How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our main product was based around our choice of genre in both music and video. I believe that with our main product this is very effective as the story of the song is about a break up and trying to move on. The artist is fairly individual and her choice of music is country/soft rock. with our video we tried to show this individuality through mise en scene as well as the general story from the narrative genre. The costumes we used were everyday clothes however for the female we tried to make her look more indie, yet simple with jeans, comfortable shoes and a top. The tops which she wore tended to link in with each scene showing her feeling and emotions at that moment in time. I also noticed that near enough all country artists sing about love, whether it be a new love or a break up. This aided our video into being effective as it followed almost a 'rule' that country artist follow. Overall i do believe that our main product was very effective as each shot filmed fitted in with our genre each time, it told a story, and the conventions of our country/soft rock genre were shown
clearly.
Our original ancillary products:
Magazine Advertisment Inside cover
Inside CD cover Back Cover
Front cover
We decided that these images did not represent our artist, album or music in the correct way and therefore changed them to the following.
When we came to create our ancillary products, we knew that they had to link in well with our music video. With this in mind we chose colours, text sizes and fonts, images, and layouts very carefully. For our magazine advertisement we kept it fairly simple yet effective in the sense that the image says it all about our genre of music. The girl is sat in the middle of a long, never ending road which represents a journey. The girl is sitting on an Amp whilst playing a guitar, and this gives the impression to the audience that our music is relaxing, yet somewhat a type of music you would chose to listen to by yourself, linking in with our idea of a break up. The album title 'The Odyssey',meaning journey, has been placed along the road to show text image cohesion, and to give an insight to the audience of what type of music they will be buying.
The front cover of our digipack shows a journey through life along a never path that could lead to either somewhere, or nowhere. The colourful, bright yellow leaves scattered across the path tells the audience the country style genre that our music is about. The artist is on the front cover, which after doing some research I discovered was a key part in a country album as it shows a sense of emotion and makes the album in general more personal.The female artist transitions throughout the cover to show her growing and getting stronger as she moves further along the path. It also shows a sense of glamour as the beginning shot of her sitting down, she is wearing casual everyday home clothes, moving later on to a glamorous bright red dress. The cover also shows the emotion of the album through the artists facial expressions. It shows thought and meaning which reflects on the variations of personal songs on the album. The font of both the album name and band name differ from one another, however have the faded similarity which we chose to portray the idea of old memories fading away. The fonts are also jet black, we did this to make them stand out and make them memorable to the audience, as after doing much research, I discovered the bold titles are important in any artists album as it sells their music. The curly font shows the feminine side of the album and depicts women as the target audience.
The back cover of our digipack again uses the same font as the magazine advertisement and the album title 'The Odyssey' has also been place along the side. This type of font, we believed looked very feminine and personal as it almost looks handwritten. We used swirls in just one corner, this was to show that our target audience is females, and the swirls represented 'love' to link in with the idea that swirls and fireworks are how you feel when you are in love. They are also jet black, however stand out well linking with the stand out red dress. For the main image we decided we wanted to do something a different, this led to us choosing to have a black and white background with just one dominant colour showing, in this case it was her bright red dress which stood out the most. We believe this is effective as it draws the audiences attention to the image. We also used a red dress as it is associated with 'love' therefore it links in with our genre. The titles of each song are written after a maple leaf. This was chosen to show a connection with the Front cover and the fallen leaves from the tree.
The inside of our digipack, behind the CD, we chose to have a heart made out of hands. This was purely because we believed it would have an impact on the reader as they took the CD out of the case. It could also have a meaning to the audience, making them remember the good times they have shared with loved ones. Again, we have have put main focus on the heart shaped hands. We have also emphasised the fallen leaves to link in with the front and back cover.
For the inside of the digipack we chose to have scatted photographs of artist to show her dedication to music, hence the guitar in each photo. The images also resemble the message of the album 'Journey'. This is shown in many of the pictures such as the top sky photos which show the clouds getting darker and more dull. The pictures a framed in white to make them look like polaroid pictures. This gives the impression of memories that either want to be kept or not, depending on how the audience decodes it. the expressions of each picture reflect on the music the album produces, as there are mellow, happy and heartbreaking songs such as 'Just a taste'. This image is simplistic and contrasts the rest of our album of bright autumn colours.
Overall, I believe that after recreating our ancillary products we have made a stronger between them and the music. We have managed to portray the genre more efficiently to the audience and made it easier for them to decode each product. Our ancillary products have also been made more personal. We have shown the use of more technologies such as the green screen and photoshop. The colours were made more vibrant, yet had contrasting fronts to imply the difference in songs and the uniqueness of the artist. These differences gave our ancillary products a brand identity, which after receiving audience feedback, we found that we didn't have. We took on board what our audience wanted and we have now achieved this successful change.
