The document summarizes the process of creating a promotional music video and ancillary materials for a band called "Tangled Channel." Key details include: - The video was inspired by the band Supergrass and aimed to both follow and challenge conventions of indie music videos. - Ancillary materials included a magazine ad and CD digipack cover that maintained continuity with the video's style and color scheme. - New media technologies like digital cameras, editing software, and online research platforms were used at all stages of planning, production, and evaluation. - Audience feedback will be considered to improve future promotional efforts.

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
 -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

2. our band ‘Tangled Channel’ show. Instead the main character is shown in various scenes with a cardboard cut
out air guitar because I 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 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 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

3. "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 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;
- A logo of an indie rock music company
- Barcode
- duration of the song
- copyright information

4. 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 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
- 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.

5. 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
- 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.