1. How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary
texts?
Jake Bennett
2. Colour Scheme
• Looking at our ancillary texts (poster and digipak) there is a clear colour scheme through out,
these colours are electric blue and crimson red. These colours are also present in out main
product, the music video.
• In our digipak blue and red is seen on every side. On the front cover we have used a blue filter
and an overlapping red filter on top of the images we took. On the back cover we also used an
overlapping blue and red filter to give off a blurred/3D effect. On the inside of digipak, we
took a picture of the lasers at a rave and edited one of them of be blue and the other to be
red. We thought the 3D effect would work very well as in out video and images on our digipak
we show the protagonist living 3 unconnected aspects of his life, almost like he’s living in 3
dimensions.
• The red and blue colour scheme carried over into the poster. We also used the laser image
from a rave with the red and blue colours on the top and bottom of the poster. We also used
red and blue on the main text found on the poster that reads ‘Cola’.
• Finally is our music video. The colour scheme is also very present in this, during the football
scene, the party scene and the montage at the end. The red and blue appears as a quick flash
in time with the music, however during the montage the every shot has had some sort of
colour correction to be red or blue. As well as that we had small areas or red and blue in the
mise en scene. For example in the protagonists shoes during the ‘chilling’ scene have splashes
of red and blue.
3. Mise en scene
• Part of mise en scene is the characters. The main protagonist throughout the video and digipak pieces
we produced was James, a 17 year old boy. We decided for James to appear as the protagonist in all
the video and digipak aspects we produced because this would help the audience create stronger
bond/connection to him rather if he only featured in the video. James is defiantly portrait throughout
the tree pieces as a protagonist, not only because he is given the most screen time in the video and as
the focus in the digipak images, but in the video he is represented as a man with athletic prowess,
leadership qualities and a fun personality, because of all these traits we represented him with the
audience want to like him and aspire to be him. Moving away from James, the protagonist, we have his
group of friends. The group of friends were made up of Robin, Harry, Jess, Millie and Niamh. We chose
these people to be seen in the video because they are the target age group and are they are of people
that would listen to dance/electronic music.
• Other important area of mise en scene is props and costume. We used both many times throughout
the music video, starting in scene one. In scene one we see James coming into his house, going up
stairs and falling asleep, through the use of props and costume we have made it look like James is
coming home from a long hard day at work. For example we see he is carrying a lap top bag, one that
you would usually see in the work place. And by looing at his costume we see he’s came home from
work as he is wearing a blazer, tie and smart shoes. Throughout the video on a whole we have a
repeating theme of drinking, this prompted the use of props. In scene 2 we see James at a friends
house with two other boys, they are chilling out playing video games and drinking beers. In scene 4 we
see James at prinks with the lager group of friends, they are all drinking, and we see shots of them
playing drinking games with a ‘shot-spinner’ game. During the montage scene we see James pouring
water onto his head out of a sport bottle in football. As well as that James costume changes four times
as he is showing different aspects of his life,
• The final area of mise en scene I’m focusing on is lighting. Lighting was very important in all three
aspects of our coursework. In the music video we had to use lighting in the scenes we were filming at
night, and we had to think about how we would make shots we filmed at different times look like they
were filmed at the same time using lighting.
4. Characters/Life style
• James is the main protagonist throughout the music video and digipak. However it
is unclear to say if he is the artist as we never see him ‘DJing’. We thought we
would have one person play the protagonist in both the digipak and music video as
it helps create a bond for the viewership. I believe having this combination of
James being seen in both our main product and the ancillary texts works well.
• As well as that in the main product, the music video, James is seen doing many
different activities and almost living 4 different lives. And we though we would
carry this theme over onto the ancillary text, the digipak, by having three different
images where James is wearing three different costumes and standing by three
different street signs. This creates an effective link between the main product and
one of the ancillary texts.
• Although there isn’t a direct correlation between the video and the poster,
meaning there isn’t any characters from the video or digipak featuring on the
poster. There is still a strong link between the poster and they other two texts
meaning they make a good combination. The images seen on the poster were
taken at a rave, rave culture and dance music have a common target audience so
we think by having a picture from a rave feature on a poster advertising a dance
album would create an effective conbination.
5. Conclusion
• I believe the combination of our three texts,
our music video, our digipak and our poster
advertisement is very successful and they
work as a combination because of the colour
scheme, mise en scene, characters and
lifestyle.
