How effective was the combination of your

main product and ancillary texts?

Introduction

In order to rate how effective our main product and ancillary texts were combined we broke our analysis down to 2 key areas:

Relevance within genre

Synergy between products

Digipack

To assess how relevant our digipack was we first took a look back to a few which we had originally analysed and then took a similar approach to the analysis of our own.

Snow Patrol- Eyes Open

We can faintly make out two figures that are positioned in the middle of the photo, a man and a woman wrapping their arms around each other. The picture is layered and filtered which disturbs and distorts it, connoting their perhaps a their hectic and distorted relationship.

Barbed wire connoting restriction within the relationship, with theme or relationships and love key to the indie genre.

Colour connotations: bleak, dark colours (perhaps filter sepia) have been used which gives the image a quite gloomy impression. On the actual cover, we can see a blurry version of another face underneath the figures, suggesting a possible alternative love within the relationship

Simplistic, easy to read typography. Title ironic to cover as it would be assumed that people would kiss with their eyes closed.

Facial Furniture EP

Nature imagery composed of multiple images layered on top of one another, key code and convention within the indie genre. This symbolises the connection between humanity and nature.

Simplistic, typography, again key within the indie genre.

Man of earlier century layered with mechanics, could be connoting modern man and his advancements within society as well as their relations to the wider universe (time and space).

Happy Endings

Clear, easy to read font- Key within the indie genre as can be seen in the previous album covers.

Composed of sepia filtered layers and nature for indie genre look and feel. The man stands alone in a graveyard to connote perhaps death, or the death of his relationship and love and relationships are central to the indie genre,

Colour connotations: again bleak, dark colours (sepia filter) have been used which gives the image a quite gloomy impression.

Analysis

Final analysis of our album cover when comparing with others within the indie genre, we feel it is clear that our cover fits the genre nicely. It meets multiple criteria within the codes and conventions of indie, such as dark and gloomy layered images, sepia being a key filter used multiple times in the genre. Nature shots and central framing to highlight a central character/theme to the music of the album, which is typically about relationships within indie.

Poster

Analysis

To explore the relevance of our poster, we again drew comparisons between ours and that of another indie rock band, arctic monkeys. Our attempt here was to parody the poster, developing it slightly to emphasize certain aspects of the indie genre. For instance we had our lead pose for a photo smoking, but developed this further by filtering this layer with sepia, and used a nature backdrop versus the plain black of the arctic monkeys poster, all key codes and conventions within the indie genre.

Final Video

From our textual analysis and codes & conventions we again drew relevance within the indie genre by including: nature shots, low budget settings, casual costume combined with smart costume when on stage, synergy between lyrics and shots, love and betrayal story central to the narrative and a pace of editing corresponding to the beat of the music.

Synergy Between Products

Overall we feel our products do have synergy for multiple reasons. Firstly, during each stage of creation we kept in mind our key codes & conventions to ensure that we were consistently working within the indie genre. This can be seen through the filters we consistently used in both out poster and album cover, as well as using the same photos and nature shots on both of these products. We kept synergy between both these ancillary texts and the main product itself by using the same characters, settings and lyrical relevance throughout. For instance the shot of Jack in the poster, a main character within our music video, taken in the alley used in our video and mimicking and arctic monkeys poster of the album Mardy Bum, which follows a similar narrative to our own. Therefore we feel that our combination of ancillary texts and final product have been quite effective to the indie genre.