BLOG EVALUATION BY END OF EASTER HOLIDAY

Over Easter, you need to work on your individual evaluation of the entire portfolio for the blog. The deadline for the draft of this to appear on the blog is April 19th (first day back). In one of your lessons this week you will receive instructions for this which you must read yourselves very carefully before you start. You will need to have got some meaningful target audience feedback by the time you write it.

Review Format

In order to make sure that your font is the right size for the required 600 words, make sure that you have set the page size correctly, based on the size of LWL.

POSTER AND REVIEW DEADLINE THIS THURSDAY!

Some groups have still not uploaded the final draft of the poster. This means that I cannot give you feedback and that you are risking losing marks for planning and meeting deadlines (this is one of the assessment criteria). Unless they are uploaded on Monday or Tuesday this week, you can expect marks to be deducted for poor planning. Similarly, the draft copy for the review should have appeared on the blog by now (deadline was Friday). Again, this means that you risk having no feedback on the draft before the final deadline on Thursday. This is not sensible, given the challenge of writing this piece, and may mean that you lose marks.

You should also have begun to gather target audience feedback for your film and ancillary products, and this should be recorded on the blog.

EVALUATION FEEDBACK - COMMON ISSUES

We've all had a look at the evaluations and there are some problems arising in a significant number of them. Read the notes below, and aim to improve the 2 types of evaluation in the next stage.

IF YOU STILL HAVEN'T HANDED IN THE ESSAY EVALUATION, YOU MUST DO THIS ASAP AT THE BEGINNING OF NEXT WEEK AT THE LATEST!!

1. Use your media language where appropriate - the terms associated with camerawork (angles and movement as well as shot distance), editing (how has continuity been achieved) , mise en scene (all 11 aspects) and sound. For instance, I don't think I came across the use of the word "Parallel" once to describe music matching events on screen. This distinguishes you from non media studies students, which is what you are. It also demonstrates high level skills of application.

2, Make comparisons to existing media products (seen on the film side of your course - Leigh, Loach etc)- "similar to particular scenes in films you have viewed" -this will be something to explore when you discuss your film poster. This is good practice becuase it makes links with your planning and research.

3. Refer to media theory and concepts where appropriate - for instance, some of you made references to issues about the representation of gender, audience demographics etc

4. Continually illustrate with particular scenes from your own work.

5. Be honest. Far too often, you have avoided discussing problems you had, or problems with your finished product. Don't bury your head in the sand! By admitting to these problems and, more importantly, by discussing how you overcame them or how you could have overcome them, you are demonstrating that you understand what a good product should look like and demonstrate. Constantly EVALUATE in relation to real media products, and in relation to your aims for the film. Consider carefully and honestly, how well you think you targeted your audience. Does target audience feedback support your view? If it is critical of your film, evaluate this view for its validity (worth) and consider whether that person has a good point.

6. In the section "on how successfully you have used digital technology" - be reflective and discuss what you have been able to do - How has final cut been an improvement, What have the blogs allowed you do this time round, what has garageband allowed you do? DO THIS AT THE BEGINNING OF NEXT WEEK AT THE LATEST!

Review Copy Draft

Please send an email version of the copy to me as well as posting it on the blog, as this will make annotations and advice much easier.
Thanks.

DEADLINES THIS WEEK

REMEMBER THE DRAFT EVALUATION USING THE QUESTIONS IS DUE IN ON TUESDAY THIS WEEK (1 WEEK FROM ISSUE).

ALSO, THE FOLLOWING WORK IS DUE ON THE BLOG BY THE END OF THIS WEEK:

A2 MEDIA DEADLINES THIS WEEK

Week Commencing 22nd March

Work continuing on poster and initial design and copy-writing draft work starts in photoshop and indesign for review.

26th March: final draft deadline for poster, to be uploaded to blog, with initial evaluative comments from group and results of target audience feedback on poster.
First draft of ‘copy’ (800-1000 words) for the review uploaded to blog as Word document.

See your booklet for more advice on each of the stages, and use your notes from the lessons on reviews to help you write the copy for the review.

Evaluative Essay - Deadline 1 week from issue

The following brief will be issued to you during your second lesson this week. This is a conventional essay, and should be handed to your supervisor by the one week deadline.

TASK: TO WRITE AN ESSAY EVALUATION OF YOUR SHORT FILM, INCORPORATING TARGET AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

LENGTH: about 1500 WORDS
Context

For your A2 qualification, you need to evaluate your production work in 2 contexts:

1. The Evaluation stage of the Advanced Portfolio (worth 25% of the Portfolio, or 20 marks)
2. Section A of the exam (Theoretical Evaluation of Production, worth 50 marks: part 1a, describing and evaluating skills development over the course of the production work, and part 1b, evaluating the production in relation to one of 5 media concepts).

