Evaluation Question 2

FINAL: Question 2. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Evaluation: Question 2

How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?

Evaluation Question 2 - How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?

The magazine article was inspired by this NME article

On the other hand, my digipac does not show my band together, which is a common convention used by other media products already on the market. My reasoning for this was to create a retro feel as it is typical of the indie genre and so to fit into this, I would have to use certain styles which would attract this kind of market group.

The use of artwork in my digipac and poster may be considered to be quite pretentious, however, I think that this is all part of the branding with my products as our video shows pretentious elements too, and so makes the link between my main product and ancillary texts actually quite effective.

What I mean by this is that my digipac has a closed narrative. Some people may look for artistic, deeper meanings within my product, however, it is all part of the disjuncture and there are no greater meanings. Our music video uses exactly the same idea; there are arty ideas, such as: the banana and monkey scene; the cocoa drinking in a boat on land etc. These ideas all have artistic features and may be considered quite pretentious as they use random, artistic locations and ideas without the intention to impose a narrative. There are no deeper meanings with these ideas, they’re created with a sole purpose to entertain a niche market (the indie genre), and this is what I think we have done well.

My digipac, poster and video do not show direct links between one another because this is not something I have seen often used in the indie genre. From the digipacs I have seen from the likes of Two Door Cinema Club, Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend, they do not use the imagery featured in their music videos, however, it is conventional to show links between the digipac and video with other genres such as pop, R&B, Blues etc. As they may wear the same clothes or follow a certain theme as this is all part of their branding and how they are memorable to their audience – this is a form of advertising for the artist.

DRAFT Evaluation Question 2 - How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?

I am very happy with how all of the products I have created have turned out, however, I do not think that my music video shows links to my digipac and poster but I think the combination of the products does still work well.

Our music video uses a fast-paced and high tempo song, which means that the video needs to use bright colours, lots of action and people having fun; otherwise the video will show no or little link between the visuals and the music – a convention that cannot be ignored when creating a music video. An example is Vampire Weekend’s quick paced song of ‘A-Punk’:

However, my digipac shows no link or combination between itself and the music video as there are no cross-linking images – only the name of the song on the track list on the back cover. Steve, the lead singer, is featured in my digipac, but you would not be able to tell as the shot is side on and could be any person. On the other hand, the digipac and the poster are very closely linked as they both use the same image, like Two Door Cinema Club do with theirs:

 

This use of the same images creates a sense of branding and makes the audience link images with the band and its music. Although the poster and digipac show very close links, they do not link without perception or deep analysis. But I do not see this as a major problem as many artists in the indie genre show no links whatsoever between their album artwork and their music videos. For example, Two Door Cinema Club use the cat image in any of their music videos that were produced with that album.

Nor do Magnetic Man with their black and silver line imagery:

    

Or Arcade Fire:

These images are simply eye-catching images that when the audience see them will be instantly reminded of that certain band (they act as an advertisement and brand the products). Therefore by not including a linking element, I am not challenging any forms or conventions, I am simply using these conventions and perhaps developing them further.

DRAFT ANSWER: Question 2. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

I don't think my final digipak entirely matches the music video. However, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing because I have seen it commonly used within the indie genre, which is the one our band is classified under.


I think my original digipak idea gave the impression of 'branding' much more than my final idea. This is because the band's name is 'The Skeleton Boys' and on the front of the album cover was four different coloured skeletons. This gave each band member their own image, and the idea was then reinforced when you opened up the album to see each coloured skeleton have their own panel supposedly 'singing' parts of the band's songs. However, there wasn't a clear link between my album and poster and I believe this is where my original idea failed. If you look at other artists album and poster to promote it, they usually match so the consumer can link the two together. Whereas in my idea, there was not.

 

I definitely believe my final idea for digipak and poster has a clear link between which then goes on to help create a sense of branding between those two products and the music video. The main link between the three products is definitely the name of the band. The band's name has the word 'skeleton' in, so by using images of a model with a skeleton face painted on should help make the poster and album more recognisable as to who it's by and what they are advertising. I don't think it was essential that the digipak had to have similarities with the music video because it's nothing something typicial of the indie genre.
Vampire weekend are a good example of this typical convention. The first single released from their second album 'Contra' that had an official video was 'Cousins'. After watching the video and looking at the album cover and poster and then comparing it against the video, there is no link between them. This reinforces my idea that the album and poster should match but it is not a necssity for them to match the video. I have observed that the idea of all products matching is usually only seen within the pop genre.





I think all three products will appeal to my target audience but in a different way. The video is "uber quirky" and fun which is what you would expect with an upbeat like One Night In October. The whole disjuncture and 'antics' in the video  help to portray the band as  a care-free group of people having a laugh which is seen often from indie bands. If I was to carry on with the idea of fun through to the digipak stages I think it could have put off the older range of my target audience, so by lowering the tone with darker colours and a real life image instead of drawings, I was able to raise the maturity level of the band and hopefully making them appeal to the whole age range of 15-25 year olds.

PLANNING: Question 2. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

-The idea of skeleton/ skull on the painted face matches the name of the band.

-Nothing matches from the video,

-Say what I haven't included e.g images of the band or similarities between the video and the album and poster.

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

My digipak did go through allot of changes but the main idea stayed the same. As I have already said in my evaluation question 1 the main influences for my ancillary products came from a combination of the Album cover and poster from ‘The Vaccines’ album ‘What Did You Expect From The Vaccines’ and the album cover from ‘Vampire Weekend’ and their album ‘Contra’ both of these artists fit in with our genre or indie/alternative.

My draft digipak scored 6/10 which is average but wasn’t good enough for me. I think this was because even though you could see the influences in the album cover there was no influence from my music video. I was also advised to take the album name ‘Run’ off, this was something I had taken time thinking about and did conduct research into it from my peers and even though they liked having the album name on it I eventually took the advice of someone with more knowledge and removed ‘RUN’. Also the image in the front needed to be ‘re-created’ and have more influence from my music video; to task this I decided to test out the location where we shot out band performance. Although these were good photos they were ‘too good’ the styling still wasn’t right. It took me a while to think about how to style Meg to look ‘uncool’. To fix this I asked my fellow group member Jess who had very good ideas and using a combination of mine and Megs own clothes we managed to create two styles. Next we needed to find a better location. To do this I looked through our draft music video and settled on my garden where we shot the footage for the boat scenes. Looking at the photo I got Meg to pull ‘fun’ posses to fit in with the upbeat style of the band.

For my poster draft I scored 9/10 and the only comment was ‘its either brilliant or abysmal’ so there wasn’t much I could change apart from the photo for it to match the one on my final digipak. Because I used the same photo from the digipak and the same font I felt there was a direct sense of branding. I also used the same shade of pink over the album cover, back and wash on the poster.