Evaluation - Question 2

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

Our media products link strongly. The ancillary texts and the main product link very obviously visually as they use the same images. The front cover of the digipak and the image used in the advert are the same and it is taken from the same shot in the video. This is the shot at the start of the video, the one that shows us the titles for the band and the song. This creates a visual link for the audience to identify with and means that the ancillary texts are directly relatable to the main product. So without knowing what it is, anyone who has watched the music video will recognise the poster and digipak and vice versa.

There is also a set colour scheme across the products. The use of yellow was established in the video and this was another use of irony in its connotations to happiness and the sun, despite the lack of these things within the context of the video. The purple/blue and blue tones within the rest of the text connote the true emotion of the context of the video and the lyrics of the song. This contrasts against the yellow and will intruige the audience as the two colours are pretty much exact opposites. The two opposite colours also link to the use of the two locations, the two sides of the story. One the happy memories and the other the sad reality of the lead singers current emotional state. The font, as I have already mentioned, was taken from the bands previous albums and this means that it keeps in uniform with their previous releases, meaning that any fans would recognise any of these products without having seen the other, widening our audience further. This is also important as it the band aren't pictured on the front of the digipak or on the advert and this means that the font is the only signifier of the product being theirs without actually reading it, so using the font they have always used was important as it means they are recognised without their physical presence. This is lacking as it is a convention of the indie genre for the band not to be pictured as it fits with the whole 'its all about the music' style.

However the band are featured inside the digipak and this is challenges some of the conventions because in some cases the band aren't pictured at all on their digipaks, the same for other bands within the genre. But instead of having them plain as day visible we placed the images of the band stood infront of the beach huts across the inside and covered them with the blank shot of the hut doors over the cd's lining it up perfectly so that the band are only visible when the cd's are removed, hiding their presence, still not promoting their image but more the music. Almost like it says 'play the cd to see me'. Its still putting the music first. Another thing that shows the music being put first is the information present on the bottom of the advert and the bottom of the back of the digipak. This includes the record label logo and information about the record label and links to various social media sites relating to the band and the label allowing the audience to look into the band and their music even more.