Q2 Evaluation - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Throughout the production of our music video we worked hard to make sure that everything we created linked together and portrayed the right genre. We wanted our work to have a clear noticeable style which is why we chose the black and grey theme.

Our black and grey theme throughout are work was quite significant but the mise-en-scene had to precisely match otherwise the black and grey colours would not be relevant. This is why our theme is quite dark and emotional and it is why we carefully chose our model and made sure he had tattoos and an indie rock style. As there is no colour within the video it can be hard to visually see what we want to stand out in the video. If our video was colour then for example we could have had a red rose which could be symbolic to the slight love theme within the video. But as we have no colour I think we had to work a little bit harder and add in more still images to focus the audience on what we are trying to show within the video.

We also made our still shots black and white. We set up a dark, almost derelict setting, to portray how sad and lost the male actor was. We took all our shots on the same day to keep consistency throughout lighting, outfits, and hairstyles. The weather was dull that day which reflected the actors mood. The weather is present in both the music video and our music video advertisement and I think this consistency adds to effectiveness of our work.

While planning our video we decided that the tattoos, cigarettes and grungy look would be important symbols that we would like to use because they reflected the connotations of our indie genre but we also added the love story as we wanted to go against the stereotypical indie genre but keep the traditional style. These symbols contributed greatly to the main product and ancillary texts (all the photographs) because they add further significance to the elements in our video. 

CD Front Cover.

• The cigarette which Matthew is holding is recurring object throughout the video and it holds relevance to the genre and actors style. I think it is also associated with a rebel personality which links to the genre.
• We wrote the songs name on the cigarette as we wanted to keep the cover quite simple, which is why we also added the bands name just above it instead of having a huge title. 
• Also we have continued the black and white theme through to the singles cover.
• We tested a lot of effects during making this cover but settled for the slight cartoon effect as it helps show more tones within the black and grey image, and makes the tattoo more subtle instead of clearly showing it. 

CD Back Cover.

• For the background image we decided to use one of our pictures of a brick wall as the brick wall is also on the front cover and also appears in the video as the walls of the male actors derelict hideout.
• We continued to add the cartoon effect for the same reasons as the front cover.
• We have also used the same font (reprise stamp) throughout all of our ancillary tasks including the title slide in the video. We felt that this font suited our genre because it is similar to other fonts used in indie rock magazines and bands, so we continued to repeat it.
• We used the polaroid image because I feel that it fits our style and fills the space nicely and adds a feeling of nostalgia. I decided to put our close up image of a guitar within it because it is a very stereotypical instrument for the indie genre and i feel that it needed to be included somehow. 
• We also decided to add the conventions of a digipak such as the barcode as it is essential for selling our album, a short review so people can read other peoples opinions of the album, and the Facebook and Twitter logos to lead the audience to the band's social media. 
• The title banner matches the colour scheme and has that grungy effect as the black fades out.

Lyrics Booklet.

• For the background image we used one of our main actors and applied a gaussian blur so the lyrics would be clearer to read. 
• We took this image during filming so the actor is wearing the same clothes and holding the same props so that it links the ancillary to the music video well.
• We wrote the lyrics in our chosen font for the same reasons explained as above. We chose the colour white because the background is quite dark, but when it gets to the white part of the can we switch that part of the lyrics to black.

Poster.

• We left it appropriate to keep to the house style, and also have a black and grey poster. As this will be the main part that people will see, we would have to stick to the recurring theme so that people will link it to the style of the video. 
• We thought this image would be most suitable for the poster. It is quite mysterious and does not really give much of the story away. It contains our main actor so people can relate and link everything when they watch the music video. 

We worked independently as a group to try our hardest at creating our own brand of music video. However, with the ancillary tasks, we felt we should look at how the professionals portray there music in their digipaks and therefore we conducted some detailed research. We were inspired by many elements, some which were very useful, and some which were less useful as they were different genre.