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

For our ancillary tasks we chose to produce a website homepage and a digipak to accompany our music video. We decided upon these as we felt they all complimented each other, we can incorporate the music video within the digipak and promote this on the website. In a real life situation these both of these would be used to help promote the artist, in today’s modern world there is a need for an online presence that anyone can look at for information also from a marketing point of view both of these create a brand identity that will become recognisable from a fan and consumers point of view. Another reason we chose to create a website over a magazine advert was because we wanted to broaden our range of skills. To make a website we needed to use a programme called Iweb, this is something that none of us had much experience in but were keen to learn about. Another thing that influenced are decision in choosing our ancillary tasks was that we wanted to include photography elements in the making of our practical tasks. From choosing the digipak we were then able to start planning some artistic shots to help promote and make the album stand out. On the website we decided we would include promotional photos and so were also able to organise a photo shoot. This helped us develop another set of skills in using cameras, lighting and photoshop software. Overall, our choices of practical tasks work well together and enabled us as a group to try out different media techniques.

Before starting on the planning of our digipak we researched into what they were, what their purpose was and their layout. We found out that a Digipak is a patented style of compact disk or DVD packaging. We noticed that a Digipak can have as many panels as you like, we decided a 6 panel version, like the one above, however ours would obviously only hold one disk. Also the use of booklets within a digipak is not essential as not all of them involve it, therefore this is something that we may not include. We will however include the main conventions that we have discovered a Digipak includes, these are:

· Cover Image

· Back Cover Image

· Song Titles

· Bonus Feature

· Colour Scheme

· Other Images

Before starting the production of this task we did some research into the websites of the artists that we had chosen to be within similar genres to that of our artist. From my blog you can see images of the websites that we chose to focus on:

· Jason Mraz

· David Grey

· Jose Gonzalez

We chose these artists as our main research tasks as they were the ones that had different features within the website. The main conventions that we found were:

· Links

· Upcoming Dates

· Media

· Easy to navigate

These are the things that our target audience expect to find and so we ensured that these were the main things that we endeavoured to use in our task.

Within the ancillary task our main focus of achievement was to bring a sense of cohesion between the tasks and the main production. We wanted to ensure that each tasks aims were different but that they clearly all linked together. We used the same background for the website as the front cover for the digipak to use this as an anchor image for our artist, and considering this is his debut album to create a recognisable feature/style associated with him. We chose a colour scheme of black and white with the only colour used being teal for the text. We chose the colour as it appeals to both the male and females within our target audience. By enduring continuity of the colour scheme between our ancillary tasks and the main product we are creating a real image of as if this artist was actually being promoted. We had different aims in mind for each of the tasks, this was to ensure that they all solely fulfilled the requirements that they should. The Digipak needed to show an insight into the artist and promote his music. We did this by using pictures of Josh, taken at our photo shoot, to help publicise him. We also used the digipak to launch the music video by adding this as a bonus feature to the album. This would not only help the album sell, but would also give the buyer their own copy of the video. This links to the aim of the website, which we decided needed to give out all recent information about our artist to keep fans and any other visitors up to date, we also posted videos for exclusives, enabling the viewers to think they are keeping up to date. We did this on the homepage by having a recent news update and twitter blog, this also helped keep the website personal to the artist. A biography about Josh at the beginning gave the reader background information that they wouldn't be able to get from any of the other tasks. Finally, our music video had the aim of portraying the inner feelings of the artist not only through the lyrics but through the action and performance. By using different angles in the performance element of the video the audience are able to see different sides to Josh, also by having him ending the video in shot we can see as a viewer the journey through emotions he has taken through the song, starting off quite happy, but the eventually feeling reminiscent and slightly depressed.

In hindsight, as a group we felt that the ancillary tasks were not as focused upon as the main film. This was because the filming aspect and editing process seemed to be more important whilst in the completing stage. We did spend time over our ancillary tasks, but this could have been better organised and the work load spread more equally across the group.