Draft for the second evaluation question.

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

To make the combination of the music video and my ancillary texts effective, I used branding across all the products so that it is easily identifiable to the audience. As we used a concept, I had to ensure that I had aspects of the concept in the music video and digipak and poster. I achieved this by using similar images and location in the digipak as we had in the music video.

For example as the concept was country vs city I had to portray this in my digipak and poster.  In the digipak I used 2 photographs of London in locations that featured in the music video which I manipulated using photoshop to create a gloomy, black & white image which contrasted with the more vibrant photographs of the countryside. This effectively showed the isolated, depressing city and freedom of the countryside which was the concept of the music video. For the front cover I created an piece that also was effective in showing the concept with the countryside above ground in colour contrasted well with the dark, gritty look of the underground map which act as the roots of the tree. The underground section takes up more of the image to show that city is feels more dominant which links to the music video where Katie looks depressed and isolated in city. Although I think I was successful in creating an effective digipak that showed the concept, my poster was not as effective in showing the concept because it did not show the city side of it. Although I like the Dear Photograph effect with Katie and I think it would be eye-catching in a magazine as the photograph takes up most of the page which draws in the audience's eye, I think it would have been more effective to have used the front cover of the digipak as this clearly shows the concept. It is also easier for the audience to identify as The Empty Crowd's work because the photograph of Katie is on the inside pages of the digipak so people who identified the link would already have the album. Whereas I should be trying to attract people who do not have the album yet so to make it more effective as an advertisement I should use the same image as the front cover of the album because then the audience get the image in their heads and will be reminded of it if they saw it in a shop, Amazon or iTunes. As our band are part of the mainstream pop-rock genre it is quite unusual not to have the band selling their album with a picture of themselves so the poster could be more effective if the audience could identify the album through the artwork.

Overall, I think I have use the concept well to link the products together. I feel I have managed to reflect the concept of the music video in the digipak through the use of photography and manipulation in photoshop which linked well to the editing of the music video.