Question 2

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

Our three texts work together with synergy that flows with all three products, the music is based on a narrative to what we interpreted the song to be about and that was a breakup from a somewhat violent or troubled relationship with her boyfriend, the song represents her breaking free from her past with him escaping from her home where all her troubled memories lie to a new place at the beach where she can let go of her past with him and move on.   We then created two products for our ancillary tasks, one being the Digipak contacting the CD, lyrics of the song and images that represent the song and extreme close up images of ornaments and antiques features in the video and also the singer.

And our second ancillary task was of a Magazine Advert which is similar to the Digipak in terms of the typography and images used. The images of the actress is not the same but is similar in the sense we used the same filters and edited the photo in the same way by putting it in a black and white filter but leaving the bright red lips. Our promo needed to link together somehow and we did this by making some aspects lip like the bright red lips being included in our entire promotional package. The red lips relate to the 50’s glamour theme, which is why we found it so important to include this and make a key feature in our promotional package because it links to the Hollywood glamour we were inspired by Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Munroe; these were the kind of stars from that time which influences the voluminous hair and the glamorous makeup in the house scenes we shot. In addition to this we included images of antiques and stuck to a black and white theme, this helped to make it look more 50’s.

We wanted to focus on particular elements of the ancillaries and we didn’t wanted to hide all the colour otherwise the synergy would be less clear we used Photoshop and brought back the bright red lips and we also brought back the colour of the bronze antique ornament and the long shot of our actress at the beach and the detail of the flowers on the piano but we kept all the colour to a minimum. We used extreme close ups of antiques in the music video and we used some of these images of the antiques ornaments to put onto the Digipak, this helped incorporate the three products together. The synergy of the three products link all three together and the red lips are a huge factor of that, this makes it easy for the audience to see the similarities of the three products and shows that they are all linked together.

We were also influenced by Laura Mulvey’s theory ‘The Male Gaze’ this is where women in the media are seen from a males perspective and women are to be gazed upon by men we showed this in our promo by focusing on the red lips, this is linked to this theory because red lips are perceived and promiscuous. The same typography is used in the promotional package; this also makes it easier for the audience to see the link between the products and makes it clearer for them when purchasing the package. The same filter is used with the focus image on both the ancillaries are very similar and we used the same editing effects on both of them with the black and white filter and the red lip, this helps the audience if they decide to purchase the package, this helps promote the package because the similarity of the three parts of the package. We were inspired by artists such as Adele, her album 21, the black and white filter and the singer posing in a seductive manner with the striking makeup. We were also inspired by Lana Del Rey, her ancillaries always have a similar theme to her styles which is along the 50’s theme.