My main media
product was the music video in which I used a narrative of the singer’s
monotonous lifestyle which ended when the rest of the band appeared for the
performance section after which things seem to improve for the front man. The
ancillary tasks were the digipak for the album and the magazine advert/ poster
for the release of the debut album by The 99s.
Throughout the
three media products I made efforts to create continuity and a running theme.
To do this I used the running theme of photographs of the band members
lined up against a wall with funny hats on and in each picture they swap hats
or change positions. In the main element these pictures were used as a
pixilation/ human stop motion during the instrumental as a ‘laddish’ band
messing around scene as seen in some of the videos I analysed by The Kooks
which was a very effective part of the video.
I used these pictures as small thumbnail photos in a tile
format across the front and back of the CD cover. I did this as I didn’t want
to single out and choose one picture to use as the whole background because the
whole point of the photos was that they were changing hats and positions etc so
to show this I tiled them. I think this is quite clever as at a first glance you
would think the pictures were all the same but after closer inspection you can
see that they are different
I also used these tile thumbnails on the album release
magazine advert but I included some new picture on the advert as there was more
room for them on here and more space to fill. The pictures were not on the
album cover but they are still recognisable by the band image created
throughout using the retro colours, the funny hats and the quirky stances.
Another large part of the band image is the 70s colour
styling I created in the ancillary tasks. This wasn’t used in the main task
(video) as such but the colours on the digipak and advert were chosen to
compliment the cream/ beige coloured wallpaper that was used as the backdrop
for the photoshoot. I used this colour scheme for all of the ancillary tasks so
as to create a product that my target audience of 14-25 year olds could quickly
recognise in record shops such as Fopp and HMV as they will be most likely
looking for the album from images they have seen on the advert/poster when they
go into the shop to buy the album. The album for The 99s I decided to call ‘The
99s’ as many artists release self- titled albums as their debut album. This
means that for a first album the band and album title are the same so the text
can be nice and large to grab the attention of potential customers.
For the back cover of the digipak and some of the magazine
advert I lowered the transparency of the thumbnail pictures so that the text
could be read more easily when overlaid on top of the, however, the pictures
are still visible and it strikes a nice balance and adds softness to the back
cover so it is easy to look at and read the track listing. Like I found of
existing artists like The Kooks I used the same font for everything on the
digipak and magazine advert as this strengthens the brand of the artist and when
the audience/ owners of the album see the font they will immediately relate it
to The 99s.
Overall I received positive feedback on my main
task and ancillary tasks and people said how well they all tie in together as
one larger media product and therefore create a good brand for the artist.
