Media Studies A2 music evaluation question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

2. Introduction
• I believe the combination of our final product and our
ancillary texts are very effective. We spent a lot of time
researching other bands digipaks and websites to try
and get the best ideas possible that would look well
with the video and match the type of band they are.
We managed to achieve this by adding information
about the band members in the website, like small
bio's. This is good for the audience and the fans of
indie rock as it allows people to know a little about the
band members which are seen throughout the video, it
will also help establish a personality to the band that
would be known by the audience as well as the image
presented throughout the video and album covers.

3. The website
• If one is to look at our website they will notice that the video and various different digipaks
will be on the site as well as the native's logo. This makes a good combination to the video as
they can now be recognised by their logo on the website, as well by their faces as they are
saw in the video and the album cover. When studying the indie genre, I noticed that a lot of
indie bands and artists usually have many ways to keep the fans up to date which progression
in the band and the site is always plastered with pictures, album covers and the bands
collection of digipaks.
• I also recognised a pattern occurring in websites for bands such as Kodaline and the Artic
monkeys that there were things such as blogs and other ways of connecting to their
audience. This inspired us to make small bio's on some of the band members as it et the
audience get to know more about the band, and it also enabled us to add a particular
persona to the band and the music they played. As bands are using the internet and social
networking to promote their name, it was always going to be an integral part to our overall
product. I researched certain band sites such as Sigur Ros, Kodaline and the Artic Monkeys to
get an idea of the layout of band websites, what information they included and also what we
thought were the strong points and what we could include to help enhance our main
product. We used the website to show off our new video and digipaks. We also found that
many bands show upcoming tour dates or news about the band and found that these were
very effective as it allowed the fans to keep up to date which the bands' work. We also
decided to include the facebook and twitter links as it would help promote our band and our
main product and this is something that most band websites have as it is a way to increase
their fan base, this is something that we believed was very effective and would be an
excellent way to promote our main product.

4. Continued..
• On some of the websites we researched of this genre, we
saw the idea of fan forums on the band website, such as
the Artic Monkeys to let other fans of the same music taste
ask questions about the band and it allowed all fans to
comment and share their thoughts and opinions with other
lovers of this music. Although we did not do this ourselves,
it was something we believed was very effective and that
we could have used to make our main product more
attractive. This is because if we had done this it would
result in a chance to get more feedback from the audience
and to find out opinions on our recent video that we just
made, it would also have allowed us to see on a bigger
basis, what we had achieved when making an indie video
and what could be improved.

5. Album+Digipak
• When creating the album cover and the digipak, we thought it would be vital to use images
of the band members either in the album or digipak, After much consideration, we chose to
focus on the bands name ad having scenic backgrounds in the digipak to show the type of
music that we were producing. This was music that was not too much rock, neither too much
pop, the song had a nice balance and this is why we decided to use pictures which were
peaceful and very picturesque. However, we did use photoshop to edit the pictures slightly in
our own way.
• As a group, we found good locations to take pictures for the digipak, and after this was done,
we had to return to the classroom to edit them to get the bands' name in. Whilst doing this,
to show that the music did have some excitement to it and that it was a fast paced song at
parts, we used colurs and effects to brighten up pictures and give them more life. The same
applied to our music video as in many of the shots we also used some sunlight effects and
other effects to brighten up the scene and make it seem more lively and fast paced. The
visuals in the digipak are also useful for letting the audience understand what type of band
they are and the style of music in which they play. This is very important because it will
attract the viewers' to the video if they are interested by the digipak. It was a very effective
combination as we believe the pictures, colours and all the editing done to the digipak really
gives the audience an idea of what type of music they will be listening to. As well as the
bright colours on the editing, we also had darker pictures edited and this was to show that
although the music can be fast-paced and upbeat, what they are singing about can be quite
sad at times, especially because the song was written by the band, so it obviously means
something to them or it was a story of one of the band members.

6. Continued..
• For our album cover, we used an editing technique called double exposure. We found this
was a very effective combination to be matched with our main product mainly because
throughout our music video, there are live shots of the band playing throughout. It meant
that, as well as having the band shown in the video, we also had their faces on the album
cover, establishing a strong connection between the album and the video itself. Using the
band throughout the video and in the album cover proved to be very effective as it would
mean more publicity for the members of the band and the fans would recognise them if they
were to buy the album or watch the video.
• The technique of double exposure that was used in our album cover also inspired us to use
this technique for transitions when editing the video. The main reasons for this was to show
that the band were central to this song, as it is their own lyrics and to remind the audience
that this is the story of one or more of the band members and that they may have been in
the same situation as the actor in the video. Double exposure is also a very useful technique
for transitions as it makes the transition more smooth. In this sense, through our album cover
and the editing techniques used in that and our main product, the combination resulted in a
good relationship between the two, it allowed us to establish to the audience identities of
the band, as well as showing them that the song is the story of one of the band members.
One of our influences for double exposure was the show true detective. This is because in
the opening credits we saw how effective it can be and how smooth the transition is. The
album, just like the digipak, also had a picturesque theme to it. Once again this was to follow
the codes and conventions of the indie genre as many album covers are very picturesque, but
a lot of the times also show the band in the cover as well.

7. Conclusion
• All of our ancillary texts are very effective
combined with our main media product as
they are all intertwined through the use of the
same editing techniques, desings and styles.
This resulted in the perfect environment to
create a professional video along with all the
professional looking ancillary texts.