Your individual evaluation - draft deadline 19th April

MEDIA STUDIES AS LEVEL, FOUNDATION PORTFOLIO

THE EVALUATION

DRAFT DEADLINE: MONDAY APRIL 19TH ON THE BLOG

An evaluation must be completed by every student individually in the group, and must be on the blog by the final deadline: April 30th.

You are strongly recommended to obtain your own copy of your product before the end of term so that you can make precise references to shots in the sequence. You will need to supply your own blank dvd for this. For the purposes of audience feedback and your own evaluation, you are also strongly advised to upload the film to youtube (through your own account, or ours – ask Andy Paul or Richard Ellis). When you have done this, put a link on your blog.

The exam board states that the evaluation must address the questions appearing below. There is no word count specified, but you must ensure that your answers address each of the questions fully.

You should support your evaluation with visuals (eg new additions of youtube extracts as evidence of a point, or references to existing visuals on the blog, such as animatics or photo location research.)

NB: the evaluation must not be written as an essay. The examiners are looking for creative use of the blog here to make this task visually interesting with plenty of incorporated visual material, embedded moving image, precise bullet point responses, and hyperlinks as well as informative and analytical discussion which uses media terms and answers questions in full.

The questions that must be addressed are as follows:

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

Here you should show that you understand the conventions of a thriller, and use terms to explain this. Make sure that you discuss enigma, restricted and unrestricted narration, typical elements of mise en scene (the 11 areas, and specifics within them eg low key lighting), iconography, protagonist, antagonist, binary oppositions, use of camera, use of sound, use of typical themes and issues, and how the 3 stages of narrative are used. You need to refer to examples to support your points, but you may use your research and planning analyses to do this.

You need to explain how your product uses those conventions and forms of a thriller film, and how you have tried to do something unique and different. Provide precise detail from frames of your product to support your points. If you have had any feedback from members of the target audience (through youtube, for example), then you should incorporate comments as supporting evidence.




2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

You will continue to work on this section after Easter.
‘Social groups’ refers to the types of social groups your characters belong to; for example, their gender, age, social class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.
Here, you need to consider the same questions on representation as you are going to use to frame your work on representation in TV Drama. For example, you need to ask who is being represented by your product (Gender? Age? Ethnicity etc)? Be sensible about this, and focus on the main characters in your product. You then need to ask How they are represented? Here you need to analyse the representation of your types of characters in terms of the use of technical codes (eg camera, mise en scene, editing, sound). You should consider whether these are positive or negative representations of this social group, and how this is achieved. You might also discuss who has the power or higher status in your film opening. Is this more in line with traditional or modern representations of the types of people you have chosen to represent? Next you need to ask Why? Here you need to explain why you have represented a particular character (eg a woman) in this way. Perhaps you wanted to create empathy with the audience, or perhaps you wanted to indicate that he/she is an antagonist? You may need to link this to the conventions of a thriller, but you must explain clearly your rationale for creating the characters this way. You will need to specify who your audience is for the product, and why you think the characters help to target this audience. Perhaps your representation fits in with standard stereotypes? If so, you will need to discuss why this is, and explain why you did this. Do not simply describe what kind of person your character is: description is not textual analysis, and will not achieve a pass grade! Use screen grabs, stills or storyboard material to illustrate- material from your work and real media products.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Here you need to consider the distribution route for your product. You will receive some teaching on this after Easter, so do not attempt to write this section until after Easter. Use links and visuals here to illustrate where possible.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Your audience must be clearly stated, in terms of gender and age. You should also suggest which other real thriller films your audience has enjoyed (try to find evidence of this).

How did you attract/address your audience?

Here you need to explain why your audience would enjoy your film. Select detail from your film to support your answer, including material on for example, the story told through the narrative, the use of camera, the use of mise en scene, the use of character, the reference to certain themes or issues, and the use of sound. You should use screen grabs from your film or stills to illustrate your points

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Here you need to include a list of all of the technology you used for this main task. You could include images of you using some of the equipment. You need to explain what you learned about the camera (methods, procedures etc), and what you learned about using the editing software to create a sequence that an audience. Provide an honest evaluation of your success as an individual and as a group; you should use the peer evaluation to support your answers here.




Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Here you need to explain how you think you have progressed from the preliminary task to the main task. You should discuss your development of technical skills (use of camera, sound editing, vision editing, your use of continuity editing (if this has improved!), your construction of character and story. Try to provide links to the earlier posts (refer to entries in your archive).

If you need help with uploading anything to the blog, or with uploading to youtube, allow plenty of time to ask either Richard Ellis or Andy Paul.

You should assume that this work will need to be done in your own time – lessons will not be allocated to this work, and we return to exam work after Easter.

DEADLINE FOR DRAFT EVALUATION TO BLOG – MONDAY APRIL 19TH.
FAILURE TO POST YOUR EVALUATION BY THIS DATE WILL PREVENT YOU FROM GETTING PROPER FEEDBACK FROM YOUR SUPERVISOR, AND WILL SERIOUSLY JEOPARDISE YOUR RESULT.