Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Evaluation Question 2 Draft

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


For my A2 Media Coursework, I was required to create a music video as my main product along with my other ancillary tasks: the magazine album advert and the digipak. To make the combination of these tasks effective, I wanted to keep a similar theme and house style in order to make it clear that each product is promoting the same artist and also to suit my chosen music genre: rock.

The purpose of my main task is to promote the single as well as to help the fans connect to the band, whereas existing fans will continue to idolise the main female singer. Using a heartbreak narrative along with close-up shots of the artist displaying her sad emotions will give the fans more of an insight to the song yet the fans will also expect a typical rock artist appearance, as the song is by a rock band. In my music video, I presented my model as a typical female rock artist – this included her wearing a typical rock outfit such as a skull vest top with shorts, black tights and black biker boots. She also wore heavy dark make-up and the colours I included in my video were also quite dull, giving an overall dark theme. For example my time lapse in London was taken in the dark at a later time in the day. I feel this highlighted a sad theme within my video, therefore linked to the narrative. Dull colours are also quite common to find in rock music videos, as opposed to bright colours which will normally you would be expected to find in a pop music video. Red was also a main colour within my video as the painting scenes included many close-up shots of a rose, an iconic romance prop. For my album advert poster and digipak I also used dark colours such as black and dark red to link to the theme and start to create a particular house style. Using this type of lighting within my video as well as these particular colours within my main task and my ancillary tasks also helps portray the rock music genre.

I believe the main role of my magazine album advert is to stand out to the reader, and instantly give off the impression that it is advertising a rock music album. It will also need to include relevant information such as the release date, the platforms it is available on and reviews from respectable and trustworthy music magazines like The Rolling Stone and Mojo. I feel my poster serves these purposes as it includes an intriguing image of a rose/photo on fire which instantly links to the tile of the album ‘Light Me Up’. This image is also quite unique, in the sense it is not simply an image of the artist, which many album posters are, but rather an interesting object. This is also a concept quite commonly used for rock genre advertisements as the band’s appearance and how attractive they are normally isn’t important. I have also used fire in other images which appear on my digipak to highlight that these products are all promoting the same album. As well as similar images, I have also used the same fonts to again display a particular house style.

In my opinion consumers who purchase digipaks are normally dedicated fans of the artist, especially as today most music is normally purchased online, therefore I believe the digipak should be more personal but still include typical rock genre conventions. For my digipak I have included images of the main female artist as I believe she will be a main selling point in regards to the band. In these images my model is also wearing the same outfit she wore for the music video, linking both tasks together and highlighting the rock image. Many of these images are also in black and white, as from previous research into the rock genre products including past digipaks from the actual band The Pretty Reckless, many of them use black and white photos. I have therefore edited pictures of my model in black and white, however I have also included other significant images of other objects, for example a rose. This combines all of my tasks effectively as close-up shots of a rose have also been used in my music video. Referring back to the personal aspects of digipaks, I have also included a message for the fans on the inside of the digipak. This is a typical convention of digipaks for all types of music genre and the font that I have used, especially on the cover of my digipak, are the same fonts presented on my poster.

Therefore I think the combination of my music video along with my ancillary tasks are effective as they all work well together and it is clear they all belong to the same band by the house style, including the same fonts and the same colour scheme. They also give off the impression that they belong to the rock genre because many rock genre products use dark colours, images of women normally wearing quite controversial outfits to appeal to the male fans and relevant and appropriate props on their digipaks and posters, rather than images of the band themselves.



Overall, I believe both my main and my ancillary tasks portray a particular genre by the type of style they present through the selection of images, colours and fonts.

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