Evaluation Question 2: How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Tasks?

I feel that, overall, the branding of my main product and ancillary tasks hasn't been very collaborative. I fell that this is because I've made my digipak and poster not alternative enough for the  music video. The video is edited so that it shows how the stereotypical teenager is presented - lazy, gaming and generally an all-around immature character. For example, this is displayed when we see the main actor walking around the house with nothing but his dressing gown, which is one of the stereotypic details about teenage life - that they have it easy, that they're lazy and that it's what they do all day long. We also have the notion that they play games all day, as illustrated by the Xbox console and the two actors playing it with controllers.
Additionally, we also see the immaturity when they have their pillow fight, with the mid-close ups of the cast getting hit by one another creating a very amusing and humorous atmosphere. This is amplified by the randomness of things, when we see the rice crispies being thrown on the floor, for no apparent reason, which then get licked up by a dog. This is not the usual type of music video, especially those in usage by the mainstream media, which is why it can be considered alternative. There is also the subtle notion of superheroes, which is also what kids and teens in the modern world are crazy about. This is shown individually when each of the three actors opens up their dressing gowns to reveal the more serious dress underneath - a more country fashion suit, which is used by the actors later on. This is seen in numerous superhero products and therefore does indeed relate to them.


On the other hand, my digipak and poster are a lot different, along with the logo of the group. The logo is very edited, in my opinion and therefore does cast a bit of alternative effect onto the branding of the group, with the letters similar to that of a typewriter and several copied ones from DaFont, which display the name of the group. However, I get the feeling that it's also very gothic or 'dark', in a sense. This is shown by the dark and green colours that dominate the entire thing. Also, the subtle notion of the name 'Redrum' is also a relation to the Stephen King novel, "The Shining", which is a horror and 'Redrum' is 'Murder' spelt backwards. This gives it a very eerie setting and background.

My digipak is a bit different and more effective when combined with the music video. It includes more unusual effects, such as the amount of orange I put in to cover any white parts, which excludes the name of the band, a part that has a white background. I also did a lot of editing with the pictures. For the main photo - the one with the two artists standing together - I changed it so that it had a 'lens flare' effect on the top right hand side and the whole picture was filtered through with a grainy effect. All this gave me a very alternative answer. I also edited the two individual photos so that the artists appeared to stand in front of a police height-bar room. This gave it a humorous effect and this worked in my favour to establish the alternative genre.

My poster, however, was very simple - which didn't give much of an impression whether it collaborated well with the music video or not. However, I do think that the very fact that it's plain itself is a hint that it might be more of an effective combination with the music video - this is because not many artists have so much blank space on their promotional posters.

Overall, I do not think that my video, digipak and digipak poster do not combine well. Each has its own style, such as the blankness of the poster, which contrasts to the usage of space on the digipak and the alternativeness altogether in the video. However, I felt that, in terms of genre, I did a better job at creating the alternative feel of the pictures on the digipak and the different random scenes in the video, whereas the poster was made plain and therefore not as uncommon - as I saw in my research, there were plenty of other artists who decided to cover the whole page with their picture and place the rest onto the sides and relied mostly on the picture to catch the eye of audiences. I felt that, even though it was not alternative, it was good to have a bit of normality to promote the video.