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

Many themes and ideas have been carried over from the main product to the supporting magazine poster and CD cover. As the song is about raw challenging issues, we felt having a gritty texture to the music video and ancillary texts were vital in producing a successful piece of work. We used the simple idea of carrying over the characters played in the music video into the magazine poster and CD covers. To make the use of characters strong enough, we decide to use this theme throughout the entirety of the promotional package. To differentiate from the usual music poster, our group decide to design a poster for each character within the music video (the pimp, prostitute and news reporter). As well as designing a poster for each character, after create a number of posters, we asked people within the target audience (15-24) which poster best supported the themes of the music video and how. The research was majorly using in helping us understand what features interest our target audience when producing the poster and CD covers.

Our stylistic aspect of the promotional package was the persona and the outfits and contrast of different characters within the music video. This is evident all aspects of the ancillary texts for example; the pimp wearing a parker, the prostitute in stereotypical clothing and the suit of the news reporter. Another feature to the poster and CD case is how all three characters are framed within their pictures. The prostitute is always framed within one third of the photograph, showing how she is the victim within the video; she also doesn’t look into the camera making her look venerable. Other example for this include how the pimp has placed towering over the camera in his poster, this low –angle shows his power within the main product. This dominance is also evident within the inside cover as staring straight into the camera gives the audience the overwhelming sense he is the dominant character within the video. The strong themes and relations between the ancillary text and main product help advertise the overall feel of the product to the audience.

It seemed that the central theme should run throughout our project and that the main character of the music video (the prostitute) should be presented on the CD case in a similar light to her character in the main product, so the audience can create a link between the two. This would come across to the target audience as a mysterious and unusual artist, especially since the music video matched that of the rest of the promotional package. It was obvious to the group, whilst the song "When the Sun Goes Down – Arctic Monkeys” in the music video is a very meaningful and challenging song, and the fact that the music video focuses on the personalities between characters (which is represented in their appearance), that the same theme on the magazine advertisement would be the most appropriate thing to do when promoting the CD.
Overall we feel the range of techniques used across our poster and CD covers are used cleverly, from the depth of focus used on our back cover to the filters (i.e. diffused glow) used for the front cover and poster to create emotion from the prostitute.