Evaluation - Question 2

QUESTION 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In order to combine my music video with the Digipak and the Poster, I had to create a brand identity for my band. This is essential in marketing all the products. It establishes: the genre the band belongs to, what their style of music is and what target audience the products would appeal to. 



MUSIC VIDEO

I established the brand identity of the band during the pre-production stages of the music video. I had studied the style and genre of my chosen song (Brain Damage by Pink Floyd), which was part of the Progressive Rock era. My particular song was made in 1973, before music videos became popular - so I could not gain insight from another person's interpretation. I did find out, however, that there was a modern equivalent to Progressive Rock - New-Prog. 30 Seconds To Mars, Muse and Radiohead all belong to, or at least considered to belong to, the New-Prog genre. 

I had gained most inspiration from the music videos by 30 Seconds to Mars. They had a very specific style to their music videos: they often made them as short films. 

As we can see, the videos are created with a dark and abstract agenda in mind. This reflects the surrealism within their songs. In all their videos, the band members have black eyeliner around their eyes. I believe this appeals to the Emo youth sub-culture and so I tried to do the same technique.

I applied eye shadow instead of eyeliner because I thought this was more striking and interesting. It emphasises his eyes a lot more and creates a greater surreal effect. 30 Seconds To Mars also painted their fingernails black, which I also did with my band members. This adds to their dark nature. This is a part of this band member's identity. It demonstrates an inner conflict between light and dark, good and evil. This is part of the reason why I have named the band "GOOD VS EVIL". This overall look of the Lunatic is how the band member would dress at live events. The coat itself is quite large and youthful, which would perhaps appeal to teenagers belonging to a lower social class. Fans of "GOOD VS EVIL" would recognise this character being the 'Good' side.

The 'Evil' side would be The Laughing Man:

Their band is formed out a continuous performance. The two members in the band are characters who are in conflict. The Laughing Man is dressed in a suit and a ventian mask. This could appeal to the stereotypical teenage attitude of despising authority. He is wearing a suit and has a tall height. He is "The Man" keeping you down. In 30 Seconds To Mars's videos, they contain surreal-looking villains who are antagonistic simply because they look terrifying. GOOD VS EVIL's act would be the continuous conflict between the Laughing Man and the Lunatic.

To further continue this idea of conflict between Good and Evil, I took advantage of the text backdrops.

Because I wanted to create a dark, intense atmosphere I used a black backdrop with white text. This makes it look like the darkness is dominating compared to the white. 



DIGIPAK

I have continued this idea of conflict in my ancillary texts. In my Digipak, I used an entirely black-and-white colour scheme. This may seem somewhat dull but I thought it represents what the band are. It is black fighting with white, light versus dark, good versus evil. This is especially demonstrated through the lyric pages in the booklet:

This takes quite a ying/yang approach to good and evil, adding to the band's philosophical - or, more specifically, metaphysical - identity. 

I used stills from the music video within the booklet to connect the two platforms together. 

To continue the regular colour scheme, I altered the colour of the pictures to black-and-white. Incidentally, the bottom still could not be shown in its entirety in the music video because of the application of a widescreen format. It was disheartening finding this out because it took so long to frame. I was delighted to find that I could include the whole shot in the booklet.

An addition to the Digipak, which I perhaps should have included in the music video, is the logographic style of the band's name GOOD VS EVIL:

Its somewhat archaic style represents the intelligence of the band as well as the history of Good and Evil. To have them appear well-educated and philosophical will appeal to a wider, more intellectual audience. It does not just have to be limited to the lesser educated youth. 

POSTER

I carried the logographic text over to the Digipak poster as well as the colour-scheme. Initially, I used many different colours for the different pieces of text. After debating it in class, however, I decided to keep to the black-and-white style. Colour in that context does not fit the identity of the band. I wanted the poster to connect with how colour is used in the music video. The colour did not seem to fit well with the rest of the poster.

The image on the poster is a still from the music video. It was directly inspired by Alfred Kubin's painting Madness, which can be viewed in a previous blog entry. This was not only to place GOOD VS EVIL into an abstract identity but also to appeal to the more intellectual members of the audience, who recognise the reference to the painting. This poster separates audiences attracted to the'feel good' vibe of pop music from those attracted to the darker side. To continue the band's identity of being film fanatics, I customised the text below the image to appear like an old-fashioned horror film poster.

I maintained the black-and-white scheme in the image to demonstrate that idea of the ying/yang idea of good and evil. This preserves their philosophical as well as aesthetic edge. I chose to include websites, which can tell an individual more about the album and the band itself. This is a good marketing strategy because everybody has access to the internet, so they can look up the website provided if they are interested. These websites include popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which many people are likely to have. Teenagers, who are a key demographic for the band, are almost certain to be a part of either of these two sites.