Jack Baird

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts?

Emphasising Urban Culture

Urban culture has become a popular scene within the music industry, particularly for RnB, Rap and Hip Hop genres. We see lots of artists surrounded in places associated with inner city environments. For example, the vast majority of Eminem’s videos are based in cities (e.g. “Not Afraid”, “Bezerk” and “Love the Way You Lie” are set in cities). Therefore, I decided to focus on this urban culture in each of my media forms, because these are the sort

of surroundings that homeless people find themselves in on a day to day basis.

Using a digital camera, I took photography of artistic graffiti on a wall in London for the magazine poster. I also used this same image for the back of the digipak. Similarly, within the music video you can see they are dancing in a run-down urban environment with some graffiti in the background of the camera frame. This combination of imagery is meant to emphasise the urban culture throughout the whole production. It is a scene that is perceived as trendy and contributes to a sense of style and image for the song being

more urban.

The "American Dream"

In my digipak, poster and music video I tried to promote the idea of the "American Dream" in each of the media forms that I created. This is the idea that anybody, regardless of background, can succeed in life. The reason I did this was to suggest to my audience that you should never give up as you can always succeed or achieve your dream – an idea which could appeal to broad range of people who aspire to succeed in their lives. You can see this through our music video as it tells you a story about how the two homeless people dance in the street, but are then recognised and picked up by a dance crew.

Jack Baird

In the music video we used warm colours to support the positive ideas in the narrative, by using natural lighting in some of the scenes such as where the two homeless people are getting filmed by one of the dance crew members. We used the sunlight in this seen to create a positive environment. To make sure that this was consistent throughout our production, we had to make sure that we adjusted the brightness and contrast in some of the scenes in Sony Vegas. Warm and bright colours will give make the narrative in the video much more positively.

I wanted my Digipak to underpin the same concept in that it would also link to the "American Dream". Therefore, I used a photograph of the graffiti wall with a ray of light shining across it. There were many different locations I visited to get the perfect shot, and it took several

hours before I was satisfied that I had a captured an image which promoted the idea of that there is “light at the end of the tunnel” when you are in a dark place. On Photoshop I used colour corrections, brightness and contrast functions to highlight the ray of light even further. I felt this helped the poster link to the narrative of the music video, as they both imply a message of the “American Dream” – that it is possible to succeed and achieve your goals in life. Similarly, for the front cover of the digipak, I used a red circle on a white background that I designed on

Photoshop. The image was supposed to denote an impression of a rising sun, which would again connote the idea of “rising up” in the sense that anyone can rise from their position in society.

Recurring fonts and text types

In order to make my digipak appeal to people, I had to make sure that they were consistent throughout. With the font and text types I felt like that they had to be the same for all of three forms. The text and font sizes might have been different on both the poster and CD cover but I wanted that consistency, as this would be a type of branding which my target audience could recognise due to the repetition. On my poster and CD cover the same text was used throughout them. I used a stock font in Photoshop and manipulated it by rasterising the image. The use of bold text on the front of my album cover and the title on my poster was intended to state a message to our audience, to be bold in life, in the same way that our music video promotes determination. Being consistent will benefit us as it helps to create a good image and opinion about us.

Having the word 'BEGGIN' stand out on every part of my digipak will mean that when somebody sees it on both the poster and the CD cover it will reinforce the ideas that are linked together in them. This text serves as a contrast against the American Dream ideal that is promoted. Andrew Goodwin explains that music videos can contrast the lyrics in order to highlight their meaning more sharply. I wanted to apply this concept throughout the production, hence the use of the word “beggin” and a standard font and typeface every time it is used.

Jack Baird

Here is my digipak. The font and text were both used on the poster and the front cover of my C D cover. I also used the same text on the back of my CD cover but it is much smaller. The recurring fonts on all three media elements ensures that the audience can

link them all together. I used big, bold text in order to make it stand out to people and also to tell them that there is a story in the whole of the production. Having recurring text throughout the elements means that it will stick into peoples head so they may want to see the song or buy anything that is related to ''MADTWO''.