Evaluation Question Two

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

The song I decided to use for my music video was I'm Not Done from the self titled album by Fever Ray. 

To accompany the video I thought that the best combination, for a song of this genre (ambient/electronic/trip hop), was a digipak and a magazine advert that would link to each other and the video itself through common themes such as contrasting colour.

To link the three products I took a screenshot from the video, along with some editing in Photoshop, and used it as the album front cover. I took the album front cover, and used it as the main image in the magazine advert, which I did following research into how real magazine adverts have been produced for music albums.  Another method I employed to link the products was to use the same (and similar) font(s) across all the ancillary texts. 

I tried out a number of fonts to try and decide which to use in through both the digipak and advert.

The font I decided on was Courier New (the first from above), which I used for the name of the artist and single. I chose this font as a starting point as it resembled a typewriter, which gave it a rudimentary style as the typewriter is old fashioned and not as complex as the methods used to type in the present. I wanted to make the font look simple and understated so as the audience would not be distracted by any fancy fonts or attractive colouring. To distinguish between the artist name and the single I made the single name in italics, which made it separate from the artist name without being too different.

For the magazine advert I wanted to keep the same fonts, but there was more to be written on it. I decided to use fonts that looked similar to this one, but not exactly the same so as to add some variation.

(Taken from the magazine advert)

(Rockwell Font, used to make the quotes stand out from the other text)

In terms of linking the ancillary products to the music video, I think I did a fairly effective job and the three can be easily associated with each other.

I aimed to build the artist as a fairly reclusive, dark, serious and soulful woman, but also strong willed and determined. I think the setting of the video gave it the reclusive and dark aspect I desired, but it was harder to make her seem strong willed. Her physical movements during the last verse before the bridge make her look the most determined, but looking strong willed is something that is hard to pull off in a music video. I decided to drop the strong willed aspect of her personality, as the other aspects still created the desired effect and being determined does generally connote being strong willed. 

The front cover takes a shot from the video of the artist while running, which stands out from other more common poses that female artists take for the front cover of their album. This is done to emphasise her uniqueness and the fact that she has not deliberately prepared for the shot connotes that what she does comes naturally to her and she doesn't need to put on a fake pose. The contrast between her and the woods in the background makes her stand out and connotes her independence, while the shadow cast by her face across her neck keeps the dark overtone I wanted to have throughout the three products.

The magazine advert is very similar to the digipak in the way it builds the image of the artist, but it also emphasises her more as she has an entire image to herself as the text it is above it. The woods to the left of her makes her stand out even more as she takes the central position. The black borders above and below the main image also add to the theme of darkness and seriousness. The white text on black background fits with the theme of contrast along with the record label which is white on black as well.

In conclusion, I think that I have managed to effectively use the combination of the music video, digipak and advert to create an artist with a particular image. One thing I would improve on is to make the contrast theme more obvious during the video, as there is only one part (the line that goes "Do you laugh while screaming") where there is clear contrast and it is mainly something I realised after having filmed the rest of the video.