Evaluation Question 2

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

To measure how effective the combination of our main project (the music video) and our ancillary texts (the magazine poster and the digipak) are, we must first see how well they combine in real products of the same genre. For example, here is the album artwork and magazine advert from Tinie Tempah's 'Written in the Stars':



It is obvious to see straight away that the two are from the same product. There are many notable features that link the pictures to each other:

• The picture used is the same on each
• The text used in each follows the consistent house style
• The colours are the same

So they link in well with each other, but how well does this combine with the video? Here are some screen shots from the a scene in the video of Written in the Stars that links in well with the images:

Clothing and accessories (e.g. Sunglasses) match that of the images

The colour scheme and blue tint on the video is similar to that of the images

The artist's pose in the images can also be seen in the video

The images also link in with the concept of the video:

• A blend of stars and other elements of space are in the image
• The artist's pose looks like he is deep in thought, and the low angle shot makes him look powerful and important, linking in with the theme of destiny in 'Written in the Stars'

We can see from the above example that to combine effectively with each other, a music video, a digipak and a magazine poster must all conform to a consistant house style. We can see that things like text, colour, mise en scene and concept all form the house style. Knowing this, how well does our project follow a house style?

Our Work

We must first identify important symbols and themes in our video that collectively form part our house style:

• Fireworks, fire, burning
  
• The girl, photographs
  
• A feeling of reflection on the past, reminiscence, regret

These themes were strong in our video, and so it made sense that to effectively combine our ancillary task with it, they must carry over to the images we make. Our video was about the burning up of relationships, shown metaphorically by Remi's acting and literally by the burning photo at the end; It also carried a theme of fireworks, as a metaphor for a troubled mind. In order to link our ancially task into the video, we felt it necessary to carry over this concept into our images:

Aside from retaining consistency in our concept, we also had to keep the text consistant. There is no text in the video, but everything written on our ancillary images is in the font 'Roadway', this helps to indentify the products as coming from the same group.


The continuity of the font helped to link and combine all elements in our ancillary task, but it created no links to the video. To further link to our video, we used similar colour schemes in our ancillary task as we did in our main to help combine the two together, as well as link the ancillary in with itself. I think that this was a very effective way of combining the two as, similar to the artwork for 'Written in the Stars', it allows a clear visible link to exist between the two parts of the project, and along with the links in the concepts between each, ensured that both sides of our work were reconised to be related.


I think that our ancillary task and our music video combine very effectively. We have a continuous concept, colour scheme and font and image through all our work. I think it would be clear to an audience that aspects of our work are all from the same project.