How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?

By Damian Zlotorzyski

A2 Media Studies- Evaluation post 2

My two ancillary tasks had a purpose to promote the main media product (the music video), both the digipak and magazine poster were designed for the purpose of bringing more attention and attraction through various promotion techniques such as synergy in order to promote the main product. I have constructed my magazine poster and digipak in a similar way in order to represent similarity across the two ancillary tasks. This enables the audiences to easily identify the two media products and relate them to the music video, this will allow the viewer to know the production belongs to Urban Vibe Records (UVR) and work as a trademark.

I have used the same colour scheme across both the magazine poster and digipak using a range of; green, black and red, this makes the two ancillary pieces very identifiable. This has previously been done by artist’s such as Eminem in the album ‘Recovery’, the artist uses the same theme and colour scheme through the digipak and magazine poster for his ancillary pieces. This allows audiences to be able to clearly identify Eminem's production pieces and allows it to work as a trademark for the artist.

Furthermore, my artist ‘Run Down’ is presented on the centre of both the magazine poster and the digipak being the main focus and attention of both the ancillary pieces. However, the artist appears to be with his back to the camera not revealing his face, this can come across as mysterious and be decoded by the audiences in many different ways, the dominant reading of this would be that ‘Run down’ is embarrassed of his lifestyle and that he has no good memories to reminisce about signifying that every single day is the same thing for him. This concept can be seen in Eminem's album ‘Curtain Call’ This album and digipak does not reveal Eminem's face or identity which intrigues the viewer to ask questions if it's even Eminem on the magazine poster and the digipak cover, this plays a massive part in the promotion of the album as it makes the viewer want to watch the music video in order to understand the concept behind it. Overall I’ve taken this approach taken by Eminem and applied it to my music video in order for my two ancillary texts to promote one another and force the audiences to watch my music video.

I have used the background colour as an array of green colours in order to convey the generic conventions of the artist which are in relation to drugs, the colour green can be correlated to cannabis. This idea has been further enforced by the CD cover having a cannabis leaf in the album name ‘Exile’ replacing the letter ‘x’ in the word with a cannabis leaf. This makes a direct link between our artist and the consumption of drugs. Furthermore, I have added in a white cloudy effects across the digipak which can be identified as smoke fumes and clouds created by the artist. The use of drugs and interaction with the narcotic was the main ideology within the production of the music video. We have tried to portray this through Stuart Hall’s theory of reception by trying to enforce the dominant reading is negative, as the route of consuming narcotics and being around drugs is a negative life style.

This is usually portrayed as a good thing in the generic Hip Hop music video as seen by artists such as Tyga and Wiz Khalifa, they portray the image of consuming drugs a positive ideology and they are proud of it and seen doing regularly. This process is constantly repeated in there music videos, where as on my music video this is identified as a socially negative act. Additionally, in relation to mise-en-scene I have transformed the lightning to make the artist the main focus of the production, I have enhanced the brightness of the image in order to make the artist stand out more and represent that he is the main focus point. Better visibility and Lighting is commonly seen focused on the relevant subjects, in our case the artist is the relevant subject so I have made him stand out making the artist the primary focus.