Question 2

How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product With Ancillary Texts?

After the main product was completed and editing the music video, the next task at hand was to look into, and research various album covers and magazine advertisements, for these albums, within our genre.

As noted before, one of the biggest influences for me in this particular genre is Mumford and sons, due to the fact that they are the main folk band in contemporary music, today. But not just this, the band have conveyed many connotations, representations and conventions of folk, which are helpful focus points in the making of our project. One of their videos, ‘Winter Winds’ was also an encouragement, which helped me in the making, planning and editing of my music video.

I had to create a digipak (just like a CD set), which showed true representations of my genre, which the audience and I can relate to. I had to take into the considerations of things like location, theme and most visuals.

Panel 1 – My front cover of my panel, straight away draws to the title of the song, ‘Paper people’. Instead of basing the cover on the artist and the visual of the artist, I decided to go in depth on the music and the meaning of songs and titles. This way I could be creative with what I presenting to the audience. The paper people stand in a general fashion in front of a cornfield, which is an iconic connotation of the folk genre, where the greenery and earthiness keeps to the theme of freedom, which I have incorporated onto the cover. I have essentially, created my own separate world away from the music video, (which is separately to one song) and the artist in it, which the whole video and production is based around, and the themes of love and separation. Here, it’s a world for the band and the artist, focusing on that one song on the album ‘paper people’, and giving the audience a questioning feel of this completely separate area. I’m giving the audience a sneak peek on another lifestyle and these little peoples home, which could be insinuated as make believe. The font which is called ‘Zapfino’, keeps the design simple and easy and minimalistic to understand, as I didn’t want a bright or crazy font which is eye catching and bold, which draws you into the writing, instead of the picture. The simpleness and easiness fits in with the genre, and the picture as a whole is sophisticated, as we want to keep an easy sense that the audience can relate to. The picture is bold and simple together however, where there is no deep meaningful suggestion to the cover which represents an ‘extreme’ lifestyle or an over the top connotation of the band/artist.

Inside Left and Right – Keeping the visual with the paper people and the earthy background. On this panel, we only have one paper person to focus on, instead of having all of them on another panel again. I also put the lyrics to one of the songs, which of course again is a paper person. With the lyrics and the paper people side by side, we create a bold representation of the genre and mostly the song title of ‘paper people’, which is a play on with words. Here, we are just focusing on the song title alone with the lyrics, and an example of the song title, making the audience aware of what the song title is about.

As the left panel is more focused on the song title, the right panel focuses more on the artist we see in the video. Putting the picture of the artist on the pack at all shows, that I am still incorporating the visual of the music video, together, with the art of the songs and music of the album cover. I have taken a slight twist on the picture however, by turning it more creative. It looks like a drawing sketch rather then an actual real picture of the artist in the video. As we see the plain video reels of him in the video, which alone takes a real life take on the artist and his partner, incorporating the themes of love. On the cover however, it looks like from an audience perspective that the artist has imagined what his protagonist and character looks like, and this is the visual the band drew and thought of, of what they would base there song and plot around. I had a picture of the protagonist who is in the music video, and mixed around with levels, contrasts and situation and created an effect called ‘cut out’ which, creates a cubed, painting like picture.

Even with the picture like this, you can see that he is playing the guitar in the picture; once again I have taken a connotation of the folk genre and incorporated it into my picture. We can also the location of the cornfield behind the character, showing that I have not shone away from the representations of my genre. This panel of the character, will be under the CD cover, which therefore I didn’t choose to have any writing on it. 
So, I am still keeping the artist and the artwork of my album on separate panels, as they are two different worlds that I don’t want to intertwine.

Back Cover – On my last cover, I have the paper people once again to finish it off, and include all the other songs, that would be on the album, I also have copyright notes on the edge of it as well. To try and not make the panel the same as the front cover, out of the various shots that I took, I found that this shot was one of my favorites as I have introduced another paper person, hanging by one of the plants, which gives the impression that there more of these people that i am trying to convey. This bolds out once again the world in which I was talking about earlier, in the front cover, that I am giving the audience once again a sneak peak into this ‘make believe’ world, this one is slightly different however, as the angle of the shot, that I took it in, is slightly tilted, and the I also lowered the brightness and contrast so it’s a little darker than the front cover. I did this, as on the back panel as it is the last panel on the digipak, I am creating a ‘goodbye’ sort of mood, as it is a goodbye from the artist, the band, and the paper people, that I have created, and it is a sort of thank you from the band for picking up and buying the album. This is where the differentiation is between the back cover and the front cover so they don’t look similar, and by also keeping the conventions and connotations of the genre which was present on the front cover, such as the location (cornfield) and the meaning (wishing well, paper people).