Media Studies: Evaluation – its time to wrap up!

 Know: what the evaluation of my portfolio entails  Understand: what needs to be included in my evaluation  Be able to: complete my evaluation for my practical production portfolio By the end of the lesson I will:

Today is the Evaluation! Evaluation (20marks): For the evaluation you will reflect upon the creative process and your experience of it. Your evaluation must be done electronically and may be done individually or collectively. Possibly formats are: A podcast DVD extras A blog A PowerPoint Scribd (

You should not simply produce a written essay and the potential of the format chosen should be exploited through images, audio, videos and links to other websites and online resources. In your evaluation the following questions must be answered: A. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? B. How does your media product present particular social groups? C. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? D. Who would be the audience for your product? E. How did you attract/address your audience? F. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? G. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? FINALLY YOU MUST INCLUDE EVIDENCE OF AUDIENCE FEEDBACK IN YOUR EVALUATION

EVALUATION Working with existing forms and conventions – reworking the familiar 1. At a micro, technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity, the language of film and the grammar of the edit? 2. How many mistakes did you make, and did you improve in the main task having made errors in the preliminary exercise? 3. At a more symbolic, macro level, how does your fiction film reflect or challenge the conventions of the genre or type you are working in? Will it fulfil the 'contractual' nature of film genre or will it subvert expectations deliberately? 4. Are there any elements of deliberate pastiche or parody, where you ‘play’ with the genre's codes and history? Are there any intertextual moments where you hint at a reference to another film? 5. What kinds of audience pleasure are you trying to provide, and how confident are you that you have delivered on this promise?

EVALUATION Representing—constructing 'the real' 1. Who and what (people, places, themes, ideas, time periods) have you represented and how in your film? 2. Who is included and excluded by the text you have created? 3. What form of ‘realism’ have you constructed, and why? 4. What role do the mise en scene, acting, dialogue, music and style of camera work (micro elements) play in the construction of verisimilitude (the macro level of the textual world)?

EVALUATION Working in media production contexts – professional practice 1. How did you manage the group dynamics, equipment and resources, interim deadlines and the necessarily collaborative nature of film-making? 2. What health and safety and logistical problems did you solve? 3. How did you organise your human resources—the people involved in the production? 4. How did you manage actors, locations, costumes and props? Remember that deciding not to use a particular strategy (e.g. not to use any props) is also a creative decision. 5. How did storyboarding and creating a shooting script work in practice? Did you make creative decisions to depart from the original plan? For what reasons and with what outcomes? 6. Although time management may seem a less exciting aspect of creative media practice, it is possibly the most important—how did you manage your time, and with what success?

EVALUATION Using technology—creative tools You will have used digital cameras, microphones, lighting and editing resources. Some of these will have been closer to industry standard (for example, Final Cut Express) than others (for example, using a torch to light a scene). How did digital technology enable you to develop creatively and are there examples of the technology obstructing or preventing your creative flow?

EVALUATION Thinking about audience—making meaning 1. How did you respond to the initial brief with the audience in mind? 2. How did your analysis and research into the type of film you selected impact on the creative process in pre-production? 3. In filming and editing, how did you ensure that the meaning would be apparent to the audience? What creative decisions did you make in planning, rehearsing, filming and editing that were influenced by your sense of the audience and possible layers of interpretation? 4. How did the audience respond when you trialled aspects of your film? Are there a variety of different possible interpretations of your opening sequence that will depend on the cultural situation of the viewer?

Bibliography AuthorTitle James, A (2005)A History of film formWebsites – accessed 10/09/2010Filmography YearFilm Director Star Wars (George Lucas)