Bastille - The Draw

Ancillary Text 1 - CD Cover

Ancillary Text 2 - Magazine Advertisement

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To answer this question, I have made a Powerpoint, shown below.

Previous Bastille music videos including ‘Oblivion’,  ‘Overjoyed’ and ‘Bad Blood’ feature a young girl as the protagonist. I have followed this convention by having a young girl as the lead role, and having the narrative follow her. Many of the shots I have used also are very similar to those used in previous Bastille music videos. This ensures that my product is believable and professional.

My media product features a young girl who is not sexualised in any way, therefore this challenges Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze. This may be because of the genre of music, as it is unconventional of indie rock music to have sexualised features within it’s iconography. I have done this for both my music videos and ancillary texts.

According to Tim O’Sullivan, media texts use careful mediation to tell stories about our society to the audience. I have applied this theory to my music video, as because of the lack of speech, I had to imply that the protagonist was struggling with depression and overdosing on drugs.

I feel like I have challenged Todorov’s theory of equilibrium, as the narrative begins with complete chaos and equilibrium is never actually achieved. I have not featured a ‘quest’ for the protagonist to complete either, as it just the narrative just goes from bad to worse. This may be a feature of having a slightly abstract music video.

Google defines Indie as being a shortform of "independence" or "independent“, and in a way, because I have worked independently in producing my music video and ancillary texts, the creation of them was ‘Indie’. Therefore I believe that I have complied with the conventions of the indie genre in my products

The Draw by Bastille is both in the indie pop and indie rock genre. When I typed these into Google images I found conventional indie iconography. I feel that I have complied with these conventions, as the colours and fonts that I have used in my music video and ancillary texts are very similar to the images shown on Google.

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

I believe that the combination of my music video and ancillary texts looks professional. I used the same images that were in my music video to create my CD cover and magazine advertisement, and therefore they connect. The similar iconography makes each product easily recognisable to the audience, as the main image that I used in my ancillary texts is repeated during the music video (shown to the left).

Below are a comparison between official Bastille media texts and my own, to highlight similarities, differences, and conventions applied. In each case, the codes and conventions that I have used make my ancillary texts more believable and easily recognisable to the audience. 

I created a survey to get audience feedback on the effectiveness of the combination of my main product and ancillary texts. This survey links with evaluation question 2, and there is more about it in that blog post, below this one. 

Question 4 is aimed at this part of the evaluation, and ask the audience if they believe the music video and ancillary texts appear connected. These are three answers out of a total of 24:

Most of the participants believed that the music video and ancillary texts were easily recognisable as being linked to each other. However, some thought that I could have used more imagery, and maybe a motif between the texts. 

If I was to create similar products in the future, I would use more similar fonts and imagery between the music video and ancillary texts. 

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I created a survey on SurveyMonkey to collect feedback from my audience. I tweeted a group of Bastille fan accounts on Twitter, as they are my main target audience. I received 24 replies to my survey, which is an average amount, however it isn't truly representative. I asked six questions, the first three defined the participant into a category, and the last three assess the opinions of the audience. Questions five and six are for this part of the evaluation.

Some Question 5 Answers:

Some Question 6 Answers:

I made an animation displaying one of the participants answers, however it can not be embedded, it can be found here: 

http://goanimate.com/videos/0Ny5I7PncjiM

In my opinion, my music video could have been developed more. The narrative was sloppy. I was actually going to film more, with a child in place of the protagonist, however due to clashing schedules I couldn't film in time. Because I didn't, the part with the kettle makes little sense, but there was meant to be a flashback, showing she was exploring her memories. This goes in accordance with the comment which says that I "could have improved the narrative". 

The ancillary texts also look a little unprofessional. Perhaps it's the layout. During the production of my media texts, I didn't take my time like I did with my first portfolio in AS. The creation was quick, and I should have gave more attention to detail, however in the audience survey, the participant seemed to be pleased with my ancillary texts and believe that they were professional. One comment even says "they could be what I see in the shops".

One comment says "You could have made the music video HD". I did try to upload the music video in high definition; the clip itself saved to my laptop was in complete 1080p, however, YouTube kept changing the definition to just 360p. This made my music video less believable as a professional product, as most VEVO artist music videos are in full HD. 

With the feedback from my audience, I would change some some parts of my media texts. Whilst in post-production, I could have taken my time and gave attention to detail, however, with pressing deadlines I didn't do this. If I was to do this again, I would work more on the narrative of the music video, piecing together each part second by second whilst in pre-production. 

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the creation of my three media products, I used a variety of different hardware and software. There are advantages and disadvantages of each piece of equipment, especially each piece of editing software I have used. 

