A2
MEDIA STUDIES
.EVALUATION.
How effective is the combination of your main product and both of your ancillary tasks? As I started A2 coursework consisting of a music video, magazine advert and digipack I knew that I wanted them to all link with the same house style running throughout all of my products. I believed this would not only make the products
look professional but also allow them to be easily recognisable to consumers. Despite this, all the products have different purposes and I aimed to fulfil each different purpose by the end of the course. The conventional main purpose of a music video is to entertain the target audience, which is what my purpose was with my music video to Oh Wonders “Technicolor beat”. The target audience can gain entertainment by watching the visuals with in the video that go with the song especially the performance aspect of my
actress dancing in the black box that I have incorporated. I believe I achieved the purpose of entertaining my target audience as I included a variety of different visuals through different shot types including close ups and wide shots,
locations (black box, bedroom and outside) and performances that would allow the audience to remain engaged throughout the video. My audience can also interact with the video itself as my actress frequently looks directly at the camera which breaks the 4th wall and allows the audience to feel as if my performer is looking directly at them. This allows a personal identity aspect of my music video as the audience can personally connect with my artist and understand how she is feeling emotionally whilst also following the narrative of the story. My music video
also uses a variety of locations during the narrative, all my locations beside the black box are part of everyday lifestyle (bedroom, outside) so are therefore relatable to the audience which allows them to make a connection with my performer’s lifestyle. Therefore the settings I have chosen in my music video all appeal to a variety of audiences providing entertainment as well as allowing them to follow the narrative, it serves as a purpose of a music video and is very effective as the main product that my ancillary products were created upon. A magazine advert should advertise a product, such as a music album in the case of my A2 coursework. It should sell the product as well as informing the audience (uses and Grafications theory) about the artist. I didn’t have an actual idea of what I wanted my final magazine advert to look like at the beginning of the course, so during the course I allowed my ideas to develop whilst making the music video through the creation of my research tasks such as my mood board and research into existing products, I think this enabled me to be more creative as it meant I was not having to stick to a plan. I knew I wanted to reflect the same theme as my music video as it would allow them to be recognisable as promoting the same product. Therefore I
made sure that the artist who featured in my music video was the face of my magazine advert; this allowed the two different products to be linked and easily recognizable to the audience. Additionally I also wanted my magazine advert to represent the genre of my music video, so I decided to use a similar colour scheme to the colour grading used in the video, alongside the use of the same artist meant that there was a direct link between the two products. In order to inform the audience about my chosen artists and her success I decided to include reviews from trustworthy well known newspaper sources such as “The Independent” this would allow my audience to feel confident when purchasing the album as they know the reviews are all genuine. I decided to include a sell line which reads “includes the hit single Technicolor beat” as this links back to the music video
as that is what single the video was made for so most of my audience would have hopefully seen the video and therefore be wanting to buy the product. Overall this allows my advert to work effectively alongside the music video as it has direct references to the music video which allows a connection to be made between the two products and by sticking to the same colour scheme makes the products visually pleasing. A digipack is slightly more advanced than a magazine advert as it is promoting the entire album rather than just the single, digipack can also be seen as collectable items for some fans which is why I made sure it was of the highest quality and being why I included a personal message from the artists as I found this is an aspect which make digipack collectables. The main role of the digipack is to promote and sell the
album to not only the target audience but also to an array of audiences who may not have heard of the artist / group before. I therefore had to make sure that my digipack would not only inform the fans of “Oh Wonders” new music but also make sure it showed new audiences a bit of information of the artists and demonstrated the genre through the use of images and text choices. This encouraged me to make the whole digipack eye catching and use colours and fonts that would stand out against one another. The font I used was called “Moon flower bold”, I found this on a website called “Dafont” and finding this font gave my digipack an authentic indie look which reflected the genre of the music. I kept to the same colour scheme as the one used on my magazine advert, this kept consistency between all of my products which helped them remain professional looking to the
audience. However in one of my digipack images I adjusted the colour scheme so that it looked darker, this was to add emphasise to the “eerie� dark effect I wanted to give off to the audience. I decided to include a personal message from Oh Wonder to their fans with a signature so that the audience felt like the message was individually directed towards them allowing them to create a personal connection. This was a great convention to include as this would be interesting for the new audience to read / look
at so they had a cleared idea on the artist’s personality. The track list is a typical convention of a digipack so I made sure that I included that, below the track list I also included all the important recording details so people had an idea what recording company the artists belong too as this is information that the new audience may be interested in. Therefore I believe that by combining the digipack to the other two products as they all feature the same songs and artists this would make the product look recognisable and
link them all seamlessly. Overall, I believe that the combination of all three of my products was highly effective as they all link together well and allow the products to sell one another whilst giving a large amount of detail on the artist. I think I could have incorporated two more pages onto the digipack as six page digipack are more common than the four pagers, but overall I believe all my colours / choice of photos all work well together and the products link well together whilst looking good individually.