A2 media studies avanced portfolio evaluation

2. • There are many types of different media conventions that have helped inspire us. One of the
most important people who have influenced us was looking at artists who also developed
from a young age and going into adult hood. An example of this is Justin Bieber because of the
way that he has developed from 14 years old to the age he is currently which is 21. Whilst
looking at him quite deeply it means that we are able to see the way that he has developed as
a star through his music videos. We looked at videos such as One Less Lonely Girl and OneTime
these video were created when he was just starting to develop as a star. In these videos there
was a narrative as well as a simple performance which either included a bit where the artist
would perform by simple background or in One Less Lonely Girl there is performance which is
very similar to our artist because there is a performance where they perform using just a
guitar.
• Another artist who had a huge impact in the motifs that were presented in the music video
was Ed Sheeran because the style of music is very similar to Joss Logan in the way that a lot of
his songs are made in an acoustic manner.The paw print is very iconic to the way that the
music video and website has been produced.The leopard print on Joss Logan’s t-shirt is very
symbolic in the way that it is a light shade compared to a black shade which has lead to
thoughts of both the album cover and the website.The reason why this was so relevant was
because the leopard pattern is very bold and hard to miss in the music video of Just Imagine so
it was though that as a group this would be a good chance to have a pattern that could stand
out and would be iconic to the audience and everyone would be able to see the pattern and
immediately relate it to Joss Logan.
1) How does your product, challenge or develop
conventions of real media products?

3. • We also looked at other people for example Sam Smith who was very influential on the way that our website was
made. At first we looked at Sam Smith because his songs are rather depressing very much like our artist who
dreams of another world in his song Just Imagine.The website was also crucial to the way that we wanted to
design our website too. We looked at the website to see that the colours that were used were very abstract and
simple and in some ways were very mature compared to other artists of his own age for example: Miley Cyrus.
We purposely looked at Sam Smith and decided that the black and white of the website also reflects what is
trying to be said in the song Just Imagine. Just Imagine shows that there is a reality as well as a dream land and
the reason why it’s black and white is to show that and to show the way that there are two worlds.The black and
white also helps to exaggerate the way that Joss Logan is changing from a boy to an adult and as he starts to
grow up so does his music as well as the website.The digipack also kept to this colour scheme of showing how
the star has grown up and has very fierce colours.
• We also looked at the logo Atari for our own logo which helped us decide what our logo should be. In the end we
decided to have a red logo on a white background with a similar format to the Atari we just thought it would be
better without the line going down the middle and without the writing as the shapes on the outside looked like a
‘J’ and an ‘L’ making the logo very memorable as it can be seen on merchandise which is shown on the website
and it is also present on the digipack.

4. • As a group we decided that the transformation from a boy to a man was very important in the
way that the theme was portrayed.The main idea of the video was to show a reality
compared to an imaginary world and we did this by looking at the colour scheme that was
expressed through both the digi pack and website.The Digi pack and website both stuck to a
similar theme of black and white to show the two worlds and the colours used emphasise this
because of the way that the colours are so different to one another.
• The Digi pack also uses shadows a lot in order to emphasise the coming of age. The shadows
are able to represent the old start to when he was a child to the coming of age when he was a
man. So the shadows also represent a learning curve of the growing up that he has had to do
to get where he is. There is also black and white which imitates the ‘Just Imagine’ video which
shows the two worlds that he is having to live in.
2) How affective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?

5. • The website was also very important and Sam Smith was a major influence in the website design as
mentioned before because it suits the style of the artist in the way that it is black and white so make
the website seem very sophisticated. It mirrors the way that the single ‘Just Imagine’ has two sides
to the story because of the way that there is an imaginary and a reality world and the reality is what
his old world use to be and he has been forgotten from someone's life and it is looked upon like
when he leaves the country he holds on where as she moves on.
• The black and white is also important because the theme of the songs are quite depressing and the
fact that the colours are neutral means that it suits the style of music. However, if the colours were
to be more energetic like ‘Miley Cyrus’s’ website it wouldn’t match the style of the music that is
being portrayed as it has a lot of colours going on to show the off her personality which is described
extremely wacky in the way that you are able to move objects around as well as images being
placed randomly on the website so it makes the website seem very spontaneous and unorganised.
• The font has also been used for both the website and Digi pack so there is a pattern in the way we
wish to represent the artist.The font can be seen as being quite childish in the way that it is red and
bold and we could have decided to use a more subtle font. We decided to use the same font but in
white instead so we could have a pattern that is the same within the Digi pack and website so there
is an occurring theme.

