Examiners Report

Film Trailer:

The best film trailers did not attempt to tell the plot of the film in narrative order and included a great variety of shots, using fast cuts to create an effective and atmospheric trailer. However the majority followed the narrative of the film and were overlong and would have benefited from a greater variety of shots and tighter editing. Some of the weakest looked more like submissions for the short film brief! 

Film posters were the most successful aspect of the ancillary tasks submitted and showed good understanding of conventions. Magazine front covers were the most inconsistent. The weakest showed little understanding of generic conventions. 

Short Film:

A few candidates worked to the short film brief and these were largely successful with clear narrative and characterisation, careful construction of mise en scene, titling and camerawork. Centres need to be more careful about originality in soundtracks, however. The posters for these films were generally effective although the film magazine review pages were less successful. There were very few radio trailers for the films. 

Evaluation 

The best Evaluations took a multi-media approach. Whether as a presentation, a blog entry, or as a DVD extra, an effective evaluation used clips and stills from the production work, feedback from the audience - often as video or audio clips - and reflective analysis. Of particular note are those candidates who created video-based evaluations which included talking heads, clips from production work (often paused and annotated), and interviews with the audience. The direct addressing of the four set questions was also a characteristic of a focused evaluation. 

However, the Evaluation more generally tended to be the weakest element of candidates’ work and the most over-marked. The worst evaluations were those on blogs or presentations that consisted entirely of text, especially when responses to the set questions were either very short or difficult to find amongst the rest of the material in a largely unstructured piece of writing. A small number of candidates made the mistake of answering the set questions for Foundation Portfolio, which was not acknowledged by the Centre. Most candidates did address the required questions but in many cases their answers tended to be descriptive. Many evaluations took the form of largely text-based essay-style answers on blogs or on numerous PowerPoint slides, which many Centres then inappropriately rewarded as being excellent use of digital technology and ICT. In one case a candidate was filmed reading her answers, which does not constitute excellent use of digital technology. 

Advice 

The expectations of the unit are greater than for the old 2733 and this needs to be reflected in the marking 

The best submissions were those making the most of the electronic basis of the new spec, thoroughly integrating audio, video, image and web links to the written word during the planning and research stages and the evaluation 

Encourage candidates to blog or use VLEs where possible, on an ongoing basis; this will prove especially useful in preparing for G325 

Ensure candidates answer the four questions in their Evaluation 

Teach the skills for the ancillary tasks not just the main tasks 

Set an internal deadline well in advance of the Board’s deadline 

Complete print-based coversheets, filling in all sections accurately 

Where there are fewer than 10 candidates send all work to the moderators