Evaluation Question 2

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

As you can see via the slideshow below, the consistancy between all covers for the CD digipak is constant throughout the CD and this carries on to the music advertisement poster.
The use of editing combined onto the digipak enables the cover and documents share uniqueness and combines the project together through things like; colour scheme, font styles, imagery and linking the digipak to our target audience. Referring back to my post published on 14th November (14/11/11) I researched and developed the meaning of our target audience; "The Indie Scenesters." This combined the different genres including; Trendies, Townies, Hipsters, Craft Kids, Geeks and Young Alternatives. We researched  furthur into this to find their likes and dislikes, and found that this target audience is what we are looking for. I also remember my AS level magazine had the same target audience, which was key as it meant I already knew the types of clothes style and things they were into which helped build the genre stereotype of a "Indie Scenester."
The main product links to the ancillary task gratefully as you can tell by the ancillary task photographs that both myself and Emma took at Thamesmead, in order to get the effect we were looking for. The digipak was taken in the same place to which some of the filming occured, in front of a railing in Thamesmead, where the background was the Thames River.

This created a lovely background effect for both the filiming and the digipak and combined, created a great consistancy between them both, and linked the main product and ancillary task together. If the viewer was to look at the CD digipak before viewing the main product of the music video, they should be able to distiguish both the target audience and the type of emotions that the artist is portraying throughout the ancillary task. The use of positionning towards the camera and the movements that took place enable a sad kind of emotion and the title "What We Started" links in with a breakup or something that happened which he is looking back on memories. This is why we named the album "What We Started" so that it would link more to the final product. The photographs used on the CD cover link to the narrative music video as it shows scenes and screen shots of the video. The video itself is a narrative music video as we found the lyrics to the song linked more to a relationship based video rather than a performance video. However, when we created our rough cut, we based it upon a relationship break up but this storyline slightly confused the viewers from our feedback. This is why we decided to go slightly more drastic and create the feeling of loss when the viewer reliases the death of the girlfriend. This then gives a clear story line as the music video is based around memories of both good times and arguements that the couples had, before the realisation that she is actually dead. The feedback we recieved on this story line was great as it meant that the users understood the story behind the lyrics and also added comments like they fit the lyrics and the movement of the song written and performed by Alex Lloyd. The feeling of loss and lonliness transforms and transpires throughout the CD digipak as well as the music advertisement poster we created. This is because the use of effects and the black and white saturation enables a memorable mood, contrasting with a bold and brightly coloured CD which would be used to emphasise a happy or positive music. The colourless effect relates and relys on the consistancy that transforms through the CD and gives out the emotions I was looking for.

By editing and changing the effects of the; Levels, Contrast and Brightness, Saturation and Sharpeness, it gave the emotion packed and colourless CD cover we were looking and hoping for. This cover could also be seen as to wonder to the viewer what the CD is about and may intrigue the user into picking up the CD to view the song tracklist if the digipak was to be sold in a exsisting music market today.

The clothing shown and worn in both the final and ancillary tasks are exactly the same. This relates and combines them both and links the user to the final product if the CD or music video was to be messed up, anyone would be able to see they go together. The clothing consisted of Black Jeans,  Urban Outfitters, £35 followed by a Wine Coloured Hoodie, Burton, £20, a Denim Jacket, Topman, £40, Black and White Designed Top, A specific Band, £15 and finally the Red Van Shoes, Office, £45. These stores are some of them which I found the target audience shops in, which I will refer to from the research I created back in November 2011. As you can see, Topshop/TopMan, and Office are few of these found to be the most popular shops visited by the target audience. Having the artist link to the target audience, it provides a clear genre for the music, as the styles represent a specific trend which fans and others of this genre can relate to. 

As for the style, colours and font of the text used for the CD cover, we conducted research to ensure we got the most suitable font for our necessary target audience and to match the house style and relevance. The different fonts we tried and tested were:

• Trajan Pro
• Stencil Std
• Imprint MT Shadow
• Gloucester MT Ext
• Copperplate Gothic
• Century

  
We wanted to find a font that we could use for both the track list, for the front cover and for the actual CD merchandise, in order to create and keep the house style we wanted. We moved on to look at existing albums currently in the music industry and being sold in the market currently and came across many but the one that caught both mine and Emma's eye was the CD by "David Cook." This is because the artists name stood out as it was typed in capital letters, standing out from the rest of the albums, which is a great advantage. We then decided that we wanted to create something similar with our album for "Alex Lloyd" so it would not just fit in with the rest of the albums if it was to ever be sold and displayed in shops, but be brought or looked at due to the uniqueness and it standing out. The font also stood out to us and colouring, but as we had created a black and white CD, we did not want to destroy the house style and consistency by adding bright red text.
Both the ancillary tasks and the final video include the similar font styles to enhance the consistancy between them all. This included capital lettering for the artist name of "Alex Lloyd" and a kind of italic styled font for the song name of "What We Started."

To the left shows the text and writing on the music advertisement for "Alex Lloyd" which displays the type of style we were looking for when creating the house style to ensure the consistancy matches throughout. However, the colours differ throughout the three designs and styles due to the range of background colours that are displayed on either the video, CD cover or the music advertisement for Alex Lloyd. Fortunately, no matter what colour the style of the name and song is, you can always tell that they all relate due to the style of the fonts and the use of capitals and italic styling. The second image displays a screen shot from the video (final cut) which I grabbed using the Grab Tool in order to show that we inputted this to the video to create the effect and to carry on the consistancy accross the ancillary and final products. The third and final image was grabbed from the CD cover to complete the process of the consistancy for the text accross all the images in order to make the house style work and fit the genre we were looking for.

Improvements

Although I have demonstrated some examples of links and consistancy throughout the task of both the main product and ancillary tasks, there are still some improvement me myself would make if I could go back and change a few things.  One of these would be that because we have used a black and white effect on the ancillary tasks for both the digipak and the music advertisement poster, I think we should have used this effect also in the main product. Throughout the final product of the music video, we added, modified and changed different effects in order to help tell the story to the user, but instead of the black and white saturation decline from the music, we added a sepia effect   which we thought worked. Looking back on the music video, we should have used the Black and White effect rather than Sepia as it would have linked more with the rest of the ancillary tasks to upkeep the use and effect of the consistancy.