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

Well first off our music video has a narrative structure to it with some abstract elements implemented within the film. The CD compliments the video with images from the video, for instance the front cover involves an image of Helen on the canal looking back into some bushes which you cannot see, In the video Helen looks back at a Stella can which Sheila has thrown before she passed away, that’s where I got the idea of the image to go on the front of the album and I feel the desaturated image with high contrast links in with the theme of the past. The magazine advert features the song title, the artist, the date it’s released and a mention of a website at the bottom which helps promote and sell the featured song. This links in with the back cover because it has Helen featuring on it yet again. I feel I have used the same abstract design and style across all three.

The video has fast cuts, jump cuts, close ups and even a 360 view of the character etc. These are the key elements of an abstract video but our groups have managed to create a narrative to it as well. The earthquake effect, the use of the bad TV effect along with line art made the video even better; we used cross dissolves, fades, black and white imagery, and also used freeze frames to give it a more authentic look and feel to the work.

The song featured has an indie vibe to it so the target audience is going to be young. The representations of young adolescent people can be shown in a negative way for instance some people think teenagers are all drug takers, alcoholics and have a live fast die young attitude. In some ways that’s what this video is connoting; showing young people in a horrible situation and have just grew up in the wrong crowd and how a girl (Sheila) went down the wrong path and died because of it. But it’s showing how drinking, drug taking and even teenage pregnancies are the wrong thing to do for instance lyrics say ‘Lisa had a baby with Sam, And now Jack’s on his own man’ this suggests that your going to end up lonely if you choose that life of crime etc. This music video will be aimed at teenagers and telling them not to go down that road so I feel it is an excellent opportunity for teenagers to think about their lives; creating a society of teenagers knowing not to mess with drugs and alcohol etc.