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

I feel that the combination of both my main product and ancillary is extremely effective. My main product is a music video for a song called ‘Really Don’t Care’ by Demi Lovato. I included both performance and narrative aspects in the video. The narrative followed a storyline of three girls seeing the same boy and when they find out that he cheating, they unite and get revenge. The ancillary texts are a digipak for the song and an advert for that digipak.

For the digipak front cover I have used a photo I took during the filming of my music video. This means that the costumes and props used in the video are present on the front and back cover of the digipak. I did this because it creates a clear link to the music video and if people were to see the digipak in a shop they would recognise the cover if they have seen the music video. For the same reasons, I also put the front cover of the digipak on the digipak advert.

 

As you can see, the digipak and digipak advert have a common colour theme of black, white and purple. I chose purple because our primary audience is young females. The colour black links to the pop/punk style that the artist (Demi Lovato) has, as she is often seen in black and white clothing with hints of more female colours, such as purple or pink. In the music video, we have continued the theme of black and white within the clothing and backgrounds, but if I were to do it again, I would incorporate more bright colours to fit the pop/punk style as well as the dance-pop genre style. I could have used effects with more colour for the clips to brighten it up and appear as more of a dance-pop song, but the narrative that we chose for the song may not have suited that style. For the narrative clips I changed the appearance of them to be dull, so that it had a negative feeling, but when it got to the end of the video with the clips of the girls getting revenge, I kept the original colour to show the difference. I did this to make it clear to the audience that the girls were happier now and in a sense their lives were brighter (more colourful) without the boy. When editing the video I came across a problem when trying to add transitions as I cut all the clips first and then add all of the finishing touches afterwards. This meant that when adding transitions it made the clips shorter and the lip-syncing out of time. Next time I would do the video from start to finish, incorporating transitions and effects as I go.

In terms of the dance-pop genre, I think that the lack of bright colours and expensive setting does not follow its typical conventions. However, it does have a performance aspect, scenes that follow the lyrics of the song, multiple locations and a love interest, which are all the typical conventions of a dance-pop genre. The digipak and advert also follow the typical conventions of those from a dance-pop genre. In my digipak and digipak advert analysis, I analysed three existing ones from the dance-pop genre and two of those three had the digipak front cover as the main focus of the advert. This is what I choose to do in my advert because I thought it was an effective advertising technique.

 

I am very happy and proud with how the ancillary texts and main product turned out. I like the design of my digipak and it came out much better than what I had planned it to, but I think the design is also very simplistic. I could have used a more imaginative background, but I liked that it resembled the performance part of the music video. I strongly believe that both the main product and ancillary texts relate to the target audience that we planned for. The music video has a storyline that girls can relate to and the song has a strong message of empowerment and togetherness for a younger audience to look up to. Some music artists are idols to their fans, and are heavily influenced by what the artists do, say or feel. This combination of music video and ancillary texts is sending a positive message to those fans and has a moral that they can learn from. The digipak also portrays this as the three girls are all sat together on the front and back cover, with other pictures on each of the different panels within the digipak also showing them having fun or laughing. I wanted it to feel inspiring to the audience that they have overcome it together as a group of friends.

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