For both my main and ancillary tasks, I thought I should create something simple as Chris Cohen is quite a simple artist. I decided to have the continuity between both the music video and the digipak and magazine advert; the use of black and white colour tones was the basis for this continuous simplicity.
At the beginning when we first chose the song ‘If You Only Knew’ from Chris Cohen’s selection of songs (www.unsignedbandweb.com), we needed to choose what our video would be like. Because the nature of the song was unhappy as it was a song about relationship break-ups, so the colour tone needed to suit the mood. My production group and I chose to use black and white throughout the video (apart from at the beginning) to show the distance between the male and female character and to show the sadness they were experiencing. This is carried on into the ancillary print productions which are both fully black and white with only a touch of colour; blue around the edges of the album title and colourful Spotify, HMV and iTunes logos on the advert.
The genre of Chris Cohen’s music is of the acoustic genre, which is very simplistic and minimalist. I decided to reflect this in my work and use simple colours and fonts throughout my post-production and print work. I based this all on close ups of the guitar and wanted to focus on the instrumentation and the photo of the couple. The black and white, again, shows the simplicity and upset within the genre and meaning of the song. Most acoustic songs are about relationships and therefore this works well. The pictures that I used for the album cover are, in the majority, stills from the music video. Apart from the front cover, all these pictures show the continuity between the two products. The picture on the magazine advert took some debate to choose, but I eventually went for the picture on the back cover of my digipak. It represents the artist and the instrument beautifully and really boasts the work of the artist. Because we didn’t have a physical artist, we used the character in the video as our artist, and added performance elements into the video.
The main and ancillary tasks are linked in so many ways and this reinforces the meaning and the solitude represented within the song ‘If You Only Knew’. If we were to use bright colours in the music video, it would make relating to either character more difficult for the target audience, and lose the focus that is pushed upon the relationship. I feel that the music video and print productions reflect the conventions of the acoustic genre. We included lip syncs, close ups of the instruments and of the facial expressions of the characters, and a happy ending. These all played a massive part in linking together the main and ancillary tasks.
The importance of the continuity between all of the products is that we are creating a promotional package that can consist of many platforms. For example, Radiohead produce albums and music videos just like we have, but also have other products under their belt such as Radiohead water bottles, rain macs, etc. If we were to continue on the same path and carry on with our promo package, we would create simple things for our extras:
- a Chris Cohen guitar pick
- a branded notebook
- a signed photograph of Chris Cohen
- a guitar
These are just some of the many things we could sell to increase the platforms that are included in the Chris Cohen promotional package. This could possibly increase the popularity of Cohen himself, and would therefore create a new basis for his music.
No comments:
Post a Comment