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

Mise en scene

- There is no visual link in the mise en scene between the music video and the ancillary texts. This is because we wanted to portray a sense of confu-sion in the video, but juxtapose this with pure simplicity within the ancil-lary texts. An example of the link between the mise en scene of a music video and its ancillary texts with real media products would be The Beatles album “Magical Mystery Tour”, where the members appear dressed as their anamorphic counterparts on the front cover, a direct reference from their music video for ‘I Am The Walrus”. An example similar to our own, where there is no direct link in mise en scene between the texts, would be the Arctic Monkeys album “Suck it and See”. We decided to follow this ex-ample as we felt it would reinforce the idea of ‘less is more’. The connota-tion behind this being that the audience would feel they would be at-tracted more by the bands music than their appearance.

Use of camera

- Once again there is minimal combination between the two products. This is because in the video there is a constant sense of confusion through the rapid camera motions, however, the digipack and poster were both digi-tally constructed, therefore no link can be made between the uses of cam-era. On the other hand, the composition of shots in the music video and the composition of the digipack and poster a very similar in the fact that they adhere to the rule of thirds. An example of an album cover and music video link would be in Slipknots song “Psychosocial” for the album “All Hope is Gone”. The album cover comprises of a shot of the band members stood in a field with a blue tinted effect used. This shot style is frequently used throughout the music video for “Psychosocial”

Representation of artist/group

- Goodwin stated that the artist/group would be heavily included in close ups in the video and would generally dominate the album artwork. How-ever, we challenge both of these theories as our video included minimal footage of the lead vocalist and our digipack and poster contain no images or reference to the band members themselves. An example of the conven-tional representation of the artist would once again be Slipknots video for ‘Psychosocial’ and the album “All Hope is Gone”. This is because through-out the video, the are a variety of closeups of all members of the band, clearly showing their face/mask. This transcends onto the album cover where we can clearly depict each member standing in the line up. An ex-ample similar to ours would be for Metallica “One” where throughout the video, we can harpy ever clearly see the band members faces, which is emulated onto the cover for their album “…And Justice For All”.

Branding of artist/group

- Due to the lack of inclusion of the actual band members in both main product and ancillary texts, it can be suggested that the band are at-tempting the brand themselves as ‘all about the music’. This goes against the majority of musical releases today, where the lead singer or ‘pretty face’ dominate the publicity and are generally used to sell the product. By challenging this, we attempt to make the listening experience more about the actual music rather than who is performing it. A contemporary exam-ple of this would be for artists like Rihanna and One Direction, whose al-bum covers and music videos are dominated with close ups of themselves. We chose to veer away from this attribute as to conform to similar bands such as Nirvana who rarely created a brand for themselves within their music.

Theme

- The dark nature of the video is juxtaposed in the album digipack and poster which is displayed as bright. However, the contextual nature is, too, dark as seen with the representation of a skull and missing brain. An ex-ample of the theme of a song being represented on the album cover would be “Magical Mystery Tour” by The Beatles. This is because the attitude of the song is very light hearted, psychedelic and happy. This effect is repre-sented on the vibrant and imaginative album cover. We chose to emulate the mood of the music video in our album cover as we felt it best reflected the seriousness of the theme of insomnia.

Typography

- There is a direct link between the two ancillary texts, being that they both display the band’s name in the same text. This adds to the idea of artist branding as the typography of the name becomes a logo in itself. How-ever, there is no link in the typography used in the video (at the beginning in the dictionary description) and the digipack and poster. An example of the use of typography combination over various texts in contemporary media would be Eminem, who has used the same font for all albums and videos, also establishing a brand for himself. We chose a similar approach as we wanted to effectively introduce a logo through the typography of the band name.