Evaluation - Question 2 Plan

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary products?

In answering this question, I intend to show the strength of my branding across my products. An important element of this, I think, is the continuity of the 'look' of the band. Throughout my video, digipak and poster (as well as the twitter page) Perplexa are depicted wearing the same clothes and same hairstyles. Therefore, they can be identified easily and helps maintain the theme conveyed by my products.
The theme of the products is epitomised in the album title 'Big City Prison' - the feeling of being trapped in their own home city. It is prevalent in both the video and ancilliary products; the characters and artists in the video are shown, on the most part, alone in an urban environment (direct links with 'Big City Prison'). Similarly, the digipak and poster use settings present in the video (as well as the aforementioned costumes) therefore linking the images on them to the central theme.
The digipak front cover, back cover, and poster all use the same setting and similar positioning (a two-shot) of the artists as that of some of the final shots of the music video, reinforcing the continuity and strengthening the links between the products.
As for the inside of my digipak, a 'split-face' technique is used. The inside left panel uses half of Andy's face, and the inside right uses half of Ricky's. This creates the effect of the artists being 'one' in the form of the band. 'Perplexa'. This togetherness is then juxtaposed in the music video, as the artists are rarely featured alongside each other in it. By contrast, a feeling of loneliness is created, which - because of the togetherness portrayed through the digipak -'hits home' more effectively in the video.

I feel the rapport between the music video and the ancillary products has progressed since the inital draft I produced. Whilst some of the ideas of the digipak have remained from the draft, the execution of them has been developed. I also feel like both my main and ancillary products compliment each other well: the music video brings the images seen on the digipak and poster to life and fleshes them out into a true story. It does this by sharing the elements mentioned above. On the other hand, the digipak and poster sum up the theme of the music video in an easily digestible format, able to be used in advertising the video, and giving the products a 'face' to be identified with.

There is also a uniformity between my poster and digipak - both use the same settings, the artists (obviously) and the same fonts. In a way, the poster looks like a larger version of the digipak, converted into an advertisement.

Of course, there are elements which didn't work, that I chose not to bring forward from the draft ancillary products. The most prominent one was my draft digipak back cover. The idea was to use a long shot of Leicester's signature Clock Tower as it's easily identified by the people of Leicestershire and would therefore appeal to the audience as a sense of pride. However, its surroundings are not ideal for the theme I was aiming to convey in my products. For instance, a building adjacent to the clock tower is very Tudor in its style, which is not in keeping with my 'concrete jungle', 'big city prison' aesthetic.