How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?

Overview

In the ancillary texts, Ant wears similar clothing so he is able to put across his personality and the genre of the music more clearly. This is important to an audience, as he shows him varied and allows them to differentiate the album cover from the music video.

Links: Main Product and Ancillary Texts

The cinematography that shows many centred shots, in both the music video and ancillary texts. This is an example of continuity.

The simple yet effective colour scheme that is reflective of the genre and doesn’t take too much attention from the narrative. The ancillary texts match with the use of black, white and additional red.

The puppet is used in all products and references the colour red to a larger extent.

The name of the album ‘Puppet Show’.

Audience Response to Links

Female, aged 18: The simplicity is really nice and I agree that the muted colours link to the genre. I like that you used the puppet in all aspects, as he plays a big part.

Male, aged 18: I really like the unique narrative and use of the puppet. The cinematography all clearly links, which looks really good.

Male, aged 17: I like the use of continuity throughout everything, as it all links really well together.

Female, aged 18: It’s clearly a deep narrative, which I think is really unique and nice.

Colour Scheme

Before creating the ancillary texts, I created various colour schemes that I thought would suit/match the music video. The use of black and white creates the simplicity aspect and creates the muted affect that I wanted. The red brightens the whole idea up as it reflects the hope of the puppeteer within the narrative.

Effects

A specific colour scheme is very effective when used through digipaks and magazine adverts. It helps reflect the emotions throughout and in my case, does this to a huge extent. The use of dark colours reflects the hopelessness through the music video, when the puppeteer isn’t successful in performing and shows reflects how he feels. It also links to performance and how the artist may have personally felt when growing into his profile. The black and grey reflect the sadness and the red reinforces the passion of the artist and how he strives for success. The white is a pure colour, that lightens the mood of both music video and ancillary texts. The colours are very muted and create a simplicity effect throughout all products, which are appealing to an audience and keep the main focus on artist and narrative. Colour schemes not only reflect the artists emotions throughout products, but also bring out emotions in an audience, which plays a big part when helping an audience connect. They make links to the colour scheme and what they see and become emotionally involved with the song and narrative through this.

Digipak And The Video

The puppet is used heavily throughout the video and on the digipak to reinforce the narrative and create continuity throughout all products.

The costumes are very similar, which create links to the genre of the artist and also show a mix of style.

Similar colour schemes are used.

Magazine Advert And The Music Video

The magazine advert is quite minimal and simplistic, as I didn’t want it to seem too extravagant, as I didn’t feel my intended target audience would enjoy that.

I felt the colour scheme matched quite well to the performance ending of my music video, and made it look really professional.

Overview

I think the use of continuity compliments all three products and brings them together to create professional looking products. By continuity, I mean the repetitive use of the colour scheme, narrative aspects (like the puppet) and themes (such as happiness and friendship). The matching of the products allows an audience to connect and understand the relevance of not only the narrative, but the artist himself. Jason Mittel’s theory of genre sorting media texts into categories reinforces the necessity of continuity throughout all three products as it helps an audience decide on what they want to consume and how they want to do it. An audience is more likely to feel comfortable with products that link and match in certain ways and it helps them to recognise and consume something they know and enjoy. If the products didn’t link and have large similarities then an audience wouldn’t recognise of understand that they belong together and therefore aren’t likely to consume the product. Sales are hugely important throughout the music industry and therefore following typical conventions that are knowingly loved and enjoyed by an audience plays a massive part in earning a profit. By looking at what a consumer wants and creating something through their perspective creates a huge chance of making something successful towards an audience. I feel the links I have made, such as combining themes and colour together to create emotion, and making the narrative present through all three texts, are what make the main product and the ancillary texts effective when combined.

Overview

The idea of the three products were to make them minimalistic yet effective. I feel this was successful due to various features, such as the colour scheme and narrative.

The simple tones of the images and colours reinforces the genre of the texts and doesn’t overshadow the deeper meaning that we intended to put across through the narrative.

The sharp borders and dark colours create an emotive feeling and help keep more attention on the products, as they look quite clean cut. They also keep all of the attention on the main artists and ideas within the texts, which is important when connecting with an audience.

The quirky nature of the artist is reinforced through both the music video and the ancillary texts as an audience is able to clearly see the styles and themes that are present throughout.

The digipak consists of the same colour scheme as the magazine advert, which as mentioned before, creates a sense of continuity and comfort. I have taken a photo from the actual music video and added lyrics to the chosen song beneath, as looking through some albums I saw that was a common feature.

Simplicity is a heavy aspects throughout the digipak and the main focus is clearly on the artist, as the black font against the white shows minimalism. The front cover is opposite and has a black background with white writing, which still creates a simple effect, but makes it a little different.

The puppet is used on one of the disks, which makes huge links and references to the music video and the magazine advert.

Other

Small aspects contributed to creating successful products, that kept a sense of continuity and familiarity within the texts. Creating mock ups and doing research on other digipaks and magazine adverts helped when creating my own personal product. Deciding on font and colour schemes added to the creation of my own products and making various blog posts about these small aspects added to the bigger picture. I used various websites to find different fonts, such as DaFont.com and found this really helpful when finding something quirky, that compliments my chosen genre. Using these fonts on both the digipak and magazine advert creates a decent and cohesive product. Taking various photos was helpful and gave me different ideas of how I could make my products look. Using different locations was helpful as well, as it meant I could reflect them in all texts.

Existing Digipak & Magazine Ad

Looking through existing digipaks and magazine ads made it a lot easier to create my own products. Both the digipak and the magazine ad have the same colour scheme

and fonts, which I did to my own products. Although the music video is taken from this album, this digipak and

magazine ad are a reflection of the album as a whole and that’s why it doesn’t completely match the video.

I think the fact the images and themes are all very similar creates a successful product and makes it more appealing to an audience.

I personally feel my products are effective when combined, as they are conventional and the idea of intertextuality has been used. The ancillary texts allow an audience to recognise the video and vice versa. The similarities allow an audience to connect and understand, which is crucial in creating a successful product.Media theory helped me create effective products as they helped me to understand the needs of audiences, within narrative, genre and representation.