1. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The task for this year’s project was to produce a promotional music
video with two supporting ancillary tasks. These involved producing a
poster advertisement for a magazine and a digipack. I attempted to
focus on ways that they would be effective towards the target
audience. A music video is a powerful promotional tool; in terms of
promoting the song that can help any band in a sense that people
can see the artists behind the music, while reaching new markets
and fans. Promoting a music video in the media industry involves just
as much effort when in the process of making the video.
For inspiration I automatically focussed on the band Supergrass
whose song I am using for my own work and other bands of the
same background/similar genre. The conventions of indie music
videos which I have noticed include the following;
-Shot in black and white
 -The artist/band is shown throughout the video
 -Use of extreme close ups and long shots are popular
-Dark locations
 -Fast paced

2.  -General l use of special effects
The conventions ticked are what we have used throughout our own
video. The conventions that we didn’t use were what we challenged.
In relation to Supergrass, although they are an indie rock band, they
also never used some of the typical conventions of their genre
because they are quite unique in terms of them as a band and their
music. I believe this because Supergrass’ songs consist of a lot of
things that makes it hard to determine what genre they fit in to. For
example, the song ‘Alright’ which we used for our video shows
conventions seen in rock, indie and pop music videos. Therefore the
three bands below seemed most suitable to research.
- The Arctic Monkeys
- The Kaiser Chiefs
- The killers
Firstly, I had to think about how I could create an effective magazine
advertisement used in relation to promoting the single and making
audiences aware of when it will be released, although this audience
may be of a smaller target market. I would class our work as more of
a comical video which gives off a vibe almost as if it’s been inspired
by the likes of Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies because the characters
seem funny and random which is interpreted through the use of
props and actions and attitudes of the characters. I also think having
the ability to make audiences laugh at your work keeps them
interested and can seek their attention for longer. According to the
typical forms and conventions of the indie rock genre, audiences
expect to see the artists interacting with musical instruments or
show some form of musical talent, which neither Supergrass nor our
band ‘Tangled Channel’ show. Instead the main character is shown
in various scenes with a cardboard cut out air guitar because I

3. wanted to show humour alongside challenging the typical forms and
conventions of this genre.
We also show some kind of video narrative to help illustrate the
meaning of the story behind the song which develops a stronger link
between the video and ancillary texts. I think narratives can also
make the video more memorable and adds repeatability which is
essential as music channels constantly play the same videos so
consumers quickly become sick of them. I’ve noticed that common
camera shots in indie music videos include close ups to keep a visual
reminder of the artists in the video, which is seen a fair few times in
Tangled Channels ‘Alright’. On the hand the mise-en- scene is
important in indie videos, because the music has important
influences on clothing and style. I think this concept relates to
individuality so the artists in the video must be dressed with
something that makes them individual. In this case, we all have
individual headwear that is considered popular at this moment in
time.
Firstly, we decided to go for the band name tangled channel. Tangled
channel was created by a word engine which we used to help us
come up with a band name that sounded catchy. We associated the
word tangle in relation to the characters we portray in the video who
are quite wacky and wild. The fact that the three characters are
always together throughout the video, you could say that the
characters themselves are tangled together in their friendship that
they have, just like Supergrass who stick together in their trio and
seem inseparable.
Digipack: Front cover
The playful style of our video has greatly influenced our digipack and
magazine advert. I have used certain symbols and images to give the

