Evaluation Part Two - Our Products as a Package

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

Through my research, I found that its quite rare to find artists in the pop genre who have a direct connection between their music videos and albums, unlike films where the posters, billboards, trailers and adverts all correlate with one another. For example, Katy Perry's album is called 'One of the Boys' but the colours and mis en scene used are quite feminine. She's pictured outside in a garden, yet none of the songs in the album have anything to do with this! I think a lot of album work tends to reflect the artist's personality rather than the songs that are on it. The images used for single CDs on the other hand are more likely to reflect the song, for example Ellie Goulding's CD cover for 'Starry Eyed' uses a lot of stars and sparkly images which is not only very similar to the title of the song but is also similar to to the music video for the song.

As I created a digipak for an album, I decided to stick to the conventions that I had found in my research and used plain backgrounds. Because the photos we had taken for our ancillary tasks were taken on the day that we had filmed a scene, it meant that the pictures used in my digipak looked similar to the performance shots in the video, which could be seen as developing a convention of real media text. I feel that this is a good development as it shows consistency between advertisement and the music video which allows the audience understand clearly that it's all part of the same package.





Above is a screen shot from my music video and the back cover of my CD ancillary task. They both show Emma stood performing on stage in the same outfit.

Our target audience is girls aged around 12 - 14, an age group that is associated with innocence but with a cheeky, mischievous edge. We tried to convey this behaviour throughout our video and our photoshoot, as we felt it would appeal to our audience. For example, in the video, Emma comes across quite smiley when she is on her own but 'stroppy' and more annoyed when she is around her friend. In our photoshoot, we asked Emma to pose with a hand on her hip and singing into the microphone, which gives off the impression that she's quite confident and outspoken. I feel that the video and ancillary task both portray the way that our target audience behave accurately, but also quite positively. I used dark backgrounds throughout my ancillary tasks as I thought it was the colour that produced the best quality work, and also used a light purple, dark purple and grey colour scheme for every part of my digipak. This was because it looked quite feminine without looking childish. I also used vintage brushes in the background to make the covers look less plain but creating a feminine feel at the same time. The colours and brushes I used could've made the CD look like it appeals to an older age group, but I think because the pictures we used were quite fun and happy looking which makes it look a lot less serious and more friendly, making it suitable for our target audience.




The above pictures are examples of how we made the character in our music video and ancillary task look innocent and friendly but quite cheeky and confident at the same time. I did this as it'd make her appeal more strongly to my target audience.

The poster I produced is very similar to the rest of my digipak, creating more consistency throughout my work. The only difference with my poster is that I used a different font. This was because the font was quite bold and I thought it would be good at drawing attention. Its also very similar to the font used by Rolling Stone music magazine which means that if someone looked at the poster, they'd probably think of music almost straight away.

I think that keeping some kind of consistency throughout the music video & ancillary task is useful, as it means that straight away you can look at one piece of work and know that it relates to another piece, even if its just a font or a colour scheme. Its also a good way of trending and promoting something if consistency is used as it makes it easily recognisable and people can familiarise themselves with the products.

Ancillary Task - CD Digipak

Part of our task was to produce a CD front cover, back cover and two CD inserts for our artist. To start with, I used Photoshop as it was already installed onto the computers in my media class. However, as I'd never used it before I found it very difficult to produce good quality work on it and decided to use Paint Shop Pro instead. Although I needed some help to work out how to use certain tools, I found it much easier to use than Photoshop. After we'd filmed the performance scenes in the drama studio on our second day of filming, we decided to take some photos that we could use for our ancillary task. I chose the photos I liked the best and using the edge seeker selection tool on Paint shop pro, I cut Emma out from the backgrounds which would make it easier to produce new images. I used the same font colours throughout all of the pictures included in my digipak, and made all of my backgrounds black. I decided to use some vintage style brushes to use in the background of my front cover as it made it look less plain without making it take the attention away from the picture of Emma. I used a similar background for the CD inserts to keep consistency throughout my digipak. On the back cover, I didn't want to keep a plain background because it looked quite boring but I didn't want to use the vintage brushes again as I thought it would be too repetitive. So I decided to use a gradient for my background to give it more texture. It still looked quite plain when I finished so I added a vintage brush to match the theme. My front cover, insert and back cover can all be seen below.

Front Cover


Thank You Insert


Lyrics Insert



Back Cover

Ancillary Task Inspiration

Although a lot of the CD's I've seen use a close up on the front, I think I'm going to choose a mid shot photo instead, which is quite similar to the 'Teenage Dream' album by Katy Perry. However, instead of using pale colours like the background on her cover, I am going to stick to the convention of using a plain background like Rihanna uses on her 'Good Girl Gone Bad' album. Katy Perry uses a colour theme of pink and blue for her writing which is something I may include too, and I am also going to use a similar, girly font.