Hardware that I have used:

• Canon EOS 700D Camera
• EF S 18-55mm f/3.5 5.6 IS STM wide angled lens
• Tripod
• SD Card
• Samsung Galaxy S5 Phone
• Apple iMac
• Editing Suites
• HP Pavilion 15-p097TX Laptop
• A variety of wires and connectors

Software that I have used:

• Photoshop
• Sony Movie Studio 13 Platinum
• Final Cut Pro
• iMovie
• Windows 10
• Blogger
• Youtube
• Spotify
• Powtoon
• Goanimate
• Storyboard That
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Powerpoint
• SurveyMonkey

Canon EOS 700D Camera & Wide Angled Lens

Description:

The Canon EOS 700D Camera is what I used to film my music video with. It is worth roughly £400. 

Advantages:

The screen flips so that I could view what I was filming whilst filming myself. The quality of the camera is brilliant; footage recorded can be perfectly clear or unfocused at the touch of a button. It's very user friendly, and I understood how to use it very fast.

Disadvantages:

The battery doesn't last long, but luckily, I have many spare.

Apple iMac & Windows Laptop

Description:

The Apple iMac and Windows laptop are two separate pieces of hardware. During my use with both, there were by far many more glitches on the iMac than the laptop. Certain file types could not be opened on the iMac, which made working on my products very difficult. 

Advantages:

They were both platforms for me to do my coursework, and they were very user friendly and made my work easier. The laptop was portable and therefore I could work in places without an open power source. They both have access to other pieces of software such as iMovie.

Disadvantages:

The Apple iMac was awful to use, things never saved where I wanted them to, and I ended up losing a lot of work.

SD Cards & Wires

Description:

I used SD cards and wires to transfer data from one piece of hardware to the next. Such as when transferring my music video footage from my camera to my laptop.

Advantages:

They are easy and simple to use. I experienced no problems when using SD cards and wires.

Disadvantages:

I had to use multiple SD cards because the ones I used were only 8GB, and couldn't hold all of my data.

Editing Suites

Description:

Editing suites are professional equipment used in the post-production of creating a product. I used them to edit my ancillary texts.

Advantages:

They feature many pieces of professional software that assisted in the creation of my products.

Disadvantages:

They have multiple screens, which made it difficult to edit as I'm not used to having more than one screen, however this gave me experience with professional   hardware.

Adobe Photoshop

Description:

Adobe Photoshop is a piece of editing software used to enhance still images. 

Advantages:

It has a variety of different tools and effects which aren't available on other pieces of still image editing software. The magic wand tool was especially helpful as it allowed me to remove white backgrounds from images easily. Some of the effects were very useful, such as levels, contrast/brightness, and invert.

Disadvantages:

Adobe Photoshop is not very user friendly. During AS, I had become accustomed to the software, however there were some features that I still didn't understand. Luckily there were many very helpful tutorials on YouTube to allow me to use Adobe Photoshop to it's full potential.

Movie Studio Vs iMovie Vs Final Cut Pro

Description:

These are three pieces of moving image editing software. They have many simeralities such as a multi-clip interface and video effects.

Movie Studio:

Movie Studio was the piece of editing software that I had used to edit my music video. It features a large amount of effects and tools to edit moving images. It is very easy to import and export. However, it is not very userfriendly, and it took me a long while before I fully understood how to use it's interface. Also, when editing clips, the preview screen was in a low resolution and was often had a lot of lag, and therefore it made it difficult for me to know if my clips were in sync with the music.

iMovie:

iMovie is very user friendly, it is easy to do a voice over and it features many effects to edit moving images. However, the only iMovie that I could use was iMovie for iPad, and therefore this made it a little awkward when transferring footage and files.

Final Cut Pro:

This is probably the worst software I have used. The effects that it has to offer are brilliant, however, when exporting my clips, it would always do it in the wrong format than what I had intended. This meant hours of editing were worthless because the file couldn't be exported in a format that can be uploaded to YouTube.

Microsoft Word & Powerpoint

Description:

Microsoft Word is used for creating documents such as letter and essays. Microsoft Powerpoint is a piece of presentation software and can be screenshotted and used as an image.

Advantages:

They are both very user friendly and feature a simple interface which is easy to understand. The tools and effects make these pieces of software very useful in creating things such as responses to evaluation questions.

Disadvantages:

None.

Blogger & YouTube

Description:

I have used Blogger and YouTube to upload my coursework to be assessed and graded. 

Advantages:

They are both connected by Google, and therefore I can use one account for both, which makes linking from one to the other very easy. They are very user friendly.

Disadvantages:

Blogger and Youtube can not process every type of file, which made uploading work very difficult sometimes.

