Evaluation Question 2. "How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?"

Throughout the creation of my media product and ancillary texts, it has been crucial to make sure that in some way they all link together so they are identifiable and easily recognised by people, so they can see that each text are all for the same product. However to make sure this house style and cohesion didn't get boring it was important for me to change certain things within the different products but also to add similarities.

A big part of my three products in making them link together was the use of colour and fonts used within and throughout them. This similarity between the fonts and colours connected the products together and resulted in the continuity between each text looking effective and easily identifiable. The running colour theme was mostly black and white. This is shown in these images:

As you can see in each of the three products I have used both black and white as well as colour. However I have used a lot more black and white. The reason for this is because after researching existing products of the rock genre. I realised that the frequently used black and white. Therefore I wanted to follow some conventions and also to make the genre recognisable to the target audience. I also used a lot of black and white because I believed that it fit in well with the mystery within my music video and also because of the meaning I believe is behind the song I want there to be a darker and more sinister effect to my video and ancillary texts. To combine this dark feel of the song to each media text I included the narrative within my video, and then added the shadow of the wolf on my album front cover and magazine advertisement.
Hopefully to the target audience this would show that the “Little monster” throughout the texts, especially the music video, is the man who is shown in the narrative.


The parts that are highlighted on the image above are the different parts of my ancillary texts and music video which I think combine effectively together to show the running them throughout all three products. These highlighted parts show how I have entwined colours and black and white into my music video and ancillary texts. This shows a clear style that has been created in the products which represent the style of music and the intention of the song.  A very strong way in which I have combined all of my products together is the inclusion if screenshots from my video onto both the album Digipak and magazine advertisement. I believe this shows a clear link between them all and shows the target audience that they are all connected in some way.


On the other hand there are some improvements that could have been made to ensure that there were more links that connected all of the products. As I wanted the album cover to have some mystery to it, I decided to use a different model for the image on the cover. I thought that this would confuse people and would stand out from other conventional album covers. This was also a frequently occurrence within rock artists album so in order to follow the conventions it would look effective. I do think it has worked out well, however by doing this is has made the cohesion less obvious which means that some of the audience may not straight away realise it is from the particular. In order to fix this I probably should have used images of the band on the magazine advertisement and the front cover of the album. However even though this link wasn't made in my ancillary texts I still believe it looks effective as it reinforces the genre and rebels against the norms and conventions of other existing media products. Also the addition of other aspects of the music video and the similar fonts and colours combines the products together which result in three texts that are clearly from the same product.

Once again talking about how the genre is linked together throughout the products is the name of the album and the songs on the album, which reinforce the genre of music. As the genre is rock it was important for me to keep that theme running through each product. It was easy to do in my music video because the song it the main focus, however I also needed to make sure the location and outfits also fit, especially in the band performance. This is the reason for the warehouse, I chose this location because it looked dark and run down and it isn't a fancy setting which is usually used in pop videos.. This theme was then shown in the ancillary texts; by using a brick background on the front and back cover it reinforced the rock theme. Brick walls could be associated with graffiti which would show a rebellious side to the album. The ancillary texts are then connected because I used the same image for both the album cover and the magazine advertisement, only making a few changes on the advertisement.

In conclusion I believe that the similarities in my media product and ancillary texts lead to them all linking together effectively. The use of the black and white and then orange/yellow colours in my video and ancillary texts connects them all together and leads to a visible clarity between the products. There are some ways I could have changed the three products in order to make them more coherent, such as including more images of the band as they will obviously be the main focus of the album. However overall I believe that they all work effectively together and the differences with each of the texts leads to a more effective house style and it means that it will link well with the other “songs” that would be on the album if it was going to be sold as a real product. As if it was going to be sold as a full album the album would not just base the style on one song/ video from that album.