Q2 How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?Advanced Portfolio Evaluation

Rosa Rogerson

Font• One of the most obvious continuous features of my promotional

package is the font. • I used the font ‘Century Gothic’ on both Adobe Premier and Adobe

Photoshop. • All my titles, headings and important information have been written in

capital letters as I like the image of all the letters looking an equal height which will not work when using both upper and lower case text.

• I was influenced to use my font as part of the overall house style by the music videos of ‘Blurred Lines’ by Robin Thicke and ‘Wild’ by Jessie J.

• I think the use of the same continuous font and spacing (kerbing) between the texts throughout all my media products is highly effective. It works with the similarity of images and can easily be linked to the rest of my promotional package as it creates an icon.

• I wanted the font to stand out yet still be clear and easy to read, as seen from the other music videos that use a similar font to mine, they use their text as a way to present the most important information, the song name or the artist name.

Colour• Colour is very important in my promotional package, it acts as a signal of fun and

happiness, and I wanted this to continue from my music video to both my advert and digipak.

• From my audience feedback (more detail in Q3) I learnt that my auxiliary weren't bright enough and the image (a still from the video) didn’t look right and didn’t match the colours of the video. Because it was an overlay I didn’t notice this initially but changing the brightness I have now noticed the significant difference it has made and it looks a lot more colourful and vibrant like my music video.

• This audience feedback and change in brightness really helped me create a more powerful image and suits the style of my promotional package better.

• As I filmed all the footage of my artist in the same location in front of a white background which resulted in it looking slightly boring and dull, leading from this I decided to add the overlays of colours of blue, red, and yellow and also similar footage of balloons to add depth and to make my video look busier and more exciting, my intention was to keep the audience entertained and wanting to carry on watching, something that I think I have achieved from my video because of my use of colour.

Motif – Colour dripping• I have used a motif throughout all my promotional package of

the colour dripping through water. • A motif is a dominant idea or pattern in creative work.• I chose to use a motif of the dripping colour throughout all of

my products as a way of corresponding them together and selling them as a whole.

• There were a number of stills I could have used from my video such as shots with the artist in, or the balloons and party mess on the floor but I chose to use the dripping colour as I think it gives it an air of mystery and looks slow in movement, a contrast to the fast and up beat rhythm of my song.

• Motifs are common conventions used in music videos and ancillary products as a way of selling the products as a package, in some cases the motif lasts a life time such as Michael Jackson's glove, or through out their career like Jessie J’s black bob hair style. The motif for my promotional package is something that I feel may fade out with later albums but the font would stay the same as a final way of remembering my artist.

Motif – Pop • I based my music video on the images and words of pop – pop culture, popcorn,

balloons, party poppers etc.• I chose to do this because the name of the song is ‘Pop Up’ and by repeating this

image is going to create a memorable image of my artist for the audience.• Although my video is a concept video, where the lyrics don’t necessarily need to

match the visuals, I did try and create some connotations such as being ‘out of control’ and the word ‘pop’ which isn’t actually said in the video but the images such as blowing up balloons and catching popcorn all link back to this motif.

• Andrew Goodwin (“Dancing in the distraction factory”) says that different genres of music all represent their genre in their music videos in different ways. I tried to capture the usual essence of pop songs in my video by the inclusion of colours and filming in a studio, even though there is a lot of mess and different textures, because I filmed in a proper TV studio it gives the overall video a clean cut feel like it was supervised, a major comparison to rap or hip hop videos where there are no boundaries, this is another aspect of my motif of pop which relates it to similar music videos.

• However I do see that the running motif of pop has slightly been lost through out my ancillary products, there is not as much colour and obvious connotations between them and the genre of pop. The only ways in which we see pop is by the bright colour of blue on the front of both my digipak and my advert and the colourful mess on the inside of the digipak.

• In contrast to my last point, even though my ancillary products don’t follow the motif of pop as strictly as my music video, all three products work well together and as a package I think you can clearly tell what genre the music is and also you can relate to the connotations and motif of popular culture.

Pop Music Video – Katy Perry Californian Gurls

Use of stills from the video.• It is common in the filming and production of a music video and a promotional

package, to have a separate photo shoot for images for CD/digipak images and magazine adverts.

• However because of time and space restrictions, I found this harder to achieve, I did take some portrait images of my artist during filming which I planned to use for my ancillary products however these looked too static and dull for the image I was trying to convey and so decided stills from my video would be the best idea.

• I took two stills, as can be seen on the right of the page.• Even though the quality may be slightly lower than if I were to take a whole new

portfolio of pictures for my digipak and advert, I think the overall finish works really well.

• The use of stills from my video for my ancillary products helps keep the combination and continuity of my promotional package strong, it shows that all three individual products have been created by the same artist and because of the simplicity of my ancilarry products it means that the consumer would need to have knowledge of my music video to understand that the image has been taken from there. This may help in promotion and sales figures if I were to sell the promotional package as you need to have watched and looked at all three individual products to get a complete knowledge and understanding.

• This shows that the combination of my main and ancillary products works well, as the stills from the video give little information and would hopefully lead to my audience wanting to watch the video, buy the digipak and find a copy of the advert. If I were to really sell the digipak it would work well for profits as the products work as a package.

• Promotional packages are common for real artists to use as it gives their fans more varieties of the product rather than just the CD.

Comparison of video to auxiliary products.• My aim was to sell all three of my products as a package, but even though they

are each very similar in style, colour and font, I did want to create some contrast.

• My music video is very busy with props, colours and overlays, this contrasts with the front/back of my digipak and my advert which are simple yet bright. I wanted the inside of my digipak to create a ‘sneak peek’ image of what is involved in the music video, this is why I chose to use a still from the very end of the video with all the mess on the floor so the audience are left wondering what happened in the video to create the mess. This could then lead to them wanting to watch the music video to find out, a good form of promotion commonly used in albums.

• My artist is constantly shown throughout the music video and I contrasted this in my auxiliary products by only including one image of her. This being the polaroid style image which I wanted to look like it had been taken ‘behind the scenes’ also.