Mohammed Jawaad Ansari

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

 

The promotion pack that we produced was a music video, a homepage and a magazine front page.  We decided to produce this combination because we can target our audience successfully through these methods.

 

The mise en scene chosen for all three promotional tools is consistent. We used the urban landscape and realistic camera and editing to highlight issues of urban living and youth culture. For instance, the setting of the music video is a typical West London housing estate. Similarly, the ancillary task photography is taken in Canary Wharf another built up area of London. As Londoners our selves we felt it important to celebrate the architecture and landscape of London, which some feel is uninviting but can also be beautiful.

 

There are differences however between the video and the ancillaries, which are our use of contrast between black and white and colour. In order for us to truly capture real life in our music video we had to use colour. We did try using black and white but distanced the audience from the real life situations that we are trying to represent. However, the use of black and white in the ancillaries highlights the artistry and elegance of urban settings like London. We felt this was important because both artists and their record label Boy Better Know are based on urban settings such as North London and Dagenham.

 

We further developed the connection of the elements within our promo pack through the title of our album. We chose to call it ‘Anti-Social’ using the colour red to make the word anti to stand out on a black and white background. This title connects directly to the themes used within the music video that explores youth culture and an obsession with anti social behaviour. There is also an obvious connection with our album and the film ‘Anti-Social’ which stars both of our artists and deals with similar themes.

 

There are many persuasive techniques that we used in all three of the products. Firstly, the music video puts the audience in the middle of the action through its use of point of view shots and also takes them on a journey of an urban youth. Similarly, our magazine advert places the audience in the same position as the video, at the bottom of high rise flat in South London, looking up to suggest that life can be different if you make the right choices. Other persuasive tools were more traditional like our use of command phrases such as ‘Out Now’ to suggest that there is an urgency to purchase the album and be the first to experience the music. The homepage acts as promotional tool for Devlin as an artist as well as the album ‘Anti-Social’, it includes tour dates, promotional news, award ceremonies and of course a link to buy the album.

 

Although when the three products are looked at together, there are only a few noticeable similarities that can be identified, these being; photography of urban landscapes, point of view camera shots and the dominate theme of youth culture. However, the song is just one of the many songs available on the album therefore we had to represent what Devlin and Skepta as artists in their own right and did this through the professional photography of the elegant architecture of London.