CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts. The Student s Guide to A2 Moving Image Arts Coursework

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1 The Student s Guide to A2 Moving Image Arts Coursework 1

2 The Student s Guide to A2 Moving Image Arts Coursework At A2 Level you are expected to be as creative as possible with the equipment and resources you have available to you. Your film should take onboard the in-depth research you will carry out for your illustrated essay and you should add your own ideas to the mix to come up with an original piece of moving image art. At AS you were tested on your understanding of film language, now you are expected to use these elements to manipulate an audience. The quality of your filmmaking should be of a high standard and all areas of your production should be fully considered. This guide will lead you through the essential elements of your coursework for A2 Moving Image Arts. The coursework unit (Unit 1) is worth 70% of your total mark, so it is important that you understand what you are being asked to do. The coursework unit is called Creative Production: Advanced Portfolio and it is made up of several separate elements. Although these can be seen as separate tasks, there should be a creative thread or idea running through them and joining each element to the next. At the end of the unit all of the separate pieces should form one cohesive project. These are the various tasks and should be carried out in this order. An Illustrated Essay Written and Illustrated Pre-Production Materials Two Production Exercises A Finished Film An Evaluation The following pages outline each of the tasks and give you some pointers to get you started. What is the Illustrated Essay? The Illustrated Essay is where you have the opportunity to study in depth the area of filmmaking that interests you most. This might be the work of a particular director, cinematographer, production designer or indeed any other major role in filmmaking or a craft area, which might be camera work, editing, set design, costume design, sound or music. The list is endless. Once you have chosen who or what you are going to study find out as much as you can about that person or craft area. View their work, read books, search the Internet and look for connections between their work and other Art areas such as painting, sculpture, architecture and photography. After compiling this research analyse the work. Use these questions as a starting point: What influenced these filmmakers? What filmmaking techniques are being used and why? What visual style does the work have (quality of light, colour, texture, composition, movement)? 2

3 How is emotion created in the work (fear, joy, sympathy, loathing, apprehension)? It is now time to construct your illustrated essay. You may find it helpful to divide it into these sections: Introduction (what or who are you going to study, give some background information) Influences (who or what has influenced this work) Analysis (conduct an analysis of carefully selected sequences of the work) My Thoughts (what you think about the work) What am I going to do for my film? The purpose of this essay is to find an area of Moving Image Arts that interests you and to inform your filmmaking. From the research you have conducted you must choose a theme, technique or visual style to base your own work on. At A2 there must be a clear link between your essay, production exercises and the final film. There are three ways you can present your essay: A written illustrated essay ( words). A PowerPoint presentation of minutes in length to include sound commentary. A short documentary (digital video presentation) minutes in length including a short explanatory statement. Choose the one that is most appropriate for you and agree with your teacher a series of submission dates and review sessions. What are the Written and Illustrated Pre-Production Materials? The process of developing your pre-production materials is exactly the same as it was at AS Level. You can take either the Traditional Film Production approach or an Art and Design approach, however your planning at A2 must be more rigorous and in greater depth. Your production at A2 must be based on the research your conducted for your illustrated essay, so take your chosen area or person and from this develop ideas for your short film. At A2, particular attention should be paid to: The Production Design/Art Direction Use of the Camera (position, framing, movement) Lighting/Cinematography Music and Sound Editing Note: Remember you are trying to be as creative as possible and high production values are your key to a mark in the upper levels. You should document how you have experimented with/utilised the influences from your chosen area or person. Your production exercises should be a part of this process helping you decide on the best way forward or which style or technique to use in your final film. 3

