How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
During my similar product research, I learned that the majority of artists, particularly those of the indie/rock genre tend to have a unifying theme throughout their products, often a similar style is used throughout their videos, album covers, merchandising and advertisements. For example, the American indie/rock band Surfer Blood’s album and single covers appear to be two different pictures combined into one using a variety of techniques, and this seems to occur throughout their products. Furthermore, British indie rock band White Lies tends to use somewhat strange, gritty and unsettling images with dark lighting and heavy shadows throughout its products, its videos are also somewhat unnerving and always very open to interpretation for the audience.
The predominant purpose of a music video is advertising both the song and the artist, in order to give them more exposure and publicity, as a form of expanding the audience’s profile. It is also a chance for the song to be presented to the audience in a visual form, linking to the theorist Andrew Goodwin who argued that the content of a music video related to aspects of the song such as the lyrics. Furthermore, in certain genres such as pop, hip hop and R n B, a music video presents the opportunity for the artist to display other talents they may have such as dancing or other modes of performing, though this is not usually the case in my chosen genre of indie/rock. Overall, the preliminary purpose of a music video in all genres is for advertising, and causing some form of reaction from the audience resulting in the song, band and video being memorable for said audience.
In regards to my ancillary task of a magazine advert, its role is to advertise the album and the artist together. After analysing existing magazine adverts, I came to conclusion that it must be extremely eye catching and appealing to the audience in order to get their attention when competing with other adverts and articles in a magazine. I therefore decided to use a bold, stencil front, all in capital letters to display the band’s name and the song title, using the colours black and red in order to catch the audience’s eye. I also added drop shadows to make the advert stand out even more. I used this same text in the same position in my digipak to show the album title and band name, therefore almost creating a band logo, and certainly beginning o create a house style. I also felt it had to reflect the overall feel and features of the band, giving the audience an insight into the band before they have even listened to them. I reflected the quirky, fun ideology of the band through the image, which was the camera smashed up with the film coming out the lens, which I felt was visually interesting and quite abstract, thus causing the audience to think about the meaning and making it more memorable.
The main purpose of a digipak is to sell the album to its target audience, in addition to providing any important information about the band, album and record label. The front cover of the digipak is vital as it is mainly used to advertise the album and appeal to the audience, thus convincing them to buy the product. Through my research I found that the front cover must be eye catching and stand out, but perhaps less so that the magazine advert, thus I changed the colour of the text ‘Norgaard’ from red to grey as it felt it fitted better with the colours of the image, and the bright eye catching red was not necessarily needed. I used the same camera as in the magazine advert, which I think helped the audience recognise that these products are part of the same promotional package.
As a result of this research I decided to create my own unifying theme throughout my three products, which was the notion of looking and watching others. My music video features a somewhat voyeuristic portrayal of my main actress, she appears unaware of the camera as she is not performing in any way but merely doing normal actions such as putting on makeup. This is also enforced by the slightly shaky, home video movement of the camera, I decided against using a tripod to steady the camera work as I felt this made it feel more realistic for the audience to be watching her. My digipak and magazine adverts consist of images of an old camera that is in various stages of being smashed up, thus keeping with the theme of looking and watching. However it could be argued these images are a rejection of the notion of looking due to the smashed lens, therefore leaving the audience to their own interpretation.
I also found colour schemes to be a vital part of creating this unifying theme and house style throughout a musicians products, Foster The People predominantly used the colours of yellow, black and white in the creation of products from their most recent album ‘Torches’. Therefore I decided that a colour scheme reflecting the genre and the band was vital, and finally settled upon red black and white. These are colours that are typical of the indie/rock genre, and may act as a form of key iconography to attract fans as they will recognise immediately that the products are of said genre. Red is successful in appealing to my target audience as it is a symbolic sign of passion, being rebellious and reckless, all traits that are held highly by the indie/rock ideology, and traits that are displayed throughout my products.
As my chosen song came from The Vaccines debut album, I decided to play upon the fact they were new and relatively unknown. I therefore kept their identities hidden throughout my main and ancillary tasks, not featuring images of them in any of my products; I believe it has created a feel on anonymity. This will firstly cause the audience to focus upon the music itself, which is key to the indie/rock genre ideology, but then will cause curiosity in the audience as to what the band actually look like. This also immediately contrasts with my unifying theme of looking and voyeurism,
Overall I feel that my main and ancillary tasks are successful as independent products, but even more so when combined together to create a promotional package. I think the unifying theme and house style make them more effective as it means they being it aspects of each other that may not have been noticed by the audience if they were presented separately from one another, and the audience can easily recognise they are all from the same band. However if I were to create another product to fit into the promotional package I feel this with heighten their success as a combination of products.
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