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

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

My A2 media project required my group to create a music video for our main product and for our ancillary task we had to create a digipak and magazine poster. For the ancillary task, my images are all similar as they all showcase the artist in his iconic clothing and props that we have gathered from our music video. I done this in order make the whole package more recognisable, by keeping to one theme, which is love that is mainly signified by the rose and this was idea was taken from the video. I researched theories that are relevant to image representation, such as ‘Uses and Gratifications’ by Blumer and Katz, which suggests people use media texts, in order to gain gratification or pleasure from it. In regards to my music video, I believe that it fulfills the audience a gratification through the ability to recognise the identity of the person. Therefore, I focused my ancillary tasks on using recognisable and iconic imagery, which I used across the whole production.

For my advanced portfolio, I created a digipak and magazine poster for my artist Mike Swanson to promote our music video. Before entering production, I researched several different pop artists in order to discover significant marketing methods used in the appearance of the promotional package to reach the targeted audience. I found that using similar imagery from the video and applying it to the promotional package is important because this will help the audience recognise the artist through using similar content in the text. For example, I used colours from the imagery and applied it around my ancillary tasks, whilst still showing the actual image that I took the colours from. The colour I used for majority of my promotional package was red for the titles, which I took from the rose. Also, I used the colours which express the artist’s mood and emotions experienced in the music video. For example, my digipak and magazine poster have a grey background. This colour usually emits a depressing and moody feeling, due to the lack of vibrancy, which represents the artist’s feelings after breaking up. Thus, I have created a connection between things from the video and the promotional package, which the audience would recognise as a familiar image. Therefore, I have created a brand image because the audience will recognise my artist for the different types of colours I have used throughout my production. These idea was used by Coldplay in the promotions for their album. They used Chris Martin’s iconic rainbow coloured piano as the main theme for their album. Therefore, when Coldplay fans see rainbow styled texts or the rainbow piano they will recognise that this is Coldplay’s production as this has become their brand image. Also, I have altered our record label to suit the imagery of the album by making it red, therefore giving the digipak exclusive value as a piece of memorabilia, similar ideas were used on vinyl records.

Additionally, I portray the artist as an open person about his relationships in the ancillary tasks. The digipak shows the artist looking at the camera, as if breaking the ‘fourth wall’. He is holding his rose, which signifies his love life and he is openly standing to the audience as if he wants to express the feeling and emotions he has gone through in his relationships(this would link to the album because it's based on his relationships). Therefore, this will attract the audience to listen to the album to find out more about the artist’s love life because with celebrities their love life seems to be a selling point to some fans as they want to find out more about them. This is similar to Sam Smith’s album ‘In the lonely hour’ he is sitting in front of the camera with a thoughtful expression. As a result, the audience would have to buy the album to recognise the thoughts in his head, which would be expressed by his songs and I believe my digipak would have the same effect.

The name of our album is ‘Flowers’ which links to the concept of love. The artist’s album is purely based on his relationships and their downfalls, therefore we called it ‘Flowers’ because it shows that he has failed in more than one relationship. The font for the album is red with a elegant and fancy style because this links to the imagery in the album and the generic conventions of pop, which requires the production to look ‘popular’ and ‘cool’. The font I used was inspired by Bruno Mars’ album cover for ‘XXIV’, which contains an elegant font that supports the idea of ‘popularity’ in the video and creates a recognisable visual. The image for the poster and digipak show the artist in the centre of the shot and main focus of the image with the rose in his hand by his side. The rose signifies the artist’s love life, however in the poster a greater idea of the artist’s personality is given away. The audience can decode his facial expression, which shows that he is smug, whilst holding the rose. This suggests that he plays around with his love and he doesn’t settle because he holds a great deal of arrogance/confidence that is implied by a small smile and tilted eyebrow. A similar concept was used in Charlie Puth’s album ‘Nine track mind’. The artist is the main focus of the image and his whole expression shows pride in himself, which is implied by the fact that he is posing for the camera and holding his hand to his chest. I applied this concept by presenting the artist as the main focus of the image and expressing the artist’s personality. Also, the idea of the type of shot for the poster was inspired posters that featured Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran, which both focus on the artist as the main image.

For the magazine poster I kept the same concept of using iconic images and different colours from the music video. I also used the same font for the artist’s name and album to make it more recognisable to the audience. I put the main titles that contain the release date and name of the album in bold at the top of the poster because when people buy magazines they see the top of the magazine. Therefore, if I place the most important piece of writing at the top, the audience would find it easy to spot the poster advertising the album. Furthermore, I have included a short list of the biggest hits from the album on the side of the poster to prove to buyers that the contents of the album are popular and successful. Below that I have placed a short review from another magazine this will help the audience recognise that this album has been verified by an expert. Therefore, the audience will be more likely to buy the album. Moreover, I added the names of all social media links at the bottom of the poster. The audience can get links to areas where they can interact with the artist, find out more information about the artist and the label. Also, from the website the audience can get them exclusive content. Therefore, this will help the artist build his fan base because majority of the target audience are frequent users of the internet and as a result they could easily show their support for the artist online. Finally, I have included a small exclusive logo of our record label from the digipak to show that this is our artist and production, therefore the audience can recognise that our record label has produced success. This could convince the audience to explore more of the artists that we have on our roster. I didn’t include the logo on the front of the digipak because I wanted to keep the image very clear to the audience, so their main focus is on the artist and the album. If they wanted to find out more they would have to check the back of the cover.

By creating a magazine poster and digipak it allowed me to promote my music video and artist. I made the promotional package to give the audience an idea of what the contents of the album and the artist’s personality and life. Therefore, we were able to give a dominant reading implied that our artist is a hopeless romantic. The facial expressions and visuals that clearly show that he is depressed by the fact that he can't keep a stable relationship because he falls in love with others too easily. Also, I believe I expressed the conventions of pop in our video and applied it to our promotional package to an extent where to find out more the audience would have to watch the video. Finally, through the use of synergy I was able to effectively promote our video by showing images relating to our video in the promotional package. In the poster and digipak I show the artist and the rose, which are both important images from the video and this as a whole makes its more recognisable. Synergy was used to effectively promote the video by giving audiences different methods of viewing and decoding the imagery from the album. I believe that my ancillary tasks were successful because they give the audience a glimpse of the album, therefore encouraging them to buy the album to find out more about the storyline.