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Examiners’ Reports – June 2011

Planning

The best research and planning was evidenced through ongoing blogs, demonstrating the real processes undertaken by the candidate. Such blogs included embedded video, such as work they had analysed or of audience interviews, experimental footage, perhaps with an audio track explaining the process, or animatics. This was uploaded via providers such as You Tube (often using the annotation facility), Muzu or Vimeo. The best blogs also included audio such as podcasts, audio commentaries or audience interviews (which could be recorded on or uploaded from their phones via Soundcloud, for example). The most effective blogs had images of a wide range of things, including drafts of print materials, storyboards, mind maps, recce shots, make up tests, permission request letters for the music video brief, risk assessment forms. The best ones were thoroughly hyperlinked to the range of sites visited and referred to. Blogs also allowed teachers and classmates to be able to comment on the work in progress, giving invaluable feedback and suggestions for further exploration at every stage.

All the best research was focused, relevant and analytical, rather than descriptive, and looked closely at a range of similar products which then informed the candidate’s planning of all of their own products. It proved vital that candidates researched and planned all three of their products carefully, the main task and the two ancillaries.

Audience research was done well in those centres that did more than just questionnaires and graphs. Social networking sites were used to good effect by some candidates undertaking both audience research and audience feedback. Others used online survey sites. The most detailed audience research produced more effective productions, in terms of being genre products, and were more appropriate for their selected target audience.

Drafting is essential for all productions, not just because the assessment criteria says it needs to be there – but also because it produces the best constructions;, storyboards help identify potential problems before production starts. This can also help in more effective deployment of the Centre’s resources – less time will be needed re-filming, for example, if an animatic shows early on that there is a gap in a narrative that needs to be filled. Storyboards completed after filming have no use. All three tasks benefit from careful research and planning.

Stronger candidates also included shooting schedules and call sheets. Risk assessments were undertaken by a small proportion of centres. The best blogs were also well labelled, tagged and titled so that the moderator could easily identify each of the relevant entries.

Construction

Video was the most popular medium for Centres and the most successful work clearly resulted from careful training in the technical capabilities of the cameras, consideration of sound, lighting and the use of a tripod. Weaker work was marked by frequent unsteady panning and zooming.

In the Music Promotion brief this session, there was an increase in the proportion of lip-synched performance over a purely narrative approach. This development is to be encouraged, as the narrative videos look more like short films and tend to lose function as a promotional tool for the artist. Some of these responses, as in previous sessions, have shown real flair and imagination combined with technical control; more candidates seemed to show more of the visual aesthetic with some excellent shot choices and mise en scene. A greater number of candidates submitted the required number of panes to be a digipak (ie at least four) and had clearly been taught the technical skills to be able to manipulate their images and combine effectively with text, although a surprising number did not include basic institutional elements such as a barcode and copyright information.

Not all candidates evidenced the requirement to ask the rights holders of the music track for permission to use it in their video.


Evaluations

The best evaluations were clearly well planned in terms of using a variety of methods of
presentation and choosing the right method to explore each of the four set questions in an explicit and reflective manner.

The most successful Evaluations tended to be on blogs and were media rich, using the right medium for the right question. However, there were also some highly successful PowerPoints and these used embedded video and audio, hyperlinks and incorporation of other methods such as Prezi. Heavily text-based PowerPoint responses were rather too much like essays and missed the extensive opportunities to explore the questions and show their understanding and skills that a media-rich approach to PowerPoint or Prezi can take.


A proportion of filming in the Evaluation is good – but some candidates produced their
evaluations as one video and these tended to be overlong. Some of the most unsuccessful presentations were half an hour long with a whole group of unidentified candidates talking directly to the camera, answering the questions without cutting in any images, other footage, clips, captions etc to help evidence their words. This was a difficult format to moderate. In other cases presentation took precedence over content. Candidates used variety and skill in the presentation of the work but the responses to the questions were brief and lacking sufficient detail.

Many responses were detailed, reflective and informed. On the other hand, there were some very brief responses that could not reach the higher levels; Question 4 in particular elicited a number of list-like answers, illustrated with software logos, social network icons, photos of equipment etc, and this was rarely a high-level approach.