic Monkeys are a Brit pop which we are trying to get our band into the same genre, therefore it made them suitable to take inspiration from. The reason I chose this particular album was because I remember having a shot of Alfie close up smoking and I thought that if they have used it then it would be me following their conventions.

I have made sure also that the record label company, it is important to keep these the same otherwise it could cause some legal issues as more than one record label would think they are responsible for the song. The record label I have gone with is virgin records, I have chosen this label because from research I have seen that they offer deals to up and coming bands and artists so this would help with our band as they are an up and coming band. I have got the record labels logo on both my digipak and the digipak advert so people can see the record label.

With my genre being indie it was important that I kept this throughout, I tried to match the indie style with all of my products. The music that I chose was a song based in the indie genre so therefore it was important that I matched my ancillary texts with the genre. As a result of trying to achieve this I have taken inspiration from arctic monkeys who are the same genre that we are trying to aim for. The outfit choices we have taken inspiration from lots of different bands and artists within the indie genre. We took inspiration from the ban Rat boy and Jaime T mainly. To portray this, I have included quite a few outfit changes in the video and for the ancillary texts we have used images where our artists are still in their costumes, therefore this has a correlation with the video to the ancillary texts.

I have included an orange theme especially on my digipak, the reason for this is because I wanted all of the sides of the digipak to have something in common after playing around with the pallet tool I decided I liked the orange writing on the hoodie Alfie is wearing shown on the inside cover. I used the pallet tool to get this colour which I then decided I would put over the front cover and make it pretty much transparent so that the picture looks like it just has an orange effect to it. This image was then used for my digipak advert because I thought that the picture with an orange tinge to it would be quite a recognisable picture as the orange would stand out to other album covers. The reason I have used this image on my digipak is because it will make it easily recognisable for people wishing to buy the album so it is important that they know the name and the picture if the album. The rest of my digipak also features the colour orange on each the sides, the reason I have used a colour is because it doesn’t have to be massively obvious but you can still see the link. I was thinking to use my band on all of the covers but then thought that tis probably would work and would look unprofessional.

In conclusion I found that it is important to keep the main product and my ancillary texts in common, I have tried to keep most things in common to my main product which would include pictures of the artist and their outfits, however because it is an album containing lots of songs there will be a difference between one video to the album in most situations. I think it Is important to try and keep the main product and ancillary texts, because it then allows the audience to recognise the products from the same band/ artist, following typical conventions you would want all of the products to link together, the main way this is typically done is by having the name of the band/ artist in the same font that everything else is done for.