Evaluation Q2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Music Video

The music video we decided to do was for the song "Crystallised" The xx's debut single from their debut album "xx".

We have a simple but vague narrative of the protagonist, Jade, losing a crystal at the start then going insane in search for it, shown through various clips of her feet and of her walking. The insanity is shown through the shots of her flipping her head round in slow motion. At the end she finds the crystal which is shown through a simple shot of her hand catching it. 

Although it is an unclear narrative and not everyone will understand that there is one, i don't think it detracts the effect of the music video. This is because all of the shots depicting the narrative have the same or similar image effects on them and so if the story line isn't noticed the clips depicting it will blend in with the standard and ECU shots of the protagonist singing along to the music, the various shots of cars and the brief clips of drums. 

The xx's original music video was a series of clips showing them simply with their instruments. This implies that they want the main focus to be on the music and so we thought it was appropriate to include clips of Jade singing along with the music and a drum kit reflecting the persona of the band.     

Digipak and Digipak Advert

The digipak and digipak magazine advert were our ancillary tasks. 

We decided to use a picture of an eye for our album cover, linking to our music video which starts and ends with the opening and closing of an eye respectively. This is relevant because "Crystallised" was the first single off of their album and so it is more likely to have an effect on the presentation of the album as a whole. 

There are clear links between the back cover of the album and the advertisement, one of which are the fonts, here is the font from the back cover of the album:

and here is the font from our advertisement:

As you can see, we used the same font, Minion Pro, for both but changed the colour to contrast slightly.  

To Conclude

Overall, the similarities between three products make the combination of them quite effective. Although there is only a small connection between the music video and the digipak advertisement, I don't think it matters too much. This is because the advert is promoting the album and not the music video. One could argue that the music video is an advertisement as well. Promoting an understanding of what the band is about and the kind of music they play and in doing so, hopefully increasing the sales of the album.