4 Whichever way you choose to produce your pre-production materials you must include these basic elements somewhere in your planning: Production Notes A Screenplay Storyboards Evidence of Management, Organisation and Planning of Time and Resources. All of your pre-production materials should be combined to form one portfolio of work. This should be either a sketchbook or an A4 soft back folder. Additional items such as production diaries may also be submitted. What are the Production Exercises? The production exercises should not be seen as a discreet element of coursework. They are part of your pre-production planning. At A2 Level you should try to be as creative as possible with your exercises, trying to find an original or interesting way to tell your short story. You should also showcase your skills as a filmmaker, making sure that all of your work (especially your final film) has high production values. Remember that all of your work this year should stem from the person or area that you studied in your essay. Therefore your exercises and final film should be directly linked to your chosen area of study. The exercises do not have to have their own narrative or be complete pieces of film. They can be made up of several shorter sequences. You must produce two one-minute exercises and it is recommended that you cover both the visual style of your film and the filmmaking techniques you will use. The best exercises will show an outstanding ability to develop ideas which show genuine originality and creativity when investigating and experimenting. The production exercises should not be segments from your finished film. They should be completed quite early in the pre-production process and there should be a direct link to the final film through the visual style, techniques or themes used. The Finished Film The finished film is the most important piece of work in A2 Moving Image Arts. It is the culmination of many weeks of planning, shooting, and editing. To do well at A2 in this subject it is essential that you produce a well-crafted film with high production values. The quality of your short film is much more important than its length. The best films will have fully considered camera positioning and movement, lighting, sound and editing. A good film will be well shot (shot size, camera angles and camera movement will be of a high standard). The lighting for each individual shot will have been considered and the sound will have multiple layers (the diagetic sounds of the world the film is set in, a sound effects or Foley 4

5 track and a music track or score). It is recommended that you do not use music (or other elements) in your film that you do not have copyright for. Tip: A much better approach to finding music for your film is to use applications like Soundtrack (which comes with Final Cut) to create your own musical score. Or, why not try recording a range of sounds and use an application like Audacity to edit them together to create a unique sound environment for your film. At AS all films had to be based on a narrative structure, the same is true for A2 however films can be much more experimental with alternative or non-linear film approaches. The duration of your final film should be between 5 and 7 minutes. It will show that you have experimented in-depth with the visual style, filmmaking technique or theme used in your film. The production values will be high and it should be edited in a style to complement the theme, tone or pace of the production. What should I say in my Evaluation? The evaluation is where you analyse how effective your film has been. These are some questions that you can ask yourself to help you construct your evaluation: Has my film worked technically? Was my creative vision realised? Did the audience react the way I wanted them to? How have I overcome problems encountered in my production? What did I learn from the process of making a short film? Good evaluations will compare the outcomes of your production with what you set out to do in your statement of intentions. They will be personal reflections of your experiences and will focus on how challenges were faced and problems were overcome. Tip: Don t make excuses! Concentrate on how problems were overcome rather than stating why you could not do something. A useful source of information for your evaluation will be your production diary (for those who chose to keep one). It will remind you of the things that went wrong and how you dealt with them, and also of the times you changed a shot on location to make use of something unexpected (a sunset, rain on a window, strange reflection). A basic structure for your evaluation might be: What did you do? How did you do it? Why did you make these choices? Was your film a success? Your evaluation should be no less than 800 words and no more than 1200 words. You may choose to include stills from your film to illustrate a point you are making. It may also be useful to get several people who have not seen your film to watch it and then question them about: 5

6 How it made them feel? Did they understand it? Which character did they relate most to? Your finished evaluation should be seen as the last piece of your production work and should be put at the end of your portfolio. Submitting your coursework Throughout the year you should agree a series of submission dates and review sessions with your teacher, so that you know how you are performing in regard to the assessment criteria. When you have completed all elements of your coursework the written materials should be bound together in an A4 soft backed document holder. Or, if you were working in a sketchbook then you should submit this and your production diary for assessment. The production exercise and the final film should be exported from your editing software as either a fill resolution.dv,.mov or a.avi file and then burned to DVD (note: this is not a DVD video disk). All items of coursework should be clearly labelled with your candidate number, centre number and the title of the piece of work. Your teacher will give you the submission date for your centre and you will receive your results with the rest of your subjects in August. If you need to resit a module remember that there are no January resits in Moving Image Arts so you will have to wait until the following year to resubmit your work. 6