4. audience an insight to the theme of the video. Focussing on the front
cover of the CD package, due to the fact that our characters are all
females I decided to use the feminist symbol. My reason for selecting
this sign it is relevant on the characters behalf’s because our music
video is based around three teenage girls.
The feminist symbol is actually a sign to represent the planet Venus.
It is a depiction of a circle with a small cross below it. The symbol is
also associated with the roman goddess Venus. It is used in various
media and was inspired by the old saying ‘women are from Venus
and men are from Mars’. Typically, Venus is the planet of love and
Mars is the planet of war. Giving the idea that men and women are
on different wave lengths in terms of behaviour. I think our video
shows that girls can create war by choice but given the fact that
women are metaphorically from Venus, we decide to keep the peace
and stay out of trouble.
In our video, we present ourselves as females who have no worries
about their appearances; they wear casual clothes such as jeans, t-
shirts and trainers and wear no make-up which we thought
challenged forms and conventions of music videos as women are
often displayed in a sexual way. The characters show that there are
no barriers to teenage girls taking part in this kind of behaviour
although today’s society would judge it is as reckless and not ‘lady
like’. The song is all about being ‘young’ and ‘free’, so it was
essential to show the freedom of a younger mind, in which
teenagers care about things to an extent, but are just trying to enjoy
being young and free with no worries ahead of them. Therefore it
establishes the link between the two products.
In relation to feminist film theorists that have inspired and
encouraged my music video, I found that Claire Johnston’s ‘’counter
cinema’’ theory interested me the most in which she put forth the

5. idea that women’s cinema can function as "counter cinema".
Through consciousness of the means of production and opposition of
sexist ideologies, films made by women have the potential to posit
an alternative to traditional Hollywood films. Many women
filmmakers have integrated "alternative forms and experimental
techniques" to "encourage audiences to critique the seemingly
transparent images on the screen and to question the manipulative
techniques of filming and editing".
Looking at the actual creation of the CD cover, I made sure the text
was white relating back to the original technique in advertisement to
contrast images and texts, which was used on darker images to
enable more of an eye-catching attraction for the audience. Making
the Venus symbol part of the title was important to us because the
symbol would be recognised which was beneficial in terms of relating
to the target audience- teenage girls 13 and onwards. I tried to make
sure that I blended the image as much as possible so that the image
itself didn’t look like it had randomly been thrown on the cover.
The image used was taken by me at my local bar where I work part
time; and was able to get an image of the bar before opening time.
This is because I thought it would be useful to get an image of an
empty bar which has given the picture a sense of professionalism. I
used three glasses simply because there are three characters which
keeps a sense of continuity. It also seems like each character is
represented by a glass or could make the audience think these are
the glasses the characters had been drinking from, which relates
back to the video in terms of alcoholism. It also seemed more
reasonable to have one glass looking like it had been knocked over,
because in a group of friends, you always have that one person who
is a bit more wild and clumsy then the rest, in which friendship
comes in to play because you consider yourself responsible for
looking after them, which often shows true friendship and is

6. presented throughout the video that the characters have a strong
friendship.
Using the adobe Photoshop programme was important in terms of
getting the image looking as professional as possible. The image had
already been blurred due to the blur tool on my digital camera. The
image was later neatened on Photoshop which left the three glasses
in complete focus. Using a simple programme such as windows
photo gallery was handy in the sense that you could experiment with
the fix tools on the programme like changing brightness and
contrasting the image which helped improve the colour gradient.
Back to Adobe Photoshop, the colour black was selected, then using
the paintbrush tool, gently brushed over the whole image to tone
down the colour and make it look more like it had been taken of a
night rather than in the morning in which it had actually been taken.
The back cover of the CD album is different because an image of the
artists has been used on the back rather than the front. In my
opinion I thought it looked more professional but I have still used an
image of the artists to give the album some kind of identity in
relation to the video. However, when I researched previous albums
from Supergrass and the other inspired bands; I found that they
didn’t always have a picture of themselves on the front of their
albums which is what inspired me to experiment with something
different.
I also thought it would be appropriate to use black for the
background colour because it keeps it looking more professional. A
lot of CD back covers I researched often had black or dark blue
background colours. So I decided to keep this part of the digipack
quite original.
On the other hand, in terms of features, I have used;

