Evalution Question 2

I think my music video and my ancillary tasks are quite effective and work well together as a combination. I got my music video to look professional by following a series of generic conventions as well as by using some of the advice that my Target Audience gave me when I needed feedback. Furthermore, I had a large amount of background information on the rock/alternative rock genre and especially about the red hot chili peppers, as I am a big fan of both. Some of this information came from YouTube stats about what the audience want in a rock video, some of it came from rock themed magazines where the audience has a chance to speak about rock and what would they expect from their favourite bands, and the last pieces of information come from some other forms of research such as looking at products by the red hot chili peppers themselves as well as other works by similar bands. By doing this research I managed to fully appreciate and understand the expected conventions of both music videos and rock videos, allowing me to be creative within the constraints of both.

My digipak also looks like something you could find in a record shop or online. I looked at a number of digipaks from my genre and other genres in order to find about the multiple generic conventions that make a digipak look realistic and professional. Rock and alternative rock digipaks usually are quite simple; and in general they don’t show the artist. Instead, a landscape, a skyline or a symbol linked to the band will be represented. For example, in the cover of the album Californication by the RHCP, the main image is a picture of a backyard with a swimming pool; the image is edited so the colours are different, attractive and non-conventional. The font used in this cover is very simple, and so it is in most digipaks. In many occasions, the band uses their own house font, which makes it more recognisable. In the case of my digipak, I also used a simple image of an edited landscape and a simple font for the name of the album and the name of the artist.  In general, rock digipaks include a track listing of no more than 15-20, but as this is a single, the number of tracks listed on the back cover usually is 3-4. I found about this by looking at several different album covers and then applying it to mine.

I also researched digipaks for their essential codes and conventions, in order to get the most professional looking text possible. For I example I had to pay close attention to small things such as the barcode and the placement of it; I also looked at all the copyright information, as it had to look like something that would be written in a back cover in real life. Some other things I had to look at to finish it and to give it a professional look are the record labels, the length of the track list or choosing the right font for the typed information in the digipak.

In order to complete my magazine advert, I looked at a number of real adverts produced within the rock industry; this way I found out about the basic conventions on magazine adverts, such as including tour dates, information about the artist or the album, and availability of the album for purchase. In general, people who listen to rock like going to concerts to see their band playing live, so it is very common to see tour dates on rock magazine adverts. In general, the magazine advert and the digipak should be fairly similar in order to preserve brand identity, which will help the audience recognize the work of the artist; this is why I used the same picture than in the digipak, the same font and similar colours for the rest of the digipak.

The products do look like they are part of the same promo campaign; especially between the digipak and the magazine advert, as I used the same image from the cover; the images inside and in the back of the cover offer clear resemblance between them as, although the colours are not exactly the same, the style of the whole digipak has a characteristic mark. Although the music video and the ancillary tasks do not exactly look alike, the use of brand identity has given me the chance to add some elements such as the car used on the back cover or the landscapes on the front and the inside of the digipak that will make the audience know that all three products are part of the same promotional campaign. The similarity between the digipak and the magazine advert is really obvious; I used the same image from the cover; the colour scale is similar and same font type, size and colour.