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.