Evaluation activity 2 – how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

By Ami Lawrence

Digipak

Front coverWe used a shadowed font which created the effect of the albums title name ‘Chasing shadows’.

Connor is in black and white whilst the back ground is in colour, this is to represent past and present as you can see at the back of the cover in the mist there is tree’s it relates to the back cover as I wanted to connect distance within the front and back cover.

The contrast in the picture is to represent love and distance which relates to the song ‘Remedy’ we wanted to keep the theme going throughout the ancillary products and magazine cover.

Front cover• By relating the front and back cover photos together we was able to show

‘distance and love’. We used Connor (Lead artist) on the front and picked a picture from the music video. This took time to choose as we wasn’t sure whether to use a picture from the music video or to do a photo shoot with Connor to decide on a picture. But we thought this was the best option for the music video as Connor is the main protagonist.

• As Connor was our main artist, we wanted him to be on the front cover to be noticed. As our target audience was females aged 14 upwards, this would also portray the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey, as she believes that girls fascinate over male pop artists and the look the artists/bands go for make the girls more interested.

• There are many connotations for our front album, one of them is why is Connor been positioned to the left hand side of the picture, another is why isn’t Connor in the middle as some times artists are placed in the middle as they need to be centre off attention. As we placed Connor in the right hand side of the picture this was so you can see he is placed in a field which is very distant. This is the theory known as encoding/decoding by Hall, he wants the audience to allow to decode areas in the music video where the editors have encoded it.

Inside left Placing the production company logo here it doesn’t drag attention away from the inside left cover.

We wanted the titles in the center of the left cover as the audience will automatically look at the centre. We didn’t want to take to much away from the band but they also need to be noticed.We decided to use

a black and white edit to add the same affect to the front and back cover. We wanted the theme to carry on throughout our ancillary product.

Inside left • We wanted the band on the inside left cover as it is normally a common

aspect used when showing a band. We have the lead artist who is centred in the middle, the guitarist and drummer placed at either side of him, this will show the more importance between the band members and show the audience a real look on the band.

• Whilst editing this I wanted to make the limelight on the band by adding a glow and shine onto the band which shows a slight shadow and keeps within the theme of black and white editing, you can tell the band is important and we wanted the audience to pick up on the limelight situation.

• The band are important but when it comes to our album cover we wanted the limelight on the lead artist as he is more seen in the music video, this will let the audience (who buy the CD) have a look into the band members picture and also allow the audience to have a memorabilia of the band.

Inside right Using reflection showed how we stuck to the ‘indie theme’ as this is an usual effect used on this image.

Inside right• Using reflection of the band members this showed the indie genre in a

album, this was an unusual idea for the inside right cover as we also used the silhouette style on the image which gave it a different effect. Another effect we used was an glow, feather and sharpen to make the picture more edgy but I wanted to keep the light on it so made this stand out more.

• Using this image shows that the band members want their identity hidden as they have had a shadow replaced instead of the them being shown, this will allow the audience to think why they want their identity and gives an mysterious look to this.

• The indie genre made us explore with different ideas and allowed us to extend our ideas, this also allowed us to look at certain bands and artists such as the kooks and more.

Back cover

The trees in the background are also used in the front cover, this is to show how distance is shown and how the past is behind, and to keep going forward. Still kept with the

black and white theme to show no difference used to the album, we kept this black and white to show their wasn’t any massive changes to the album.

When editing this image, I wanted to create the light on the lamppost effect to show that it was slightly edgy. We wanted to show there is light through every aspect to make sure the reason why he is hurt can be resolved.

Back cover

• Whilst editing this image, we needed to make sure it made sense to the viewers adding the obvious effect of black and white, then also adding the woods at the back. The woods at the back is the same woods that are in the background of the front picture. We specifically used this image to show distance and also wanted it to connote love.

• Another feature we added to make sure it showed a effect with the lighting, praising the songs they have made and produced.

Magazine advertBig font - Title

Recent songs they have

released to create more

interest for the fans.

Best review from a well known magazine

High star ratings from magazines which will gain

attention from those magazine audiences plus from our target

audience

Using the same theme of black and white, this kept in contrast with the ancillary products we produced.

Magazine advert

• We kept with the black and white theme and we also used an image from the music video, this picture shows how vulnerable the artist is and shows the male gaze as our young audience will feel sorry for him.

• We looked at previous magazine adverts for bands and they all use the same layout with a clear bold font and little writing with the ratings on