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

Model

Across the main text and the ancillary texts, the same actor was used. He is used in the video as the protagonist of the narrative that occurs and he also does live performance in the form of singing. He was supposed to mimic Dan Smith’s role in the band. Dan often appears in their videos as the actor who’s story is being told whilst also in separate clips singing. To distinguish between when the shot our actor was part of the narrative or him performing, two different outfits were worn. In the singing scenes he wore a long beige coat. In the story he wore a blue denim jacket- this was a homage to Dan Smith and his aesthetic as the jacket as become somewhat iconic. When appearing on both the magazine ad and the digipak, we decided he should be wearing the denim jacket- not only because it is more relevant and representative of the Bastille motif but because it would show that these ancillary products were related to the narrative from the video adding more of a meaning and background to why it was there. What we learnt from the video about the protagonist could now be applied to the model.

Settings and Font

The locations for the pictures used in the advert and digipak were the same as the those that featured in the video. It gives a greater sense of identity and purpose to the photographs which otherwise might have lacked meaning or significance. The particular settings are ones that appear closer to the end of the video- this is where the story’s mood begins to brighten as it reaches a climax hence the photographs are related to the happier, warmer times. The blocking of the character in relation to the sun and the lack of light to his face which creates a shadow still implies there is a darkness haunting him meaning it reflects the basic principle of the narrative in the video.

The same font was also used for ‘Bastille’ and ‘Warmth’. This was a variation of the lemon milk font edited slightly in Adobe Illustrator to make it more unique. The result was something very similar to Bastille’s actual own font which has become a part of their brand and now followers will associate that font with a Bastille product. The font appears in the main text and both ancillary texts too relating them all together. Furthermore the text is always white further increasing the audience’s exposure to the brand. It was important that we used a similar font because if consumers can make a link from the font to the band then they a more likely to look deeper into the product and potentially make a purchase.

Reinforcing the band’s image

There is little focus on live performance by Bastille with barely any featuring in videos other than singing (this is rare for a band who could be classed as indie) so we reflected that in our video. Only a small proportion of the music video was of the actor singing. On the secondary materials there is no reference to any kind of instruments. Pictures are only of the model, nature or the two combined. Bastille’s Wild World album is presented like a film with the cover following more conventions of a film poster than anything else so not having not highlighting the fact they make music is part of their style- it is more about the story it tells. Our digipak cover is more clearly referencing the band’s covers for their singles- with the song title crossing through the word ‘Bastille’ on top of a single photograph that has relevancy to the video. Ours clearly fits wit their existing products helping to reinforce their aesthetic.

In an interview with NME (click here for the article), Dan Smith talked about how he attended an anti-trump protest. We wanted to reflect his political stance in the video so in the intro full of terrifying and scary news stories (flooding, explosions, disease) we also included a clip from Trump’s presidential victory speech thereby comparing him to these mentioned dangerous and concerning events.

Wild World Communications

As part of Bastille's new album ‘Wild World’ they created a fictitious news company ‘Wild World Communications’ in order to make many social comments about the corruption and madness in journalism and politics without referencing a specific real life company. This brand appears in many of their videos from the album as well as promotional material that features on their social medias and even on the tours. Since our chosen song was a part of this album we wanted to use it as well especially because it was relevant to the song. In fact the album title and consequently this corporation’s name came from a lyric in our song ‘Warmth’ which was ‘Hold me in this wild, wild world’. We took a news ticker from their video ‘Fake It’ which contained it’s logo and superimposed it on our various news stories. This symbol was also the logo of the whole album too so we took the plain, higher quality picture from google images and inserted it onto the middle inside slide of the digipak. The consistent presence of this logo and the fabricated news company it belonged to helped to relate not only two of the products from this package but relate this video to many others from the album creating a clear synergy.

Virgin records Socials help to sell