Powtoon, Go Animate & Storyboard That

Description:

These are pieces of software which I used for my planning, research and evaluation. 

Advantages:

Each software featured simple tutorials that made using them very easy. My files could be saved in an online server so that I could go back to them at a later date, from different computer.

Disadvantages:

Since I only had a free membership to each of the services, I couldn't have access to most of the features available, which prevented me from being as creative as I could have been.

When using pieces of software such as Photoshop, I used tutorials on YouTube like the ones below. I found these very helpful when creating my products, as it allowed me to use each piece of software to it's potential and fully take advantage of it's features.

Ancillary Text 1 - CD Cover (Planning)

Ancillary Text 2 - Magazine Advertisement (Planning)

Bastille have placed many advertisements in magazines, which are usually used to advertise music tours rather than albums. These advertisements include the same iconography as their albums, so that the audience easily recognises them. I must use the same images and fonts and I do on my CD cover artwork in order to follow this convention. 

Bastille - The Draw (Lyric Analysis)

On the website http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107859472270/ there were many people's different interpretations on the song The Draw by Bastille and it's meaning. I believe that one in particular (shown below with +7), had concluded the song perfectly. The general theme of what people said on the meaning behind The Draw was that it was about mental illness, and the struggle to get help and stay alive. I feel as though I can represent this in my music video, using imagery of rope to literally show the struggle inside someone's mind.

Bastille - The Draw (Lyrics)

In my left hand there is the familiar

In my right hand there's the great unknown

I can see the madly different grass there

But I'm drawn to wilder nights at home

Don't listen to your friends

See the despair behind their eyes

Don't listen to your friends

They only care and want to know why

I can feel the draw

I can feel it pulling me back

It's pulling me back, it's pulling me

I can feel the draw

I can feel it pulling me back

It's pulling me back, it's pulling me

Are you drifting way beyond what's normal?

'Cause round your mind rings the words that they would say

When you go home everything looks different

And you're scared of being left behind

Just listen to your friends

Trust that their fair look in their eyes

Just listen to your friends

They only care and hope you're alright

I can feel the draw

I can feel it pulling me back

It's pulling me back, it's pulling me

I can feel the draw

I can feel it pulling me back

It's pulling me back, it's pulling me

I can feel the draw

I can feel it pulling me back

It's pulling me back, it's pulling me

I can feel the draw

The draw, the draw, the draw

Previous Bastille Music Videos

The majority of the narratives used in music videos produced by Bastille follow a lone female character. The music videos are usually very dark and use slow paced editing, and I will reflect this in my music video so that it is believable as a professional video by Bastille. 

I have decided to star as the lead in my music video, as I believe that I can portray the protagonist female character well.

Bastille - Bad Blood

Bastille - Oblivion

Bastille - Overjoyed

Screeshots From The Editing Process (Music Video)

To edit my music video I used Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13.0 for Windows. I found that this software features many effects and transitions that create a professional final products. I had purchased this software from Steam for £40 in early 2015, and so I had already educated myself in how to use it before I came to edit my music video. I used an editing technique so that the clips would transition in time to the music, especially towards the end of the music video.

 

One of the clips that I used I had to reverse. This is because the lyrics were "in my left hand there is the familiar, in my right hand there's the great unknown" but the clip had been filmed to show my right hand first, and then my left hand, and so it didn't make sense. To do this, I right-clicked on the footage and left-clicked "Reverse". It was simple and easy to do.

For this clip, I used a "darker, more contrast" filter. I dislike how my mouth looks, as I'd put too much makeup on, and the protagonist is meant to be without makeup. Therefore I decreased the brightness and increased the contrast in order for the makeup to stand out less. 

Some of the clips I had cropped so that only what was needed to be shown was shown, such as the ones in which I am struggling against rope. I believe that closeups look far more professional than long shots.

I had turned down the gain on the audio from the footage so that it didn't interfere with the song.

I used a "fade" transition for some of the clips at the start of the second verse. This was to show the similarities between both narratives, as the protagonist was struggling against herself in both,

Screenshots From The Editing Process (Magazine Advertisement)

Screenshots From The Editing Process (CD Cover)

Fonts

I've found some conventional and professional fonts at http://www.1001fonts.com/ which suit the iconography of the indie genre. I have decided to use the first, which is 'Disturbo Font' as I believe that this is a unique, yet conventional font, and will make my ancillary media texts look very professional. It has letters that appear like a logo, and therefore can be easily recognised.

Bastille (Genre)

I searched "Bastille" on Spotify. Spotify has a system in which it recognises which artists users listen to most, and it chooses similar artists based on that. Each similar artist had very similar music genres.