6. • At first we sat everyone in an enclosed room and gave them a questionnaire to answer after they
had viewed the video on a projector we then let the audience also read the lyrics after they had
seen the video on order for the lyrics to make sense with the video however we did not show these
at the same time they were viewing the video for the first time as it would mean that they could
follow the lyrics instead of the video and their views could change on the video.
• The results of the audience feedback was that the ‘Just Imagine’ video reminded them of John
Lennon's hit ‘Imagine’ and this theme was repeated several times after asking different people.
The reason why people could have been reminded of this is because the themes that are portrayed
in these two videos are very similar in the way that they both portray a theme of peace. However,
even though it seems like a peaceful world and everything is perfect, the video does not show
utter peace as it is about soldier who has just come back from the war but at the war there would
have been no peace as at the war there is constant fighting.
3)What have you learned from your
audience feedback?

7. • People also really liked the narrative as it was very simple to follow as it made a lot of sense with
what the lyrics were trying to say and people could also tell the difference to when it was a reality
and to when it was in his head and what he thought was a reality or what he had hoped would
happen. However, some people thought that the shots were too long and it seemed more like a
film rather than an actual music video. However, the music video was purposely edited like that in
order for the narrative to make sense with the lyrics otherwise the edits would be too snappy
making the narrative not make sense with what the lyrics were trying to say.
• One of the first bits of feedback we got was when we showed our performance which was filmed
in quite a dark room and we were using the lighting that was available however, people said that
this image was quite pixilated.This could have also been because we didn’t know what lens to use
in a dark environment so we decided to do a pickup shot and re-film the performance. So we took
their comments on board and filmed in another room with professional lighting to create shadows
and more interesting angles.
• One of the main bits of negative feedback was that his voice did not match the artists age.
However, this was taken into consideration before we even started the filming. We just wanted to
sue someone who could emotionally connect to the song and we thought that we would be able to
achieve this seeing as it was his song.
• Finally, we also got feedback on the website because some people thought that the colour scheme
should be more energetic seeing that it was quite a young artist and that it should be more fun and
energetic. However, as a group we gave reasoning to why we had done quite a dark background
for the website with what in order to show the two worlds as opposites show this and we had done
a dark background then the music won’t have matched the style of the website because the music
is quite slow and dark.

8. • While filming our music video we used a Canon 7D DSLR which was a very practical camera and was very
easy to use and the footage was extremely high quality giving us a wide variety of footage that we were
able to use. In order for the footage to be steady we used a tripod which was a Manfotto 504HD which
was a very profession tripod allowing us to have smooth shoots when doing a panning shot for example
as well as not being tremendously heavy so it allowed us to carry the tripod around easily to other
locations where we wished to shoot.
• The shoulder mount was also necessary to when we were filming because it allowed us to moved
around more freely while handling it so the outcome made the narrative have different shots allowing it
to be a lot more interesting to watch because the audience is watching it from all different angles.
• The lenses were also important for our construction of the music video and this included EFS 50mm and
the EFS 18-135mm lens. We changed between lensing depending on the lighting conditions as so when
we were filming in darker lighting we used the 50mm lens but when we wanted wide shots we would ou
the 18-135mm lens. It was crucial that we understood how to use these lenses because when we did the
pickup shot where we used professional lights which included a soft box and smaller lights we had to be
educated in what lens was right for those particular conditions.
4) How did you use media technologies in
the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?

9. • We used a software called Final CutPro x which was extremely easy and simple to use and we used this
for the making of both however there were times when the software would not benefit us as it would fail
or start to free. It could even take a long time to render making it harder for us to continue with the
editing as we would have a shorter amount of time.
• Another software we used was Photoshop which we used to edit the photos that would be placed on the
website and digipak.The software ran as according to plan and there were no problems however it did
take a while to understand how to use the software at the start. However, there was a problem as it
wasn’t able to create a transparent background for the image files which meant that we had to open the
file in preview and from there we had to remove the white background from the image.
• Another website which was very important was ‘WIX’ which is what we designed our website on. It is a
free website that allows you to drag and drop things and does not require code so it is rather simple to
use however there were some problems with it which we believed you should be able to do such as being
able to embed the Facebook post, instagrams and even twitter posts onto the website.
• In our second evaluation question we used the application ‘screen flow’ which is embedded onto the mac.
This application is very easy to use as it allows you to play around with windows that are open on the
screen as well as having a video of the person speaking. One benefit of this application was that it allows
you to edit what you have done on that application so all we had to do was to export the video onto final
cut pro x and then edit the other videos around it.