How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

The idea of our brand relates to today's news stories of teenage suicide (particularly as
a cause of cyber bullying). We were aiming to evoke emotion, shock and sympathy for
our 2 main characters, even for the bully who feels deep regret for what his actions
have caused his former girlfriend to do. Our brand is aimed at the younger generation of
males and females who listen to NME, XFM etc, and we want them to be able to relate
to the 2 characters in the video. We did this by using young characters (in their late
teens), so that our target audience can go through and recognize the feelings of
teenage love and angst with the characters. We particularly aimed at targeting the
social groups of metalheads and alternatives.

The idea of creating a music video, magazine advert and digipak for the same song and
band is to make sure that a brand identity is present. They should not be 3 stand alone
products but stand together as a package. We have tried to do this in a variety of ways.

Imagery

I think that the most obvious link throughout the 3 media products is the use of the rose,
which appears as a stand out object across the brand. This was a deliberate move as
roses are obviously immediately recognized as a universal symbol of love, but we also
felt that the rose could be used and manipulated to symbolize violence and
unhappiness through shots were we destroyed it and picked petals off of it. These
actions show audiences how the love they once had has been destroyed and torn apart.
We used photos taken during filming to use in the ancillary tasks so that the photos
would not look out of place and so there is a sense of continuity (e.g. if Claire is wearing
different clothes in the same situation in the video than on the digipak/magazine cover).

Mise-en-scene

According to uktribes.com, metalheads wear black most of the time. We used this
information and incorporated it into our video and ancillary tasks, where the characters
do wear very dark clothing (as they do in our video for the majority of the time)

The setting that we chose to film all our scenes are very secluded:

- Graveyard
- Against a white wall
- In empty rooms
- In an empty field
- Down a deserted country road
-
You do not see anyone else apart from the 2 main characters until the last few scenes
with mourners at Claire’s grave. I think this is very important as it gives audiences a
greater insight into the characters emotions giving that there is no one else to focus on.
We use this sense of isolation in all our shots for the digipak and magazine advert,
where you only see Claire by herself in blank dark surroundings.

Lighting the scenes correctly was very important to us for both the video and ancillary
tasks as we had to create a gloomy mood, where you can feel that all hope is lost.
We did this by using shadows on walls to show the silhouette of rose picking, we made
sure that all of our scenes n the graveyard were in black and white. In our ancillary
tasks I used lighting effects in Photoshop to create a ring of light around the graveyard
gate and I used the opacity tool to drop the opacity of the photos on the magazine
advert to make it seem as if Claire is leaning out of the shadows.
There is definitely a theme of darkness throughout the 3 products, as everything has
been desaturated or lowered in colour, however making sure that the red rose is till in
colour to emphasize its importance to the brand.
Text and Font
As a group we made sure that we used the same font throughout the ancillary tasks,
which also correlates with the video as the font is meant to look like handwriting (like in
the suicide note from the music video).
What has worked well across the brand?

- I think that our group has successfully managed to create a brand identity for the
band and their album. We have maintained the use of the rose throughout the
video and the ancillary tasks.
- We have made sure that the story to the video is not too obvious from the
magazine advert or the cover of the digipak, meaning that each media product
continues the story from the next: you see the magazine advert and wonder what
the story of the video is, you then listen to and watch the music video and realize
the theme, and you can finally buy the album and be able to recognize it instantly
from a shelf based on the cover art which is a still from the music video.

What hasn’t worked so well?

- I think that our use of contrasting and brightening/darkening of colours in the

magazine advert and digipak makes the same image look different from the
video than in each of the ancillary tasks, which weakens the brand identity.
- I also think that our use of black and white in the video and the digipak contrasts
too much with the magazine advert where every image is in colour.