Matthew Simpson

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

Design

One of the main ways in which we have displayed and portrayed our artist as the main actor on our digipak is by displaying him on both the front and inside covers. This means that he will be catching the audience's eye whenever they look at the digipak, therefore signalising his significance.

The main reason for us choosing to do this with our digipack is because we were heavily inspired by Calvin Harris' album “18 Months”. This album uses the same style, where the main actor is shown on the front of the digipak, displaying his importance to the audience. The main reason for us being inspired by Calvin Harris is because he is a very well known house music artist, which means that overall he is a very convention choice to take inspiration from for our digipak.

Overall I think the combination between my main product and ancillary texts is very effective because they share similar conventions which allows the audience to distinguish exactly what genre they belong to, and what we were aiming for when they were created.

Mise En Scene

One of the main ways in which we have displayed and portrayed our artist as the main actor on our digipak is by displaying him on both the front and inside covers. This means that he will be catching the audience's eye whenever they look at the digipak, therefore signalising his significance.

The main reason for us choosing to do this with our digipack is because we were heavily inspired by Calvin Harris' album “18 Months”. This album uses the same style, where the main actor is shown on the front of the digipak, displaying his importance to the audience. The main reason for us being inspired by Calvin Harris is because he is a very well known house music artist, which means that overall he is a very convention choice to take inspiration from for our digipak.

Overall I think the combination between my main product and ancillary texts is very effective because they share similar conventions which allows the audience to distinguish exactly what genre they belong to, and what we were aiming for when they were created.

Costume

The use of costumes was another way that we were trying to promote our artist. We decided that the costume our main artist should wear a white t-shirt, black jeans and Vans shoes. This is a very generic and conventional choice of costume for the genre we had chosen because this is the style of clothing that other house music artists such as Calvin Harris choose to wear.

We displayed our main artist wearing this clothing in both our music video and our digipak. This is because we wanted them to both match in order to create an effective combination between the two.

Overall, I thought that our choice of costume was very effective when promoting our artist because of it being similar to Calvin Harris, and a lot of teenagers are generically targeted as the audience when he produced his music and his music videos.

Portrayal of the Artists

We decided upon using two separate artists in our music video. We also decided that they should be displayed and portrayed in a very similar way to each other. Yousef and Vincent were the main characters in our music video, and our idea was to present them as generic teenage boys wearing typical and generic clothing for their age group. The main reason for us choosing to do this is because we hoped that our music video would be more appealing to our target audience in the way that they would be able to relate certain aspects of the music video to themselves. The two main actors and myself were also shown to be moving to a meeting destination throughout the music video, this is because meeting up and socialising is a main generic convention of house music videos.

In our ancillary texts we chose to wear the same costume in order to create the best effect an to minimize any potential confusion that may be caused from different costumes. The reason for it creating the best effect possible is because people will easily be able to see that they are related to one another in certain aspects, and will be able to create links between the two.

Overall, me and my group believe that we portray our artists very well in both our ancillary tasks and final music video. This is because of the use of simplicity in our artist's costumes, it enables to audience to recognise who they are; further promoting their popularity.

Target Audience

I believe that I have been able to create an effective looking digipak that targets my audience very well. This is because I have used suitable images of both my actors and generic conventions such as smoke effects and lights. This therefore means that my target audience will easily be able to identify the genre that both our ancillary tasks and music video are.

The main reason for this is because of my audience feedback. The majority of my positive feedback was about the costumes and the actors in general. They commented on how effective the costumes are, in which it enables them to easily identify the main artists and what genre they belong to.

Overall, I believe that we linked our target audience with both our final music video and ancillary tasks very well. This is because we were able to make our main artists stand our directly to the target audience of choice, through the use of costumes and locations. As a result of this, I think that our final music video and ancillary tasks went together very well, and enabled us to receive excellent feedback.