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

Question 2.

An Ancillary product acts as promotional material for artists. These materials are often CD’s, magazine adverts, websites, posters, YouTube account, Twitter and Facebook. For my ancillary work I created a Digipaks and an Advert for the main artist (Desiree Diamond). The purpose of an ancillary product is to mainly promote the Main artist as well as the song, which is done through different forms of media technology, it is done to create a platform for the individual artist so they are known to their audience.

The purpose of Ancillary products:

v  To promote the artist and the song.

v  For visual branding.

v  To offer fans the chance to buy there album.

v  For Fans to be able to see the type of genre and persona the artist is portraying.

The link between the actual Music video and the Digipaks/advertisement is to highlight key ideas used within all three of these promotional materials. This is usually visual links to acknowledge the genre of the music. It is very important to follow the codes and conventions of ancillary products as the artists targeted audience/ fans expect to see visual links within the promotional material this is because it helps them identify what material belongs to an artist.

SYNERGY USED IN THE PRODUCTION PIECES.

Synergy means to work together. The term is used to describe a situation where different media products cooperate advantageously for a greater outcome. In our music video there are some clear visual links to the Digipaks and advertisement. The use of Synergy is mainly created through clothing and style of the main artist (Desiree Diamond). We used the same type of clothing she wore in certain scenes from the video for example the head wrap, white blouse as well as jewellery to highlight the strong representation of women. Another aspect of my music video which links to the ancillary product is the use of colour I used neutral colours such as black and white this is because the artist wore sophisticated clothing which were not too bright so the black background used on the Digipaks is there to focus on the main artist herself. To also highlight this even more we used a black and white base track. There could have been another form of Synergy which was the diamond necklace, the necklace is seen in the video because we wanted to make a direct link between her surname and the necklace but during the photo-shoot there was a slight problem as the artist had lost her necklace so we couldn’t include the necklace in the Ancillary products. Overall the use of Synergy is very important as it helps the target audience identify which aspects of the Digipaks/ advertisement link to the music video. It also portrays the type of genre the artist is involved with especially with our artist ‘Desiree Diamond’ her positioning and the direct stare towards the camera shows a clear representation of women and her style is something the young audience can relate to mainly females.

Ancillary texts and the main product

In my opinion I think my main product and ancillary texts did turn out to be quite successful as we did challenge some of the codes and conventions of ancillary products. An example of this is portraying the genre of the music video as well style and the persona of the main artist. I think we did present the style and genre well within the video as we made sure the main artist was wearing sophisticated and often casual clothing. Even though we went in with the electro pop genre we added a kind of RnB touch to it maybe in the sense of how the artist was framed and her mannerisms. Towards the end of the video we made sure the last scene contained Desiree Diamond wearing nice classy clothing, something more attention grabbing to justify the story which was easily done by her walking into the lift and smiling – this gave the audience (females) a strong representation of women of this generation and bringing across the message of not letting anyone get in the way of your happiness. Another convention used within the video is visual branding which is used in the main product (music video) and the ancillary products. For my Digipaks and my advertisement I used the same style images across all three products as I wanted to make it look more consistent so fans are able to recognise the image and then link it to the Digipaks. I didn’t include any filters or effects on the original image as I wanted her picture to stand out the same way it does in the music video. This is to again make it noticeable. I made sure I used a few codes and conventions across all the media products this is so the audience are familiar with this and for them to gain excitement into seeing how each ancillary product supports the music video whether using a certain style or colour.

The following are direct visual links between the products:

When i did research into digipaks i came across these two album covers which i posted as a blog post a while back. The reason why these two influenced me into creating my final design for the digipak was because they had a strong positioning and stood out. I wanted the positioning of our artist to be similar to Leona's positioning as it stands out and can be easily recognised by the audience. For the chris brown album cover i really liked the use of diamonds in the background so i wanted to create something like the ones shown on his one, i added simple diamonds to the       background and made sure the diamonds were visible and consistent on my ancillary products.