Even though the evaluation you write for the blog will not be an essay, the evaluation for the exam will be, and this exercise should give you some practice at doing it.

In your essay, answer the following questions:

• How successfully have you used digital technology in your Advanced Portfolio work? Have you developed skills in this area since the Foundation Portfolio? Have you learned any new skills, such as final cut pro or green screen, or the blog itself? (Main task only at this stage – cameras, vision and sound editing, special effects).

• How creative is your work? (Consider your use of film language in camera work, mise en scene, sound, editing, themes, issues, narrative). Have you experimented at all with any film techniques? Have you attempted to be original in your work? Have you adapted or been inspired by the work of any other director/s? Give precise examples as evidence.

• How effective do you think your role was in research and planning? Explain what you did in these areas, and evaluate your success and input. Give precise examples of your role.

• Describe what you were trying to achieve as a group in post-production (editing), and what techniques you used. For example, did you aim for continuity, did you achieve it, and how? If you have any more to discuss and evaluate related to sound or vision post production work that you haven’t discussed above in digital technology, discuss it here. Use examples to support the points you make.

• How did you use, develop or adapt the conventions for real media products of this type (consider the short film narrative, genre and style)? Provide detail from your film as evidence.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback? (This must follow research with several representatives of your target audience, and can be conducted via social networking sites such as Facebook, email, the blog itself, phone, or in person. The results can be gathered by all of you together and shared)

DEADLINE: 1 WEEK FROM TODAY – AND TO BE SUBMITTED ON PAPER AS A WORD DOCUMENT.

NEXT WEEK DEADLINES

This is a reminder of the work due next week and plans for lesson time:

A2 MEDIA STUDIES DEADLINES

Week Commencing 15th March

Complete a short essay evaluation of the finished film with 1 week deadline – every student to complete this for individual assessment and exam practice (homework). Assessment Objectives and guidance are to follow as part of the review lessons. Submit as a word document on paper.

Continued work on poster in 2 lessons
Teacher-led introduction to Review ancillary task over 2 lessons
Audience feedback on finished product to be recorded on blog (homework)

19th March: Deadline for first indesign and photoshop layout draft of review, showing blocking and layout and chosen image.

Draft review to be uploaded to blog, with group decisions about layout and ideas for content to blog as bullet points (one group member to record these).

Logos for Film Funding companies and competitions

Any logos you wish to include in your poster design can be copied from the k drive (under visual arts and media, media studies, a2 media, logos).

DEADLINE TODAY

As you all should know, today is the deadline for editing the short film. If you still have some sound work to do, you should bear in mind that you will not have priority in the edit suite as the AS students and Video Production students also have deadlines very soon.

Please read the notices in the classroom and continue to look at posts here for upcoming deadlines. Next week is very busy indeed!

Example of Independent Company marketing of short film

Look at the link to Cowboy Film on the right as an example of an award winning short film which was more conventionally sold to its audience.

DEADLINE APPROACHING!

Don't forget that the following need to be done by the end of this week - 12th March:

1 Final edit of short film, including sound and titling
2 First photoshop and indesign draft of poster design chosen from the sketched drafts for each of you that should have been uploaded last week. It is important that each of you demonstrates having contributed to the design of the poster through the initial sketched design (last week's deadline).

Look ahead in the booklet for the next deadline. Keep planning ahead!

Poster Research

You should have already analysed existing relevant poster designs as part of a previous deadline. Now that you have had lessons on this, you may think it's a good idea to edit those posts to add more detail and relevance to your own design ideas. If you didn't make that part of the previous deadline, you need to do that research asap. Each person in the group should have contributed to the research on poster designs and posts need to be headed with names to appear on the archive. See examples on this blog for ideas.

Deadlines Approaching!

Following introductory lessons on the poster work, you should now be aware of the approaching deadlines which appear below. Ask if you need help or have any questions.

5th March

Every student in group to post to blog initial draft design for the poster. Draw, scan image, and upload with comments and justifications (bullet points, about 10 lines). Group to select best design to proceed with.


Week Commencing 8th March

Editing of short film continues to deadline, plus blogged decisions and explanations (see booklet on main task)
Poster design continues in photoshop and indesign

12th March: short film deadline
12th March: first draft of poster to appear on blog

New links added for poster work

Click on the links to the right for more information on creating film posters and the institutional contexts for this work.