Evaluation Q2

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





Our task was to create a Music Video, Digipak and a Magazine advertisement for our chosen band. We chose to do an unsigned band called The Swing Movement. 


          I discovered that in the real world, separate companies are given the roles of producing, advertising and designing these products.  Companies such as; Wewow tend to deal with the designing of an album cover or a magazine ad, they don't deal with the mass production of it. Whereas companies such as; Creando deal with the making of the music video and Image works LTD deal with the designing of advertisements. This shows that it is not just one singular company that produce all texts. These two mainly focus on the designs and the creative aspects for the band. It is then usually left down to the record labels to find the appropriate magazines and websites to promote their bands on. 
          Our primary target audience is males aged 15-24. The reason we chose this was because we believed that the indie/alternative genre aimed more towards a male audience. However, we do have a secondary audience which is of the same age range but the female gender. This is because in our video text we show a relationship, which is part of the rom/com genre. This targeting females as well. 
          With our selection of band being the indie/alternative genre, it is quite obvious where the texts would be distributed/exhibited. NME are a huge organisation who mainly focus their attention on the alternative/indie genre. I believe this would be the perfect magazine to place our advertisement in, we would be aiming our product at our targeting audience. Youtube is a great place to promote your videos. However, if our video was to shown on a particular channel I believe it would be MTV. This is one of the biggest music channels in the world and mainly focuses on indie/alternative and rock music. Finally, we would have our digipak available to buy on websites such as; Amazon and in stores such as; hmv. These are two huge companies which would allow us to target both our secondary and primary audiences. 
Similarities: 

• We chose to use the same image context on both the magazine ad and the digipak. This was an image of a singular figure sat on a swing in a lonely a derelict area. This linked closely with the title of the band 'The SWING Movement'. 
• For both these texts we also used an editing effect to make it look as if the swing was moving. This was achieved by using multiple layers on photoshop. 
• In all three texts we have used black and white imagery at some stage. We used this after looking at our research into the indie/alternative genre and we found it was a common convention. The colouring used helps show the vulnerability and sadness of the figure on screen. 
• Also, in all three texts we have used the idea of looniness and isolation. This is achieved in the mag ad and digipak through there only being one person in shot, he is also surrounded by nothing but a natural environment showing he is on his own. These images link well with the video because it is about a singular person trying to overcome a broken down relationship with someone close. 
• Finally, we use the band image in all three texts. This is a good promotional idea getting photos of the band involved in as many texts as we could. 

Differences:

• We used a different person in the video and the magazine advert. This meant the figure in the mag ad didn't match the one on the video. However, we thought this was good because it was more about trying to sell the tour dates and digipak and not the video. 
• We also used different editing techniques when using photoshop. For example part of the magazine advertisement is in colour, this was down to a different layering effect used. 
• We didn't use viral advertisement at any stage in the video ie. product placement of images of the band. 

Overview:

Overall we were happy with the outcome of all three texts. We believed they all worked well together and you could make links with all three. We tried to stick closely to the common codes of our genre when creating all three and I believe we achieved this. Because the band are un-signed this gave us a chance to explore and be more creative (using our own images to more effect).