THE ADVANCED PORTFOLIO EVALUATION - just in case you have mislaid your guidance sheet.

Marks for your advanced Portfolio coursework are distributed as follows :-

Products Research and Planning Evaluation
60 20 20

•Advanced portfolio Products (Film, Poster, Review) – Final deadline 1st April.
•Research and Planning are ongoing (and you should continue to add content over Easter)
•Individual Evaluation – Draft deadline = 19th April. Written over Easter.

Your Advanced Portfolio Evaluation should be posted as your last Blog entry.
Evaluate all 3 aspects of your portfolio
Each individual has to write an evaluation using the guidelines below.

It is essential that this is written in Blog format - not as an essay. Therefore use :-
• clear headings
• precise bullet points,
• lots of visual material,
• hyperlinks to relevant websites,
• embedded video.

Questions around which to structure your evaluation.

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

For this section, you must consider carefully how you have used the genre/s and/or styles that your film incorporates. For many of you, this means how you have used the style of social realism, and possibly how you have used other genres with it, such as comedy, or romance for example. In addition, examiners will expect you to discuss how you have used the short film format. Some areas for discussion for each might be:

Social Realism – study the notes you made in class on this particularly British style, including its conventions and aims and its style. You should remind yourself of key directors here, such as Ken Loach, Andrea Arnold and Mike Leigh, and revise the key aims of Social Realist directors, especially in terms of representation (who do they aim to represent and why?). Also, use the research you did into Social Realist short films (eg Wasp), and make sure that you understand how the narrative of these short films usually works, and revise narrative theory from last year (eg Todorov).
You should be showing that you understand the contexts for the kind of film you have made. You will need to explain those contexts in terms of typical narrative structure, typical aims for representation and character types, typical use of mise en scene, typical use of sound, typical use of editing, typical use of camera and typical themes and issues. This is a very good opportunity to incorporate links to examples of films, shots from key films, or other visual material. What you say here will depend on the key genre/s and styles your group has chosen to work with.
Once you have established the conventions for your type of film, you need to decide to what extent you have conformed to these conventions or to what extent you have departed from them. You will need to show that you understand the implications of doing either: for example, how does your choice help the film to target your audience more effectively?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

For this question, you need to consider how well the whole portfolio would work in a real commercial context: you are essentially being asked how you think the two ancillary tasks would work as part of the whole marketing package represented by the portfolio.
You need to assess how well you have communicated the appeal of your film for your audience in the poster, and be precise and accurate about how the poster does this. You can include visual material here from the poster design to illustrate, and perhaps comparisons with real media output. Select detail from the poster (eg representation of character, themes and issues, location, use of colour) and justify your use of these elements in relation to what you would want your target audience to understand and potentially enjoy in the film.
You need to do the same for the review – explain carefully what aspects of the film you have chosen to discuss in the copy and show in the image in order to address the audience for the magazine. Consider whether the audience for your film and the magazine audience are the same or different, and how this shaped the copy and layout of the review.
Overall, you are being asked to justify the ways in which you have represented your film through the poster and through the review.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

You could have completed the audience research via your blog, social networking sites, email, phone, youtube or in person, and it should all be recorded on your blog. Whatever the context, it is essential that the feedback you have collected as a group is actually from representatives of your target audience. Your audience demographic should be clearly defined at the start of this answer, and it should be discussed as a valuable indicator of whether you have successfully managed to target and appeal to your audience. Your answer should not simply describe or quote from responses, but must answer the question: ‘what have you learned?’ This means that you must analyse and explain the responses in the context of your aims for the film, and use the responses to further evaluate your work. For example, if a respondent says that she wasn’t clear about the significance of a prop you have used, then you might deduce that your film lacked some important shots that might have clarified the importance of that prop to the narrative. Aim to group similar responses together and comment on them together.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction, and research, planning and evaluation stages?
‘New media technologies’ includes the digital cameras used, apple mac editing software (i movie or final cut pro), garageband, blogging, social networking sites (if used), indesign, photoshop.

Discuss each of the stages referred to above, and evaluate your own personal use of the technologies. Explain in detail what you have learned in each of these technologies, making precise references to any new techniques you learned, and if you worked in final cut this time instead of i movie, explain clearly why this was. For your role in the print ancillary tasks, be clear about how you used the programmes, and evaluate your contribution. Incorporate visual evidence wherever possible (eg drafting work on the print task to illustrate use of a particular tool).

Individual draft deadline for Evaluation appearing on blog – Monday 19th April