Media Evaluation: 2

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

From my previous research I learnt that although a band/artist may focus on one music genre, some of their songs may have elements from other genres. Which therefore the album cover must relate to all the songs. For example Rihanna’s latest album, “Apologetic” reveals songs of the genre she mainly focuses on which is RnB/Hip-Hop, and creates songs which are upbeat, busy and give off a loud energy. However within this new album are some slow songs which reveal her emotions at different stages in her life, and allow the audience to know parts of her personal life. One of these songs are “Stay” where the music video is simple, revealing the artist in a bath implying she is cleansing her emotions. It reveals her tears and how she is deep in thought with her natural look. This contrasts from her other music videos as usually she is dressed in the latest trends and they reveal unique narratives. Overall, from researching into this it gave me an idea of how I should represent my digi-pak, especially because the front cover of the album “Apologetic” combines aspects from all the songs on the album, and the shot is of the artist without any clothing, implying that she is revealing all to the audience. However writing is employed over certain areas of her body which allows areas to be hidden and informs the audience that she cannot reveal everything.

With all three of my products I wanted to there to be a concept which would join them together along with the theme. Before creating my music video I knew that I didn’t want to include the band in the video, therefore I had to choose an appropriate actor who could dance and fit the look of the genre. This idea appealed to me through looking into the music video to the song “Lost in your Love” by Redlight. From this I realised that a music video does not have to include the band/artist to be successful. From the music video by Redlight, the actors mimed to the song whilst effects were included around them, this kept the music video busy, however still allowed the lyrics and song to be focused on. An element that I included throughout all of my products was lips. The extreme close up shots throughout my music video reveal the actors lips miming to the song, the digi-pak and magazine advert emphasise the lips of the female in the image which is revealed in bright red. I wanted to emphasise the lips throughout because during my music video the actor is constantly dancing, however I didn’t want the audience to completely focus on that, I wanted to lyrics to still be focused on and listened to. Therefore the extreme close up shots allow the audience to think back to what the song is actually saying. My digi-pak highlights that music is created for the audiences to have fun with what they hear and enjoy themselves. Therefore the image displayed on both my digi-pak and magazine advert is obviously edited due to the black and white colour scheme, with bright red lips. The point is that the band/artist wants their target audience to have fun with their song, and they have showed their fun through revealing a unique image which would stand out to all the other standard digi-paks. On the back of my digi-pak I included the tracklist which is clearly visible due to the faded out graffiti background. I chose to use block capitals in red to follow the colour scheme of the red lips and stand out. The font found on the front of the music video is also in block capitals, however in a larger font because I want it to catch the eye of the consumer and make them pick it up. This is also in red font, which reveals the band’s name, “Technotronic” and the hit single, “Pump Up The Jam”. The inside cover of the digi-pak is an enlarged image which is also edited into black and white, following the  image on the front, along with enlarged red lips. The background image on this cover reflects the up tempo beat of the song and its busyness.

As previously stated, the image on my magazine advert is the same as my digi-pak because I wanted an element to make them relate, other than the theme. This image takes up a large part of the advert, and is surrounded by font, informing the audience of the information they need to know about the album and what is included on the album. To differ the magazine advert slightly from the digi-pak I chose to use both colours white and red within the font. “TECHNOTRONIC” is the large title of this magazine advert, and advertises the band name wanting consumers to remember it. Half of this title is in red, whilst the other is white. This differentiates from other fonts on magazine adverts and allows mine to look unique. Towards the left of the magazine ad is the track list laid out in a column format. This informs the audience of what they will get on the album, and what they will be missing out on if they do not buy it. Again this font is in block capitals, and in both red and white. In the left bottom corner is a small shot of the album front cover to show the audience what to look out for. This needed to be included because it is what the magazine advert is based on. Next to the image, I included writing to tell the audience that the album has already been released, which encourages them to buy it now before it is sold out. Finally, in the bottom right corner is a smaller font which reveals the website of the band and the production companies that supported this album. The website helps the album sell as if informs the audience that they could buy this album online, therefore they don’t have to leave the house to receive it.