Question 2

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

Throughout our coursework as well as completing our main task we also had auxiliary tasks to complete designed to promote and enhance our main task (the music video). We decided to make a magazine advertisement and CD digi-pak as we felt this put our creative skills to best use and we also felt this would be an appropriate way to reach our target audience as the "indie rock" genre is very big in music magazines, having its own seperate magazines to cater for this audiences needs e.g NME, Kerrang!, Q Magazine etc.
This meant that we needed to create a strong house theme/brand throughout all three pieces to compliment each other and to cross promote created using similar or the same art work. Before these tasks were carried out we put extensive research into the way musicians and record companies achieve this with existing products:

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As our genre is "Indie Rock" it is not only important that our products worked well together but also fitted into the genre. We were able to understand how to create a product which would please our target audience through research, which influenced the whole look . As The Killers are already a favourite band of mine I felt quite confident in knowing how I felt the task should look in correlation to the video.

In connection to the lyrics and tone of our song we decided on a dark, ominous theme for all three products which we feel corresponded visually to the lyrics of the song. Also from our research we decided that the strongest way to create a brand is using the same imagry from the video in the two auxiliary products to make this effective. But how was this achieved?

Lighting, images and iconograpghy

We decided that in reaction to the lyrics and tone of the song we would use a dark ominous look to our video, with a horror film element. To achieve this we used certain techniques to make our product appear foreboding and “creepy”. We used horror film iconography and devices which gave an effective look to our product.

This was a theme that we used across all three platforms which made it clear the three belonged together.

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(text from poster)

-The clown was a repetitive image throughout our video and was one of its main features as it was crucial to the main story line. This made it impossible not to feature the clown the in auxiliary task. We used an ordinary picture of the clown which was not particularly scary to make subtle hints to the view of the products which therefore cross promote.
-technique and format from the video from the overlay seen in this scene. This was an extremely powerful image in the video as it conveyed the extent to how the clown is begging to take over his life. We used this principle in the auxiliary task, making a connection to our video to convey the same message. We repeated the image of the clown to add further impact and also to extend the idea of Harry’s torment which is offset by his neutral face expression.
-We used the same image from this scene of the video and altered the brightness to convey the darkness of the rest of the video. We used this image as we felt it did not give away too much as Harry has no facial expression. His eyes engage directly with the camera which makes the image engaging and also creates a haunting image simply, which is enhanced from the overlay of the clown. This was effective as it was subtle and adds interest and intrigue to those who have not seen the video and attracts attention to the product.
-Similar angles/poses used

Features e.g Font,layout

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So how effective was this?

Well to really measure the effectiveness of this we gave a questionnaire (see link) to our target audience about what they liked and did not like about our three tasks and how well they felt they worked together as a whole. We also incorporated this into our audience feedback video during question three.

Overall it would seem we were fairly successful in creating an effective brand across all three products as we had very positive feedback from our target audience in both the questionnaire and audience feedback video. Most people felt

• "There is a strong link between all three products" constructed through "the repetition of themes and the clown"
• The lighting in the ancillary tasks "mirrored the atmosphere of the video"
• "It was clear that the three products belong together"
• The products are "intresting" and "engaging"
• It is "professional" and "current" and "fits well into the genre"