Out of school (Tusday 9th December)

Well done those of you who have got your title sequence presentations uploaded. I will try to take a look at these on the train tomorrow (I am on a course in London). Those of you who have not managed to finish them, please do so. Your next step is to identify the genre in which you are working and to begin finding title sequences for movies in those genres. You may have to use Art of the Title initially, since you probably (still) don't have access to YouTube. I have posted an example on my blog of a reasonably structured approach, but missing the analysis.



You have just under two weeks to get 5-10 analyses on your blogs...

Interesting (if slightly lacking in analysis)

This is quite a detailed description of a title sequence, but there is very little analysis (of shots, angles, choices, representations, industry standards etc.) The format is good (lots of screengrabs) but the lack of detailed analysis limits its effects. You should aim for something which looks something like this, but contains a lot more depth

Analysis of a opening sequence – kiss kiss bang bang from conner3326

Out of school today (croak)

I am not in school today on account of still not being able to speak...  You should carry on with your research into title sequences. If you have any problems, please email me.

Lots of posts...

I have posted quite a few things today designed to help you set up your projects. Please consider them as you start your planning.

Foundation portfolio - main project

Continuity project comments

Comments for all projects should now be posted on your blogs. If you've not completed your evaluation, please aim to do so before the end of the week.

Continuity Project: weeks 3 and 4

You should now be well underway with your continuity project. Remember - the initial deadline for the edit is the end of next week. However, if you will struggle to achieve this, an extended deadline is available; final cuts should be posted no later than Friday 28th November.

 

You should then evaluate your work. This includes a detailed consideration of your process (what you did) and your outcome (how your work looked). You should analyse and offer constructive criticism of what you think you did well, what you could have improved on and (crucially) how you will make sure that your final piece is better. You should also cover the following areas:

• Who would be the audience for your media product?
• How did you attract/address your audience?
• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
• Looking back at your previous work, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

You are advised to use a range of approaches. For example, with the audience questions, you could show people from your target audience your work and interview them. For the technologies process you could compare the pieces you have done, discussing how you used and improved on various effects and so on.

You could do all of this as part of a single documentary, or use a range of approaches. Although you can use written blog posts to support your answers, you should aim to use the full multi-media functionality of your blog; otherwise, you will be unlikely to get a +L3 mark.


You should make sure that you are consistently blogging about your work, going into some detail about the process. The blog should not just be descriptive - it should be analytical and insightful, explaining not simply what you have done but why you have done it, with some degree of appraisal.

Not in school (Tue 11th November)

I am on a course tomorrow so will not be in the lesson. You should be finalizing your planning for your continuity project which needs to be shot by the beginning of next week.

The Prisoner - comments [UPDATED]

Comments on "Prisoner" projects are now on Elleah, Toni and Becca's blogs. Rhiann - you should link to the video on Elleah's Vimeo account and write your own evaluation. Ben/ Laura - one of you needs to upload the video and you both need to do evaluations. It would be good if you could take a look at each other's work and offer some comments on these.

Ben/ Laura - I managed to access the Media Server, so have uploaded your video to Vimeo. I have embedded it below; you should be able to access the embed code and drop it into your own blog. I will post comments on the most recent post on your blog.



The Prisoner (Laura and Ben) from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Previous Prisoners

Please see below for links to previous Prisoner projects:

Kathryn Dowson (will not work in school)

Leanne Owens

Presentations

Please see below for the introductory presentation, the intro to the blog and the intro to the "shots" project:

As media lesson 1 intro -2014 [no clips] from Chris Earl

As media lesson 2 2014 foundation portfolio - the blog [no clips] from Chris Earl

As media lesson 3 2014 foundation portfolio - shots [no clips] from Chris Earl

To the moderator

Hi

Hope you find the student blogs interesting. They can be accessed using the menu to the right, or via the bloghub tab at the top. If you have any queries, please contact me via the following email address:

chris.earl@fram.durham.sch.uk

Thanks

A good example...

Although it's about an A2 project, Kathryn's "codes and conventions" film is well worth a look if you're struggling for ideas about how to do your first answer.

http://musicisalwaysaround.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/evaluation-question-1.html

Evaluation

Please see below for the slides from the evaluation presentation this morning:

 

Birds with arms

Just... birds with arms

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26343700

Zoe Crick! An example of what I mean

I've had a look at your video, Zoe, and have done an edit with music to show you what I mean. Thinking about it, I think you need something else within the pursuit (either figures monitoring it and commenting on it or some sort of V/O... not sure yet, will need to think about it...



Catch (Zoe Crick) - with music - Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Deadline confusion

Slight confusion over deadlines. In terms of when you need stuff shot/ editing:

• You have until 31st January to get everything shot (next Friday) although if you need to, you could shoot stuff next weekend
• You need a rough cut on your blog by the end of 14th February (end of this half term)
• You need your final cut on your blog by the end of 7th March

This gives you one week to shoot any remaining footage, then two weeks to do your rough cut and two weeks to complete your final cut.

You should, of course, begin editing as soon as you can. You should also keep in mind the evaluation questions, since you will need to begin this as soon as your edit is finished.

Narrative and Creativity

There was a very interesting programme on Rado 4 yesterday from a series called "The Human Zoo" (which I'd never heard before; I think it's about psychology). The focus was on storytelling and creativity. Although not media-specific, it is well worth a listen with regard to both narrative theory and creativity, both of which are important to A2 media. Link below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q8z3z

In particular, there was an interview with Professor Mark Turner on creativity; his website is below:

http://markturner.org/index.html

You might also consider listening to The Media Show, which will keep you abreast of interetsing current developments in the media, particularly in terms of regulation:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq

Not in the lesson today (20th January)

I am not in the lesson today. Please sign the sheet on the desk in B17 to indicate that you are present.

If you have footage to work on, you should upload this to the Swapdisk and the Media Server and begin editing (make sure you set your new project to HDV – 720p24, but accept if the project asks you to change settings when you put footage on the timeline

If you have no footage to work on, you should make sure that your blog is up to date.