Evaluation Q2

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

My group had a lot of freedom with the main product since there wasn’t an existing video therefore our ideas were not influenced by anything other than our own. The song choice does have more lyrics than your usual Dubstep song but this allowed us to steer towards a narrative which we felt agreed with the tempo of the song and also worked as a Game advertisement. The particular lyrics “You got to make the move” got us steering towards a real action packed product. The last thing we wanted to do was be generic and create a mainstream dance video as this is overdone and in fact not stereotypical of Dubstep but instead another genre commonly mistaken, known as Dance/Electronic. From here we made the final decision to create an advertisement for a game. We were inspire by the viral advertisement for the Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 3 game. I have attached the video below so you can see how we extracted ideas from their video.

We chose to film in the country at a group members home. The area proved perfect as we were conveniently located next to the wood and also found an abandoned car in car park close-by. The majority of the filming was done over a weekend which we scheduled long in advance to ensure all four of us could make it.

How does my advert relate to my video and other tasks?

The advert adopts a focus on the colours Blue and Yellow like the Digipak but is represented in a more stereotypical way for the Dubstep genre. The image is vivid  and gives off an electronic vibe relating to the style of music and the action we later see in the music video. I decided to keep the colours of Blue and Yellow prominent throughout the tasks.  I chose these specific colours because I  felt the electricity of the colour blue represents the Dubstep genre very well and the yellow is good for making the advert and digipak stand out. Furthermore these colours are prominent throughout my music video and the connotations of each greatly contrast, as the blue represents the beginning mise en scene which is calm and outdoors away from the city whereas the yellow almost represents fire, tragedy and the muzzle flashes but  a certain tinge of yellow is also quite noticeable as the autumn leaves have fallen. I have also ensured I kept sunglasses on; giving the impression this is the artists signature style as worn also on the Front and Back of the Digipak. Also the font is similar to the ones on the digipak maintaining a yellow shadow. However I felt I didn't want there to be any relation between the video or any other tasks. This is because the narrative in the video is purely one interpretation of the song which is also an advertisement for an action game. Also, most dubstep music videos will simply be of patterns and dance or in some cases non-existent at all, therefore I didn't feel it important to create a link with the video.

Here we see the yellow colour as represented throughout my  other tasks

The colours blue and yellow also come out at the start of our video as you can see here. 

Poster

You can see that I have kept the consistency of the artist's image with the sunglasses  

Album Cover and Digipak

The Album Cover is not only blurry but also crystallized to make it difficult to see the details of the image. The idea behind this is that there are many different perspectives on daily life and it is up to the audience’s choice of interpretation. Dubstep is a genre that can be interpreted differently by listeners as the songs are not heavily reliant on the lyrics but instead the rhythm and beat which affects people in different ways, some may find it distorted and others may hear it as a perfect symphony of organised melodies. This artistic approach is different but imaginative narratives are not uncommon in this genre, especially in music videos which usually have little direct correlation to the song. The inspiration for the Clear and Unclear covers comes from the judgements people make on others which tend to be negative rather than positive. For example, instead of interpreting the image as confusing or uninteresting why not mysterious or perplexing? There are essentially 2  of the same image on the front and back of the digipak which are just edited differently, basically one is clear and the other not. I specifically used the image of myself reaching into my pocket, but once again it is not clear what I am reaching for but one may interpret it is a phone hence the album name “collect call”. Once opened the blue fade is continued on the front inside cover however the mystery prevails as I only reveal a shadow (of the female singer) and on the opposite side is a continuation of my image (DJ) who is maintains his image with the sunglasses. I decided not to reveal the artists face in the digipak as she can be seen singing in the video whereas the DJ is not part of it at all.