Evaluation question 2

EVALUATION QUESTION 2

How Effective is the Combination of Your Main

Product and Ancillary Texts?

Links Between the Texts

The most simple link to be made is through the images in our branding, the picture of the girl and boy walking away holding hands was used as the only image on our advert, and also within our digipack.

This is a rather iconic image for the band to be recognised through. The image of the microphone on the floor is also used in both the video and the digipack, and was in fact almost going to be the motif we used.

The images represent the brand, creating a clear motif, which should be what connects to the audience and makes them remember our band when the images appear.

The Reason We Made These Links

The links made used these images as we felt they best highlighted the key elements of the type of band and music we were creating. The microphone is a symbolic picture meant to show a focus on music instead of the artist, as there is no one holding it, it exists on its own, and a theme quite often seen in punk rock videos. My research showed me that punk rock was less of a music style than it was a movement away from the conformity of mainstream music and fashion of the times. As such it was often viewed as ‘rebellious’ and ‘non-conformist’, with the most common descriptor being banded around being ‘anarchy’, and as such the Sex Pistols ‘Anarchy in the UK’ became a prime example of punk rock. However, this theme is more commonly seen with older punk rock bands, and not with the direction we chose, however ignoring the aesthetic image of a band was important, and something we endeavoured to carry across to our texts.

The iconic image we created was the couple holding hands, as it was an emotional point in the video and as such showed the band appealing to the audience on an emotional level. However, using the singer as one of the actors draws focus to there being a face behind the music, which is interesting to younger people attracted to aesthetics, although not our target audience, whilst also tying the song into the narrative to enforce the idea of them being one.

Illustrative Links Between the Texts

Within the Video Within the Digipack Within the Advert

Influences Through Research

The links between the digipack and advert contain shots from the music video, which was influenced heavily by our research. I found there was a mix of what artists did and didn’t include in their albums, probably because of the non-conformity of the genre. However, I did find that some bands, both old and new, used similar imagery in their branding, for instance the Ramones wore distinctive clothing, leather jackets and ripped jeans, and this was something carried through both their career and their albums and videos. My Chemical Romance wore school uniforms for both the video to their single ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise)’ and also in their picture on the inside cover to their album. This shows a similarity between ‘original’ punk rock, and the ‘new’ punk rock music.

We included the microphone image to promote our idea of ‘music not the artist’ because our research showed us the original punk rock bands tended to focus their image around the music, leaving the band as secondary. The Sex Pistols album I deconstructed included no pictures of the band at all, just the album title, band name and track listing. Although our message isn’t quite a strong or raucous as the Sex Pistols, we felt that keeping this theme was important.

Using an ‘emotional hook’ for the album was something we saw on My Chemical Romance’s album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, the cover depicts a hand-drawn image of ‘Helena’ which is a link to the song of the same name, written about the death of the singer’s grandmother.

The Effectiveness of Our Products

Our target audience feedback showed us that we made very clear links between the three texts, and that people understood what it was we were trying to create. This is good because if they didn’t understand the message between the digipack, album and video then it would mean our motifs weren’t bold enough, and the audience would not understand the story we are trying to put across.

The links between the text communicated to the audience that we were a modern day punk rock band, and as such had a harder edge than most other bands.

We felt our links were effective because they are backed up by research, our audience understand them and they seem to get across our message whilst still maintaining a single focus narrative.