Evaluation Question 2How effective is the combination of your main product
and ancillary texts?
Dani Gordon
It was crucial that when creating my digipak and advertisement that I carefully considered how they would correspond with the music video. In order to create a recognisable branding for the band ‘Arctic Monkeys’ it was essential for all three products to
have a similar style and aesthetic, I aspired to achieve this by translating certain aspects of my
music video across the ancillary texts, creating direct links between the products
The digipak and advertisement are almost identical as I used the same simple design across both, this was an idea that originated when creating the draft
for both the digipak and the advertisement. However the draft version failed to strongly correspond with
the music video, therefore would limit the recognisability I was aiming for, this was confirmed by audience and teacher feedback. Consequently
my final ancillary tasks are incredibly alike and form a style that coincides with the feel of the video, this is
due to the fact the same location used for the digipak and advertisement is the same used for the 'scummy
man' section of the video
Although the background of the digipak and advertisement are very busy, I wanted to keep the majority of the simple, only
including the necessary text and keeping the font simple. I also wanted to take inspiration from existing Arctic Monkeys
work, while still making this my own, this is why I took inspiration for the Arctic Monkeys album 'whatever people say I am that's what I'm not’, its minimalistic, as the album name
isn’t even featured on the cover and includes a mid shot of the same person on the front and back of the digipak this is
something I choose to replicate. This simplistic style was replicated across my advertisement as well, as again I only
included a small amount of text. Due to the bright background I only used white for the font as not to overwhelm and distract
the audience
I believe our video itself is very simple, we kept the amount of people in it to a minimum and decided to stick with a straight
narrative instead of flicking between narrative and performance. Even when it came down to editing we kept it as simple as
possible as we didn't want to distract from the story being told. For this reason I don't think having a busy, heavily edited
digipak and advertisement would of shown the connection between the video and the ancillary tasks. For example album
covers such as Miley Cyrus ‘Bangerz and Chris Brown ‘F.A.M.E’ are heavily edited and very busy, this works for the style of
music they are producing and lets the audience know what to expect. If we had taken inspiration for these I don't think we could of had any recognisability between our products at all,
besides the person featured on the cover.
In relation to the music video I believe there is a strong connection between it and the ancillary tasks. The main
reason being the distinctive background used in both the ancillary tasks is a scene from the video. When filming I
thought the walls were rememberable and therefore thought they would work well in the ancillary tasks. I
wanted to make sure the connection between the two were clear so deiced that as it was the pimp who was in that
location in the video, it would make sense for him to be on digipak, reinforcing the connection between the two. Even though only a small amount of the walls made it in to the
final draft of the video, I still believe it works as it is the first time the audience meets the ‘Scummy man’ /pimp
In conclusion, I feel our music video, digipak and advertisement successfully for fulfilled the aim we had set out to achieve, creating a recognisable branding for the band ‘Arctic Monkeys.’ Our ancillary tasks are practically the same, with the only main difference being the ‘scummy man’/ pimp isn't included on the advertisement, as we felt it looked better and was more to the point without the man being included. I believed the simple to the point nature of the ancillary tasks is also relevant to the music video, we wanted to show how bad the prostitutes life was, we decided to not sugarcoat it and got straight to the point. This shows how the combinations of products worked well together.