Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

After completing the music video, we had to decide how to form a Digipak that would be successfully distributed to the consumers. This needed to fulfil the conventions of our genre of music as well as clarifying exactly what our product was and how we needed to market it.

Pink Floyd had originally called the song ‘The Mortality Sequence’ and intended the song to focus on the theme of death and loss. As Pink Floyd are such a worldwide, influential band, we felt that we should include them as an institution and image in the ancillary tasks. Therefore, with the front cover, we introduced the font they used for the ‘The Wall’ album and, in relation to the themes of death throughout the song, layered a faded skull on top to represent the theme of death. I felt that this worked quite well, as we referenced Pink Floyd, whose music is clearly a large influence on the way we structured our narrative for our video, and effectively marketed the song as a song about death and the struggle people have with this. This is indicated through the image of our protagonist, huddled in a corner, with the layered skull almost looming over him.

To add to this, the back cover is, I think, ineffective to an extent in portraying the themes of the song. It does present the idea of loneliness and decay, with a house falling apart in the middle of nowhere, but it isn’t explicit enough. However, it does relate to our video, as this is the house where the protagonist lives and in this respect it effectively takes a part that is unique to the video and brands it with the Pink Floyd signature written across the wall. This effectively references both Pink Floyd and the video.

The poster/insert is fairly similar in that it doesn’t make a direct link to death, but it does have some aspects that mark it out as an effective partner to the main product; firstly, the use of the prism from Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon, which directly references the institution. This also has the ray of light obscured by the trees, showing that there is no happiness in his world since the girl died. Secondly, it again strongly presents the idea of isolation and dilapidation in the building, which is reflected through the character’s anger and upset.

Overall, I think that the ancillary tasks complement the main product fairly well, helping to evoke the themes of loss, isolation, death and also referencing fully the institution that we got our song from, Pink Floyd.