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

Music Video

For our Media A2 production My group and I created a music video for Arctic Monkeys ‘Knee Socks’. We had to steer away from all commonly known arctic monkey traits. This is so our video is original. A positive reason why this song was chosen is due to it not having a already existing music video, this is good as we have nothing to copy from. Therefore the music video is strictly our own with inspiration from other same/contrasting genre music videos.

Digi Pack – Album cover, back cover, inside, disk & website

For my Ancillary Task I had to create a Digi Pack and a website for the made up band taking Arctic Monkeys place, therefore for mine I based it on a band called ‘South Blue Idles’ and I created an album called ‘Last Night’. I then also created a website this featured the album and other aspects like tour dates etc. I looked at no previous arctic monkeys album covers so I wouldn't’t be tempted to take any inspiration from them. However I didn’t research other indie genre albums to get the conventions right.

Combination

For my Digi pack it has relevance to my music video through the link of the ‘Male Gaze’ used in both. My Digi pack is for an album not the single song therefore the combination doesn’t completely match up however I believe they work well together as they are both discussing issues of power through women. Initially the Digi pack has no link at all to the artists individually, however I did this on purpose to present to the audience that they are not all about ‘Star image’ and the music is more valued then the band themselves. This is commonly linked to indie rock genre as although like every musicians they have mass fans music always seems so come first to both artists and audience.

The Promiscuity of the female protagonist is also another clear link between the Digi pack and the music video. As on the album we see a topless women as well as women with promiscuous clothing links directly to the character in the music video.

Here is the imagery used on my album back cover, and a clip taken from my music video. The Mise En Scene such as clothing presents a good combination between both products and will be identifiable to audience members that they are coherent to each other. The link is clear between each of the images however because I have created an album cover I decided to not use the same model to show that they are similar however not the same.

Choosing to create an album over a single simply, gave me more creative control. This is due to the imagery on the album doesn’t initially have to cohere to the music video as it could be for any other song on the album. I chose to do this as creative control is something that is important and I wanted to make it as visually enticing to the audience without feeling restricted.

website

My website and my album cover inside is combined very well as the same image is used for both. This has also has a link to my music video as it is featured on the webpage, my webpage doesn't’t follow a complex layout it is a basic webpage that connotes a indie genre through the tour dates, black and white colour scheme and then also the attributes I have added to it such as ‘Glastonbury tickets’.

Contrasting

The only way my Digi pack contrasts to my music video is through the colour scheme. There is a clear colour scheme throughout my ancillary task of blue/black and white. However compared to my music video the only noticeable colour scheme is for the performance videos I have used a red tint to differentiate the difference between narrative and performance. This is a contrast between the two, although due to me designing a album cover not a single I enabled myself with more creative control to make decisions like this.