KNGS Advanced Portfolio Emma Hawkins: Evaluation of My Main Product and Ancillary Texts

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

We decided to emphasize the importance of our artist through featuring him on all final products including the digi-pak, the poster and the music video. He played a heavy and vital part in the video as if he was the narrator and was explaining his life through his lyrics. We made this obvious in the music video by featuring him on a lot of the camera shots alone and out of the narrative of the video as if he is explaining through other characters but the main male was him.

By featuring him on the posters and digipak as well as the music video, this made him instantly recognizable to the audience and makes it clear that he is the main artist in the band and is not just an actor. We applied Neale's theory of the female gaze to our main artist, construction him in a way where he would be not only a music icon but also an attractive person to be followed by female fans and recognized, this would also promote the band by selling him as well as the music which is something conventional all music genres, selling the image as well as the music. Although selling the music is more important to us and the indie genre, as the indie genre is known to be very grounded and about the music, which is why we stuck to a very simple image with our artist. This challenges Richard Dyer's Star Theory as he discusses how "A star is an image and not a real person, that is constructed" we left our artist looking very simple and down to earth, acting as himself and singing lyrics that mean something to him and not music that was constructed for him and to sell him image. We also included a guitar throughout the video with our main artist to emphasize to importance of the music alone and not the image of the band. This is conventional to our genre, as looking back upon most of our research, the artists and bands we researched promoted music as being the main focus.\

From looking back upon our research into what our audience expected from our media product, we realized that to have a successful promotional campaign we must have included these vital aspects within our media product to convey the indie genre clearly and achieve what our audience requested from the genre:

Mainly male characters (We achieved this by featuring our main artist as male and another male within the music video)
Themes of love/relationships or a party and social lifestyle (Which we featured throughout the music video due to the lyrics and narrative of the video, based on romance/love and specifically an account of the artist and his explanation of the girl that he ''wants to be more than mates'' with.)
Costumes should be scruffy ( for example should be dressed ''scruffy'' and have messy hair and appearance in general, not dressed high class in order to feature all the attention on the music) - We achieved this by dressing him quite simple but not all together ''scruffy'' as we still wanted him to seem attractive and appealing to the audience.
The Settings should be in places such as empty buildings and countryside (We featured our location in the city to emphasize the urban and modern feel of indie music and also to relate to our target audience who are mostly city teenagers who appreciate the indie genre)

We decided to have our main character as a male in order to fit with the song and lyrics, which is an account from a male who is in love with a female in his school. We thought using a male would be more understandable and also would promote the female gaze, as he would be attractive to present to the audience and a recognizable icon. A lot of the indie genre have a male as their main artist or a whole male band all together as their voices are low and scruffy sounding and we wanted to fit this convention when presenting our artist in all of our media products. Although we presented a male as the artist and another male playing the artist in the narrative of the music video, we knew we'd have needed a female character to set up the "love story" in the music video however due to the lyrics of the song we decided to have our female character as strong and independent, which is primarily why the male character cannot get her (portrayed through the lyrics) ''i want to be more than mates".

Her strong and fearless character challenges general gender representation in the way that females are supposably intended to be represented as caring and weak in contrast to males, and by using a female in our music video that challenges this theory and idea, creates a successful promotional campaign as our female audience can relate to the strength and individuality of the female in our video and will have another reason to be a fan of the band and enjoy the media products. As well as the females, the males can relate to the vulnerability of the male character and artist instead of sticking to the conventional strong and emotionless character of males that is usually conveyed through the media and in society, males will find comfort in this and the lyrics may explain something that they are too worried to talk about by defending their masculinity.

We chose to present our artist as scruffy and simple but not too badly presented as we wanted him to remain attractive to the female audience. The style of his clothes remain conventional of the indie genre as he is wearing very dull colour which portray him as being very grounded and selfless as he is not promoting his image or revolving the video around himself but more about the music and the story he is telling. We decided to keep the "scruffiness" to a minimum as we wanted him to conform the Neale's theory of the female gaze and did want our female audience to be put off the main artist although to stick to our conventions of the indie genre we made sure that his hairstyle would still be presented as messy to leave him a touch of edge to his style and make him seem more appealing and real to the audience in a sense that he is portraying the indie genre in the correct way.

In terms of love and romance, this shot was something we planned to include, a two shot of the two main characters of the video, the female and male engaging with each-other to highlight their significance to each-other and the lyrics, outlining the romantic involvement with each-other and the male's eagerness to be involved with the female. We can tell this by his facial expression and how he is turned towards her when she seems not as interested, looking away from the male and forward towards the city surroundings.

We also framed them on either side to show the obvious space between the two and the loss of connection with each-other, as although this song it telling a love story, it is also outlining the lack of interest from the female which causes sympathy towards the male, as he is playing the caring, weak and vulnerable role in the video.

In terms of Settings and Location, our audience expected somewhere gritty so we incorporated this by presenting our music video in a city location, Birmingham, somewhere urban and gritty but appealed to our target audience. This gave us a range of different places to film in Birmingham with plenty of sights and people to include in our music video, making it seem more real and legitimate to the indie genre. When research, i noticed that a lot of the bands i researched including the Arctic Monkeys included a city in their video as it conforms to the gritty and scruffy reputation of the indie genre.

Therefore we anted to conform to this reputation but also put our own interpretation on it by also featuring our artist singing directly to the camera in a plain white studio to emphasize his importance and to put realization on that this is his story and his music. making him instantly recognizable and creating a successful promotional campaign.