Question 2: Evaluation

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

Evaluation question 2 from Katie Howard

Written Copy:

Music video:

The narrative for our music video was about a girl around the age of 18 who had just gotten out of a bad breakup. She is still going through the stages of missing her ex and the video is about her making a reflective journey going to all the places which held a special meaning to the ex couple. She also checks on the social media profile, something we included in order to make links with the song itself. We chose this narrative because we felt it went well with the song. The song had a very sad tone and therefore we decided this narrative would work well. Additionally, we wanted to limit the number of characters involved therefore we decided on a narrative which focused on one physical character and one virtually included character.
The effect of this narrative on our music video was that it was relatable to our audience as many had been in this situation. I also think that as it was relatable it made our main  character more compelling  as she spoke to the audience. The emotions in which our character portrayed throughout the video truly reflected the narrative as she was sad and reflective throughout. I also think our narrative was effective because of the amount of detail in it, especially in the making of the Facebook profile and shots like the keys etc.
The narrative and song combination worked well because there was a clear link in the themes of both the video and the song. The narrative followed the lyrics and there was a connection between what was seen and what was heard. However it didn't work as well in the sense that the song was all about New York City and we obviously had to film in England.

Digipak:

We made the digipak to link with the products because that is a key thing we learnt about in the research process. It was important to make links between our products as our audience needed to recognise that the different products all related to the same artist and song. It was important to have consistency throughout our products. We used certain shots from our music video as covers for our digipak. We used the night shots for the outside and the daylight shots for the inside covers. Additionally, when we researched digipaks we noticed that the font was consistent. Therefore we worked to make sure the size, colour and font itself were the same throughout the digipak. The colour was consistent with the video and promotional poster. We decided against manipulating the colour because we did not want to take away the natural colour which was in the images. Personally, I really liked how the colours represented the song "New York City". I felt that although we weren't actually filming the New York skyline, the same effect was coming through. I think the combination of digipak and music video is effective because there is a clear link between them and the theme is easily recognised across both products.

Promotional Poster:

The promotional poster was actually quite difficult to come up with. The EDM genre is not a genre in which artists release a magazine poster. Additionally, magazine promotional posters themselves are actually becoming quite outdated and are no longer a traditional tool used to promote an album. Therefore during the planning stages I looked at other genres such as Pop where promotional posters were used most often. Using research we were able to identify the conventions of the posters and learnt what we had to include in ours. It was important to recognise the links between the digipak, music video and poster as they were all for the same song and artist. Like in the digipak we used shots we took on the day of filming the music video as the main image for the poster. We incorporated the front cover of the digipak on our poster in order to both make a link and conform to a convention. Also, the same colours and fonts were used in order to show consistency across the products. The video link is shown by the use of images which are similar to the shots from the music video as well as the main character taking the main focus in every product. She is therefore easily identifiable to the audience.  The colour is consistent across the board as we did not want to manipulate the natural colours which were shown nor did we want to interrupt the theme by making the colours overly edited and artificial.

Here is an example of the fonts used:

   

The effect of the overall combination of products is that there is clear evidence of consistency across the board. Each individual product is can be recognised individually as being a part of this brand and as a stand alone thing. By having features which are consistent across the products it makes them more effective and recognised by the audience. They show that the link is an important part of branding and it works better in terms of promotion for the artist. If a product is recognised by the audience it improves the reputation of the artist. 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, overall I really appreciate the connection between the products as I feel like it is a big, important part of branding. By using consistent features it makes clear links. Examples such as font, colour and images themselves show the consistency effectively. We received feedback from various audience groups concerning the effectiveness of the links and they said things like "...." "...." Overall the combination of our main product and ancillary task is effective because the brand is easily recognised and you can clearly identify the ongoing theme between the products.