Examiners’ Reports – June 2011
G324 Principal Moderator’s Report
General Comments
Most centres responded effectively to the electronic nature of this Specification; many presented work through blogs and in the best practice candidates’ blogs were accessed through a central blog hub. Blogs allowed centres to present all five elements of each candidate’s work (the research and planning, the main construction task, the two ancillaries and the evaluation) in a dynamic and flexible manner. The blogs that worked best were labelled with candidates’ names and numbers and permissions were set so that the moderator could access the blog with ease. There were also Centres that submitted effective work via presentation software that exploited the multimedia capabilities of PowerPoint or Prezi, for example; PowerPoint and Prezi both allow for hyperlinks, audio, video, embedded image etc and can be used very well – although this was more rare than good blog presentation of work. The most effective administration had the central blog URL on each coversheet and all other boxes were completed in detail. Cover sheets outlined the task; the names of each member of the group who had worked on that task; gave detailed assessment comments (that related to the level criteria from the Specification) and referred specifically to the individual candidate’s own performance. Coversheets should be printed not on disc. Marks should be checked so that they are accurate and correspond with the marks submitted. The majority of Centres remembered to
send the mandatory Centre Authentication Forms with their work. Any disc work should be sent on one disc per Centre, where possible. As with G321, file formats must be universal (such as jpeg, pdf or .mov) – Publisher, Photoshop and Fireworks files, for example must be converted into one of the appropriate formats before submission. Moderators are not expected to download work onto their computers in order for it to work, which is often the case with work submitted via school VLEs. Where work is presented on disc these files should be organised with menus and folders using both candidate numbers and full candidate names. Centres should check discs and blogs for functionality before sending them to the moderator.
Research & 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.
PowerPoints did not lend themselves to the same ongoing presentation, but did have the
potential to have similar embedded multimedia content and hyperlinks as blogs. Where these
PowerPoints were submitted as videos of the candidates actually presenting the PowerPoint it
was noted that the effective ones were carefully considered, with close miking of the candidate
and the screen clearly seen. Better still were the PowerPoints with an audio track of the
candidate’s presentation.
VLEs were used by a fewer centres but work from many VLEs was not as flexible as either true
blogs or even PowerPoints or Prezis as they often limited formats and required the downloading
of every item of planning or research presented by each candidate.
Hard copy research and planning is not allowed at A2 and will not be considered by the
moderator as evidence.
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; magazine draft layouts and page
plans, website layouts designs, storyboards or animatics all 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. Several centres demonstrated very worrying health
and safety issues that must be addressed in future sessions.
The best blogs were also well labelled, tagged and titled so that the moderator could easily
identify each of the relevant entries.
Construction
The music promotion, film promotion and short film briefs (briefs 1, 2 and 10) were the most
commonly presented tasks, followed by the documentary extract (brief 7), although there were
also more newspapers this session (brief 8) and a few TV advertisement campaigns (brief 3),
There were a few radio submissions (brief 13) and a couple of Children’s TV opening sequences
(brief 6). Print was the most popular format for the ancillary tasks. There were a number of very
strong submissions for all three of the most popular briefs. The best responses demonstrated
real cohesion between the three construction tasks.
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. The magazine advertisements and web pages were generally less successful.
Many web pages were not online with working urls but were just jpegs of a design for a site. This
is not acceptable under this Specification. Not all candidates evidenced the requirement to ask
the rights holders of the music track for permission to use it in their video.
Short films that ran to the recommended length of five minutes tended to work better than those
that were over long. The best had interesting narratives, often featuring an older cast of family
members and friends from outside the peer group. The stronger ones also showed effective
understanding of film grammar using multiple camera set ups and a range of shot sizes taken of
the same scene and then demonstrated excellent continuity editing. Some candidates took a
documentary approach to this brief and produced interesting responses. Verité-style work rarely
resulted in successful outcomes at this level. The poster and radio trailers ancillaries generally
worked quite well but many of the review pages looked like newsletters.
The best film trailers were short, well-paced, had a non-linear narrative structure, used a range
of techniques to intrigue the audience and had been produced by candidates who had closely
studied the conventions of the form and of the genre in which they were working. They also had
a clear sense of the whole story of the film they were ‘teasing’. Most relied on intertitles; few
included voiceovers. Some submissions read as the opening of a film, being wholly linear in
narrative, and so were uncomfortably close to the Foundation Portfolio video brief.
A significant number of candidates producing Print-based tasks (both main and ancillary) used
found images in their work. Royalty free images do not constitute original images and an
overuse of such material means that their work demonstrates minimal ability in the technical
skills at best. Print work was generally well executed with a good grasp of Photoshop and an
improved integration of images and text compared to previous sessions. A significant few
showed in their planning that they had looked at a range of relevant print texts which they had
annotated and analysed – yet seemed unable to replicate their forms and conventions;
newspapers often demonstrated very large body-text font sizes, for example. A number of
newspapers looked more like the real thing but a few still resembled Microsoft Publisher
templates for newsletters or even Publisher templates for magazines.
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. A few Centres did not seem to have encouraged their candidates
to answer the set questions at all and this produced very weak responses.
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 number of Candidates submitted responses as Word files on disc, which limited their success.
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.
