HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN AND ANCILLARY

TEXTS?

Three products have been developed for Isaiah Dreads including a music video for the song ‘Hype in the booth’, a complete digipak for his first album, and a magazine poster promoting the album.

I have created synergy throughout the development of all three products as I believe this to be key in people’s relations between products and their association with the artist.

I believe that synergy is what draws audiences into buying the album and product because they are able to appreciate artistic nature of staying true to the genre and ability to stay coherent.

Through research I found that synergy was a vital element to any professional work, therefore I took time to make sure my products blended and meshed together and helped to develop each product individually and as a unit.

Synergy between the main and ancillary texts was created through aligning all products with the Grime genre. Overall the relationship between the main and ancillary texts was essential in creating realistic/professional looking products.

How have you connected all three of your products?

The first key way in which all three products are linked is through images of the grime artist.

I felt as if using images of the grime artist (me) would be a simple but effective way of creating synergy between all three products whilst conforming to the grime genre.

They key aspect of the main text (music video) is the shots of the grime artist as he performs the song ‘Hype in the Booth’

The front cover for the poster was taken on set during shooting for the music video. The still image was taken on the balcony of the estate that we filmed on.

The fact that the same estate where the front cover for the poster was taken was used in the music video adds to the products synergy and interrelation.

All locations are set in London which accompanies the grime genre perfectly, as it is the city where it regenerated.

The same brick wall can be seen in certain shots of the music video and in the background of the poster.

The digipak Is mainly made up of shots of the grime artist. I believe that the shots of a tunnel wall on the inside of the digipak capture the essence of a grime album, as it looks dingy and dirty. This was the goal as the grime genre attempts to capture the impoverished nature of the youths of London, as covered in Q1 of the evaluation.

If there’s one thing I could improve it would be having the same location of the shots of the digipak in the music video. While we took the shots near the estate it still classes as a different location. Despite the tunnel where we shot the pictures for the digipak being a perfect location for the grime genre, the synergy of all 3 of our products would’ve been increased if the shots were taken at the same place we shot the video.

Costume The costume (Adidas tracksuit) is coherent through all 3

products. The grime artist never changes costume in any scenes,

and it is what he’s wearing on the poster and digipak, therefore the costume is what the audience and fans will instantly recognize, thus making the costume itself an effective tool for creating synergy between our main and ancillary texts.

One other way we linked all 3 texts is through the rawness of the images. The grime genre captures the darkness of London’s underground society, therefore our digipak has been edited to lose some colour.

The video and poster were both shot on the same estate at night. The time of day is clearly important, because the natural darkness conveys a sense of that underground culture.

As can be seen above, many digipaks, including Drake’s ‘Nothing was the same’ Album, include a portrait picture on the front and back of the digipak.

The digipak from Wiley’s album ‘Grime Wave (2008)’ uses a dark colour palette,To convey the darkness of London. It is apparent from our digipak’s colours that we drew inspiration from this album among others