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

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? on Prezi

The target audience for my music video and my ancillary texts is the same. The target audience is fairly young, ranging from age 14 to age 30. This is shown through many elements of my music video. The first being the song to the music video- ‘Under China’. The genre of this song is Indie rock, which is a sub-genre of the alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980’s. This genre is very modern, which therefore gives it a young target audience. Our main product reflects the genre and target audience in a number of ways. Firstly, we have used young actors (Dalia: 18 and Fraser:16) this means our target audience will feel as though they can relate to the characters. The theme we have used in our music video is domestic violence. This reflects the rock genre of our song, as a lot of Rock songs are about issues in everyday life. Audiences will appreciate the honesty of the realistic representation of life. A lot of music videos are very optimistic and give a false representation of life, whereas our video does not. Some of our audiences may also be able to relate to the theme of our music video, as they may have been victims of domestic violence or know of people that have been affected by it. Our video also has a fantasy aspect, which all audiences will be able to relate to. Everyone has a moment in their life in which they feel like they want to escape or disappear to a fantasy world. The majority of our target audience for our music video is female, this is due to the fact that the lead vocalist is female. A lot of women may appreciate the music video, as it shows a female overcoming being involved in a violent relationship and escaping it. Some males may feel that they are represented unfairly in this video, however a very high majority of violent relationships are initiated from the male. This was our reasoning for choosing to have a violent male. The music video also reflects the Rock n Roll genre, through the smoking and the violence used in the video. There is one specific shot of Fraser smoking a cigar, which is very Rock n Roll and would therefore appeal to our audience hugely.

Libby and myself had to do a lot of planning and research before creating our final product. We designed two different storyboards before deciding on the theme of our music video. By spending such a large amount of time planning and brainstorming about out music video, we were able to come up with a lot of ideas and combine these together to ensure we had the best idea possible. I came up with the idea of domestic violence, as a song at the time of our planning that was extremely popular was ‘Love The Way You Lie’ which involves a video of a couple that are involved in a violent relationship. From watching this video, I felt as though they glamorised domestic violence and created a false representation of it. I therefore decided I wanted to created a much more realistic view of it and how the victim of domestic violence is desperate to escape. In order to ensure I did this in the best way possible, I took out a lot of research in to it. I researched in to people that had been affected it by it and the way it made them feel, helping me to decide how I wanted Dalia to show her emotions, especially in the close up shots I was going to create of her. The research that helped me massively was the video of Patrick Stewart (posted on my blog).This helped me to understand how an outsider can be affected by domestic violence, my audience were going to be the outsider and I therefore found it very helpful in understanding how the video should make them feel. The lyrics to the song of Under China (posted on my blog) fit in very well with the domestic violence theme. This is important as it helps audiences to understand and focus on the lyrics much more and enables the to visualise this.

When creating our final production, we found it very important to creating an atmosphere through the lighting, location and mise-en-scene. In the domestic violence shots we wanted to use dull lighting, however this was very difficult in ensuring each shot wasn’t ambiguous. We overcame this by using various lamps and torches. This made sure each shot was dull, but still very clear. The fantasy shots had to be bright and colourful, this meant that we had to shoot them at specific times of the day. We shot the first half of the fantasy shots in the summer. This ensured we had bright lighting and colourful trees, grass, flowers etc. We tried shooting some fantasy shots in the autumn, but discovered they did not creating exciting or bright enough shots. We therefore decided to use the opportunity of when it snowed to shoot some fantasy shots. They ended up working fantastically and with the bright sun reflecting off of the snow, creating bright shots. It was also a great juxtaposition, having shots from the summer and then shots of the winter.

I researched in to other album covers when creating my own. I picked three album covers of different genres, to see the way in which the covers reflected the genre. By analysing other album covers, it made me much more aware of small detail on my album cover. It also reminded me of the fact that I needed to reflect the genre of my music video and that I needed to appeal to my target audience. I used Ellie Goulding’s album cover for inspiration, as I decided to use glitter- of which she uses on hers. I feel as though it reflects the fantasy aspect of our music video perfectly. It also draws attention to the album- appealing more audiences. The glitter adds to the femininity of the song and music video, appealing to our feminine target audience. I have decided to use photographs of Dalia and not Fraser, as she is the main character of our music video. I also felt it was appropriate with adding to the elegance and femininity of our final product as a whole.The back of the album cover represents the fantasy, a shot of Dalia jumping in the air, with glitter pouring next to her. The camera is focussed on the glitter and Dalia is slightly blurred in the background. This suggests that she is not really in a fantasy land and it is all her imagination and the glitter represents her reality (which is why it is in focus).

Although my CD cover reflects the genre and target audience, it is much more mysterious than my music video. I wanted to show Dalia’s two different sides- her domestic violent lifestyle and her fantasy imagination- however, I did not want this to be clear on the CD cover. I therefore just used two very different shots of Dalia without making it obvious what these shots reflect. I felt it was important to leave the theme of domestic violence as a mystery, making the music video much more exciting.

For my advert, I decided to use a photo of Dalia face down, giving no eye contact to the camera. This connotes her lack in confidence and vulnerability. The lack of eye contact also adds mystery to the advert, leaving audiences questioning what she is looking at. The reason for having a photograph of Dalia looking down, is because it connotes her looking down on her realistic 'domestic violence' character, from her new fantasy life that she has created. It gives audiences a glimpse of the character of our music video and certain traits she may have. I have used plain colours: grey, black and white. My reason for this is because I feel it creates a classy feel to the advert and I want the advert to reflect Audience For The Promise Club's classy and respected music. The plain colours are also a metaphor for Dalia's dull life, being involved in a violent relationship. So although she is looking down on her realistic life and is in her happy fantasy land, she can never escape her violent boyfriend.
For the advert, I have used an Italic font. This also adds to the classiness of the advert. It also gives the advert and album cover a much more personal feel to it, as it looks as though it could be handwritten. This will make the audience feel as though the album is personal to them.

Overall, I feel that the combination of our final production and my ancillary texts was very effective. The ancillary texts reflect all aspects of the final production and they both represent the target audience and genre. I thought it was very important that they both portrayed the same message to audiences. However, the ancillary texts do differ from the final production, creating an exciting sense of mystery to the audience.