JL - Evaluation Question 2

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

Our brief was to make a music video, magazine advertisement and a digipak for our chosen track. The products that we produced are all subsidiary media to build the image of the band. Hellogoodbye is a powerpop band, this genre draws inspirations from the 60's and is closely related to pop-rock and indie pop music. These genres has many characteristics. People usually wear checked shirts with skinny jeans and are known to be passionate about the music that they produced. Along with this, because power pop draws inspiration from the 60's we tried to build the band image as quite retro but at the same time showing the band as modern and contemporary.

Here are the digipak highlighting icons to show how we contructed the image of the band. I used different visual motifs to general and construct a band image.

• As with other powerpop album covers there are not any pictures of the band. Here is a moodboard with album art from other artists within the same genre.
  
  
  
  



• As you can see they are all very colourful and have a retro feel to it. The top left has a comic style to it and the Silver Sun cover looks as though it has been taken out of a comic book. I used these to help generate our digipak which lets the consumer identify the band and the genre.
  


• As well as following conventional albums with the lack of a band picture it also allows the band to build a personality to the audience of a 'fairy tale' world as mentioned above.


• It also leaves consumers with an enigma as to why there is no picture and thus the consumer will try and complete this image by viewing other sources of media.
  

Here is the inside of our digipak, it shows how we continued to generate out band image.

Richard Dyer

"Star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and 'open'."

Paradox 1: "The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer"

Paradox 2: "The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer"

• The glasses without lenses builds an incoherent star image, it is seen in the music video as well as the digipak and advertisements.
  
  


• The cow and gorilla in the music video continues the playful nature of the band and may remain a mysterious as to why they are there so the consumer can carry on to complete their image.
  


• The house party they attend and the narrative of the boy chasing the girl can be related by the audience as these are ordinary activities but within the same shot there is also the presence of a cow and gorilla which makes the scene simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary.
  


• Another example of Dyers paradox 1 is the usage of handicam shots during performance. It is closely related to home videos but it is extraordinary as the band are performing in a park and are seen to be extremely talented.
  


• There is a fast cutting rate for the video. Just as the consumer starts to begin a bond with the band the shot cuts disrupting the relationship making the band simultaneously present and absent.
• During the performance shots there are first person mode of address but this is only seen during the chorus, as a result this is very brief which gives the band simultaneously present and absent.
  

Here is our magazine advertisement

• We plan to put our magazine into NME as they promote music which is of interest to our target audience.
• It is a full page advertisement as Hellogoodbye are verging into mainstream. It will also give them maximum exposure.
• We have kept the same font and background so continual consumption of the media products will anchor the bands personality.