Codes and conventions of a pop album cover

From what I have seen, album covers don't really tend to use a very busy background, which gives more focus for the artist on the front cover. Both Katy Perry's and Rihanna's albums seem to use quite a feminine colour scheme, although they are very different to one another. The covers tend to give a vague idea about what music to expect on the album, but generally I think they mainly reflect the artist's personality. Rihanna and Lady Gaga's albums both use a close up on the front cover, whilst Katy Perry's album includes a close up inside the CD. I think this indicates that close ups of artists are quite a big convention of a pop album cover.
For my ancillary task, I think that one of the most important aspects will be using a feminine colour scheme throughout. I will use a close up shot for one of the inserts, but I'd like to do something different for the front cover so will possibly use a mid or full length shot.

Rihanna - Loud Album Cover

Unlike the Katy Perry album cover I analysed, Rihanna's cover for her album Loud uses a close up of her face rather than showing her whole body. In fact, the album cover is completely of her face and only part of her hair & shoulder is visible. She has her eyes closed which limits the interaction with the audience but gives a sense of mystery which intrigues the audience to find out more as nothing is revealed. Her face is quite plain, with minimal make up used and dark eyelashes, but her lips and hair are both very bright red which indicates some degree of sexiness, which correlates with many of her songs. Although some aspects of traditional representations view women as sexual objects, which to a certain extent is shown by this album cover, the way that Rihanna's face dominates the whole cover shows a more modern representation of females too.



The back of the cover, in contrast with the front, has used much softer colours making Rihanna seem a lot more vulnerable and soft than she does on the front. The angelic image will appeal to young girls in our target audience as its very feminine and pretty but still has an edge with the use of the red tint and the red writing. The writing used is fairly plain and simple, just using capital letters for each song and keeps to one side of the cd, leaving space for another picture of Rihanna.

The inside of the cd uses a picture similar to the one on the front cover, but its a bit softer, as the colours aren't as bright. Again, an extreme close up of Rihanna's face is used but this time one of her eyes are open whilst the other is hidden under her hair. This gives off the impression that she's quite mysterious like on the front cover, but also gives a bit more interaction between her and the audience. Her lips aren't red in this photo, making her seem more innocent than on the front cover, but she is holding a red rose close to her mouth which again indicates sexiness, but also femininity at the same time.

Overall, I think that the pictures used in Rihanna's cd case really give the audience an idea about her and her music. I think the Loud cd gives the impression that her music, and Rihanna herself, is quite sexy but feminine and powerful at the same time. Rihanna's fan base probably is a bit older than Katy Perry's but probably is largely female dominated, but I think this cd case has helped as I think that we should reflect the type of music and meanings behind the songs when we produce our ancillary task.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream Album Cover

Using www.allcdcovers.com, I was able to analyse the album over, the track listing on the back cover and the cd insert of different cd's. This is the original CD cover for Katy Perry's most recent album.

The colours in the background are very soft, for example the pastel pink cloud/candyfloss that Katy Perry is pictured lying on, and the pale blue sky. The main focus is on Katy herself, who is right in the centre of the picture. Another reason she stands out is because her dark hair contrasts with the paler colours. There are two titles on the cover, one is just her name in shiny pink and blue writing and the other is the name of the album, "Teenage Dream" which is in white and pink stripy writing, made to look like candy canes. The CD cover is very similar to the video of the first single released from the album, "California Girls". In the video, she is seen sitting on clouds and waking around with big sweets everywhere, for example walking gummy bears. The writing on the cover reflects the sweet theme whilst the picture of Katy is taken from the exact same setting as the video. This style also reflects her personal image which is kind of 1950s, for example, dresses with bold colours and pictures of fruit on them.



This is the back cover of the cd which shows all the songs on the album. The same picture from the front cover is used on the back, but without the picture of Katy Perry on the front, just the list of songs. Again, like the front cover, pink and blue writing is used and the letter 'O' in different words has been replaced with round shaped white & pink sweets. The pale colour scheme and use of sweets used throughout the cd case indicates that Katy Perry is quite feminine and would appeal to young, 'girly' females, as we found in our target audience.



Finally, I looked at the picture inside the cd case and on first impressions it looks very different to the front & back covers. It looks formal and quite royal with the way her hair has been styled and the crown and jewellery that she is wearing, which contrasts with the fun images that I looked at before. However, when you look closer at the picture you can see that the crown and jewellery is actually made up from sweets which again follow the theme from the front and back covers. This picture really conveys a humorous side of Katy Perry which is often seen in her personal life from the media, which I think enables the audience to relate with her & her music.

To see Susan's analysis of Lily Allen's and Lady Gaga's album covers, click here.