7. - A logo of an indie rock music company
- Barcode
- duration of the song
- copyright information
The images of each character used, all consist of the technique called
direct mode of address meaning they have full eye contact with the
audience. This is because I wanted to stimulate interaction between
the artists and every individual audience which sometimes makes the
audience feel almost as if they were included. However using
Photoshop, I selected the dark ink outline effect. The purpose of
using this effect is that it’s different and seems to make the audience
look for a longer period of time because it sparks some kind of
interest although you can recognise each character, which is
beneficial for ‘Tangled Channel’ because audiences are most likely to
remember if they’ve had good look rather than a glimpse.
Poster advertisement:
For the magazine advertisement, consistency with the colour scheme
and continuity in terms of clothing and props has been kept. It was
important not use too much black or too much white because the
colours are too original. This explains the idea behind the rich
burgundy colour which matches the colours from the image of the
bar and the main characters jacket; therefore the colour has some
relevance to the video, and is used throughout the ancillary tasks. In
terms of props, we decided to have the main character smoking a
cigarette to relate to the lyrics ‘Smoke a fag, put it out’. All of us

8. were pictured in sunglasses, to give the idea that teenagers like to
look cool and rebel against the idea of wearing sunglasses only in
sunlight when it is necessary. You could say it’s almost as if the
teenagers are hiding behind the sunglasses in terms of privacy or
simply because they don’t want people especially parents to
recognise their drunken gaze.
If you look carefully you can also see that the main character is
wearing pink glasses whereas the other two characters are wearing
plain black glasses. The idea behind this was to make the main
character stand out and seem different from small features such as
this. The positioning we used for each character was again to show
the audience that there is a leader of the group, like Supergrass did.
In all of Supergrasses work, I noticed that their leader Gaz was
always positioned in the middle to show that he was the ringleader.
In my opinion, the other two characters seemed more like his
sidekicks then friends. However, I think we challenged this idea
because we each had individual shots and shots together to show
that the characters friendship is more valuable and the two friends
seemed more like friends then followers. On the other hand there
are still more shots of the main character because someone naturally
takes on the leadership role within a group of friends anyway.
Again, we wanted to present the idea that the teenage world
sometimes seems surreal because of all the changes and processes
we have to go through, whether it’s physical or mental. Therefore, I
decided to use Photoshop to create a cartoon effect. I got my
inspiration again from Supergrass and also The Killers, who have
various albums ranging from Cartoon images to real life images.
On the poster itself, you can see I have included text about;
- live performances

9. - locations
- website information
- the album release
to give the advertisement a professional appearance. On the other
hand, looking at the main character holding the cigarette there is a
grey fog rising from it. I thought this would look good because it
looks like the smoke rising from the cigarette is forming the text on
the poster to make it seem more interesting.
Similarly to some of the magazine adverts I have looked at I have
included some of the features on my own front cover.
Throughout the process of making this video and all my ancillary
tasks, I have used a variety of new media technologies in order to
improve the quality of my work. Throughout the months I have used;
- digital cameras-to take pictures for the ancillary tasks
- flip cams – to film the video with
- Apple Mac laptops- used streamclip and final cut pro to edit and
insert clips from the video.
- Apple ipad 2- researching other bands
- Adobe Photoshop
- Final cut pro
- Imovie

10. - Blogger.com
- YouTube
- Slideshare
- Dafont.com
- Word engine
- Streamclip
I now know how to use all of these programmes appropriately and
have used them a lot throughout my own work. The highlighted
words are the technologies I have used the most. Firstly, in terms of
the video we needed the flip cam to film. At first we were using a
modern video camera because it was handy to have the video in high
quality sound. However, we decided we didn’t need this camera
because the song would cover over the sound. Therefore we decided
to use a flip cam because it was easy to carry around in case we ever
needed to use it to film something that we thought would be
interesting for the video.
We then used the latest editing programme, final cut pro to put the
video together. At first it was difficult to operate because I and my
partner had no experience with using the programme before. With
guidance, we gradually got better at using it and eventually became
skilful in terms of using the programme.