Evaluation - Part 2

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

To make this part of my evaluation more visually pleasing, I decided to record my answer and use a green screen to show my main product and ancillary texts as I discuss them.  This is something new we learnt to do this year, which I find interesting to use for analysing texts.

Green Screen Recording:

Script:

I wanted to have consistency between my main product of the music video and ancillary texts of the digipak and poster, with the main focus to be the artist and her distinctive style.  To do this I used the same setting of the drama studio, costume of the black lace flowy dress, and make-up with bold red lips for the three different pieces.  I used bright white lights to create a spotlight against the black background and framed my artist in the centre to make her the focus of the pieces, almost acting as a halo around her.

I emphasised the vintage costume and make-up further by editing the products, using the 'interview' filter on Bullet Looks for my main product, and using a tutorial I found on YouTube to create a vintage effect on Photoshop for my ancillary texts.  This costume, make-up and editing conveys the unique elements of my artist, which is a convention of the indie/pop genre.

To continue with this vintage image of my artist, I initially chose fonts similar to a typewriter for my ancillary texts.  However, they looked out of place against the bold images of my artist, and I decided to change this and use a simpler font.  I chose a serif font and spaced out the letters, which seemed more professional and added to the unique aspects of my artist.  I made the font white to contrast against the black background, which meant it was more legible.

I originally intended to have various images such as Polaroid photos and a map and images of London for the inside panels of my digipak, yet changed this to single images of my artist.  I did this as she is intended to be a new emerging artist and the focus should be on her to promote and sell her image, relating to Goodwin's theory.

For my CD designs, I edited the CDs to look like vinyls to link with the vintage elements of my artist's image.  I placed an image of my artist in the middle of both of these CDs, similar to vinyls I had researched, which was the same image placed on the panels behind the CDs.  The fact I included two CDs instead of just one also gave my digipak extra content, emphasising the special collector's item idea of this ancillary text as well as the individuality of my artist, which would mean more sales for my artist.

Posters advertising albums often feature the front cover of the album as the main image, or an image of the artist with a smaller image of the album cover.  I opted for the second of these choices, continuing with the bold single image of my artist and placing an image of the album cover in the bottom right hand corner, as people tend to read left to right.  I also used the same font, attempting again to link the ancillary texts.  To further promote the artist, I included social media logos of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram like on the digipak.  This makes her accessible on more than one platform, particularly with younger people in their teens and twenties who are familiar with this technology, which are my target audience.

Overall, I think my main product and ancillary texts link together well.  They all convey clear conventions of my indie/pop genre, mainly due to the setting, costume and make-up.  There is also significant focus on the artist and her image, which reinforces Goodwin’s theory.  I think they communicate key aspects of conventions of the type of ancillary texts they are, such as the digipak with different panels that link and extra material to make it more of a collector’s item.  Due to all of these factors, I think my media product and ancillary texts would be very successful with my target audience.