Evaluating your A2 coursework - a guide

Everyone in a group should do their own evaluation, although you can all edit videos together and add your own individual voiceovers or annotations.

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

You can answer this question by doing two nine frame analyses.

First of all, choose nine frames from your influential short film or trailer - each frame should enable you to write about the conventions in one area.  For example: 1. titles/graphics, 2. setting/locations, 3. costumes/props, 4. camerawork, 5. story 'setup', 6. genre, 7. characterisation/representation, 8. editing/effects, 9. music/sound/dialogue.

Then do a nine frame analysis of your own short film or trailer, comparing it to your influential media product and (using the same nine areas) considering whether you have used conventions in the same way, or developed them to create something slightly different or did you subvert the conventions of your influential product - this means that you chose to do something very different from what is typically (conventionally) done.

Question 2 is:
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

First of all, this question is asking you to consider synergy so read this http://howardschoolmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/synergy-a2-evaluations.html

Answer this question by creating a short video with still images from your video and your ancillary tasks that demonstrate key synergistic elements (e.g. uniform typefaces across all three products). Add a voiceover or annotations that explain how the separate products work together.

Question 3 is:
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Again, I would create a little video to respond to this question.  You are really being asked to show the development of your products so you need early versions of your films and print products.  Use video and/or stills to show aspects of these early versions and then with a voiceover or annotations or actual feedback videos explain how your audience reacted to these versions and how you changed the products as a response to this feedback.  Finally, you should arrive at your finished products and the final feedback you received.

Question 4:
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies are things like software (e.g. Photoshop), digital files (e.g. Word documents), Internet sites (e.g. Youtube, Blogger etc.), hardware (e.g. digital SLRs, camcorders etc.) and so on.  You could answer this question by creating a photo montage (a bit like the one below) and then add annotations to explain how you used the technology and at what stage of the production you used it.  You need to refer to your decisions and outcomes regarding technology.


Ancillary Tasks
Evaluate your ancillary tasks by annotating an image of your product (e.g. poster, advertisement, front cover, digipack etc.) together with an annotated image of a similar professional product. Obviously, you need to show how you have followed conventions and highlight examples of synergy across your two products.