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

By Jay FentonBridge Academy

Media A2 Evaluation

Our main product and ancillary tasks link in very well together. There is consistency between the digipak and the website of Alibi our main artist. Within our music product, the colour scheme used is both the same consisting of the dark colours of black and purple which connotes the dark path that Alibi has come from on his journey to where he is now. These are dark colours that don’t connote positive objects or individual characteristics, which links in with the main product as the narrative Alibi is explaining to the audience through the use of his lyrics which is referring to the area he was brought up in which is the not the best of areas. Our digipak has many shots with Alibi with his back against the wall which is connoting how Alibi feels about his life having had his back against the wall so he can see everything and cannot have anyone take advantage of him behind his back. Where he is from is not the best of places so he doesn’t trust many people and he also portrays this in our main product when he talks about not even trusting the social forces of society that are put in society to protect every individual from all threatening instances when he says “Why would I trust IPCC?”.

When you take a look at both website and digipak which is the ancillary products you can draw the comparisons that is coming from within the colour schemes which keeps continuity throughout our ancillary product as we have kept the colour scheme the same reflecting Alibi as a whole.

This is effective as this mind-set of Alibi having his back against the wall is portrayed in both our main product and our ancillary texts, from many shots of Alibi rapping against walls as well as all pictures featuring on both the digipak and on the website of Alibi so everywhere that the fans and audience of Alibi can go to get his content will be see this mind-set of his displayed of all the images and videos of him. We used close up shots of Alibi in both our main product and in our digipak and website. These coincide with each other as they show Alibi as he is and give the fans the blueprint of who he is and the main close ups are of Alibi’s face which is what the fans will remember of Alibi so it can be seen as Alibi’s trademark for what he is remembered by. This then leads onto the selling point of Alibi as that is what will make fans’ eyes catch the album cover and be interested however this all stems from the close up shots that were taken which leaves the image of Alibi in the minds of on-watchers. This is how the combination of the main product and the ancillary task is effective as it interlinks and bridges a connection to both the mind-set of Alibi and the trademark of Alibi left on fans. The close ups used in the main product also show the facial emotion from Alibi when rapping. These were used to show the passion that he feels for the music and how serious he is about the music through the use of showing facial expressions which are self-explanatory in the music video.

Within our digipak we also have a shot of Alibi up against a Police ID parade where victims and witnesses point out individuals that they had witnessed commit a criminal act. This relates to our main product as our ancillary task (digipak) gives reasoning for why Alibi hold an angry opinion against the Police and criminal justice system as they have previous altercations that evidently haven’t worked into the favour of Alibi. Additionally another way our main product displays Alibi’s unhappiness with the social forces of society is when he voices his disdain of the treatment of good friend Mark Duggan by the police who was shot dead in his lyrics. In Alibi’s lyrics he is very precised, abrupt and particular with what he is saying so that the audience have a clear understanding of the narrative. He is attempting to explain to the fans and listeners so that they don’t have the challenge of attempting to de-cypher his lyrics and this is how the ancillary products are layed out. The website has big bold white contrasting a black background letters giving a clear distinction of the different pages that are accessible for the fans and people viewing Alibi’s website, making it easy for the people to navigate as the layout is neat and direct just as his lyrics are in the music video which is the main product. This demonstrates how our main task is effectively linked with our ancillary products creating an effect on the audience which helps them to explain things that have not been fully broken down through the use of lyrics.

Another way we have created an effective link between our main product and ancillary products through the use of the camera shots we have that are in the gallery of the website, these shots vary in cinematography varying from close ups to mid shots, these shots allow the audience to see the mise-en-scene in this case the costume of what Alibi is wearing. This links to the main product which is our music video as it allows the audience to see the typical stereotypes which black youth from working class areas wear portrayed by the media, this can also link with Baudrillard’s concept of a Hyper-reality as not all black individuals from working class areas wear the clothing stereotyped to be typically worn however this gives audience a distorted reflection of society as the media portrays this image as if it is the only correct one. Although we established that this could be seen as hyper-reality we decided to come to a decision that in our video we were going to conform to the stereotype and these shots allowed us to give the audience the understanding that we wanted them to see Alibi as, along with him explaining the narrative we wanted our target audience to interpret through the lyrics of the track “are you?.