How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancilary texts?

• For my magazine advert I wanted to create something that was simplistic but also effective, something that would really grab the attention of my audience. • My aim was to have the highest quality photograph that I could take and so initially

used two different camera lenses and took photos of my friend Abi. However, after conducting audience feedback, I realised that using a female to advertise a male artist didn't work and wasn't effective as a combination of my main product and anciliary texts. • I then conducted some audience research in order to look at how magazine adverts

should advertise an artist. I then analysed a number of different magazine adverts, including Jessie J, Two Door Cinema Club, Katy Perry, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey. • Even though these magazine adverts were not similar to my final product, it still

allowed for me to analyse the typical conventions and institutional elements that I should and therefore did include on my final product. On reviewing, I knew that I wanted to include the performer in my music video, Nathan, on the front of my magazine advert to represent the artist I am promoting as the main focal point of the advertisement.

• As with the magazine advert, I also made the mistake of using a female artist as the main focus for my digipak. However, after switching to using Nathan, I realised that this was better suited and more appropriate. Again, I researched different digipaks in order to create something similar. • I analysed digipaks such as The 1975s, Florence and the Machine and

my favourite; Panic! At The Disco's 'Too Young to Die' digipak. I felt as though this digipak was very creative, portraying the indie genre very well whilst being extremely creative with the editing used.

• I therefore decided to photograph the performer in one of the locations we filmed our music video in, which was the local nature reserve. I believed that this would be the best location in terms of background variety and would also link my main music video to my ancilary texts, so there would be subtle connection for the audience.

• I decided on a simplistic background which was at the nature reserve for the front and back cover of the digipak and also the magazine advert. This way both the ancilary texts and music video linked which is an example of synergy.

• This is because each text is promoting the other, successfully making the links between the three texts which makes it very clear to the audience that the texts are all from the same artist which is a highly successful marketing technique when advertising an artist or band.

• To create the 'Star Image' as described by Dyer, I decided to edit the photos accordingly using Adobe Photoshop. I perfected Nathan's skin whilst I also edited both the brightness and contrasts of the photograph to ensure that Nathan was the complete focal point on the ancilary texts.

• I used text variety as this is a typical convention for the front of a magazine advert, using one text for the artist name in black and then any promotional information in a different text in white.

• For the front cover of the digipak, I used one black font as I wanted this to be simplistic but I used the same image as seen on the front of the magazine advert for synergy. The line separates the title of the album from the artists name which links to the first title which appears at the beginning of my music video.

• For the back cover of my digipak, I used an image of my performer with his back turned away from the camera. I felt as though this created a sense of openness and closure of the album. I used white text here in the same font as the front of the digipak as this stood out the most when overlaid on the photograph. I edited the colours on Photoshop for a darker colour which represents the different moods in the songs on the album.

• All of the inside images of the digipak are black and white in order to juxtapose the front and back covers in colour, and the middle slides in black and white. This was achieved through changing the colours in photoshop. I think this is effective because is also mirrors the effect used in the music video, where we decided that the narrative element would be in colour, and the performance element in black and white.

In conclusion, I believe that I did make a very effective yet subtle link between my music video and ancillary texts because there are clear similarities whether this is through the settings of both the music

video and texts or simply just the fonts used.