Film Opening note task *NEW*

Just a quick note to explain task 9 which is new and has been added today.
This is something that we usually cover in class with a couple of lessons but I think you're all more than capable of doing this by yourself so I've added it in as a task for you to complete.
It will allow you to add more content to your blogs and show how much you know (or don't?!) about your chosen genre as well as start to use some technical language of film/media.

We'll go through it in more detail next lesson (though I'd like you to do this for homework if you've done all of the other tasks, but essentially, choose 3 films from your genre and watch the opening few minutes. Then, either by downloading the PDF, making notes or creating your own version of the boxes, fill in with the necessary details. When done, re-upload the completed notes so that all 3 sheets are on your blog.

The next task from this will be to brain-storm the key elements for your film opening based on what you saw in the films, so aim to get the viewing done asap. There are lots of websites where you can view film clips and the start of films, but if you're really struggling come see me early next week.


Thanks!

http://www.docdroid.net/VrbIwMx/y12-opening-film-analysis.pdf.html

Task List

RESEARCH

1. 'Genre' - key elements of a genre. A test post. MUST be hosted on SlideShare, must be a visible PDF and embedded on your blog.
2. An explanation of the 180 degree rule.
3. Your own explanation of the 180 rule with your own example pictures. This CAN be included with the work task 2.
4. An explanation of what Match on Match editing is (also known as match editing, match on editing, continuity editing and many others).
5. Your own example of Match on Match editing in the form of your own video. A short explanation of what you did should be included. Those looking for extra marks/credit may choose to include a more detailed explanation. Those looking for the highest marks should also include small clips of the longer clips you filmed and screengrabs of how you edited this. This could even include a recorded version of your desktop as you show and explain how and why you did what you did.
6. Preliminary task: (Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.)
7. Genre research for your own planned/ideal genre for your film opening. This should be more than a PDF. A short PPT turned into a video would be fine. A Pretzi or a slideshow would also be suitable.
8. Example clips of your chosen analysis with commentary of how these clips are of the selected genre. Focus should be on mise-en-scene and potentially editing and sound.
9. NEW: Watch three openings to three different films from your chosen genre. Use the form attached to the post below to add information about how that genre is created. 
10. A 6 frame storyboard that shows the opening to the genre you've been researching.

PLANNING

1. Storyboard for your own idea. 
2. Script.
3. Location scouting: photos of possible/potential locations with brief caption as to why suitable  for each location. (For higher marks, side-by-side comparison with screen shots from comparable film.) For HIGHER marks, try using ThingLink to annotate the photos. 
4. Shooting plan/s including equipment requests, health and safety documents and disclaimers/waivers from other involved. 
5. A moodboard of clothes for costumes.
6. A 'list' (ideally something more creative) of props. 

For task 9 (or, if it doesn't load, visit here: http://www.docdroid.net/VrbIwMx/y12-opening-film-analysis.pdf.html

Research tasks needed as a MINIMUM

As the title suggests, these tasks listed below are the absolute MINIMUM needed in order to show that you've researched into the topic, task, audience and similar products. They don't necessarily need to be in this order, but PLEASE make sure that each task is labelled as Research so that it's easy to find them. 

Of course, none of these tasks should be done as 'just the minimum', add plenty of detail and any other research that you'd like in you work, again, just make sure that these are labelled as 'Research'. This list below also shouldn't be seen as a way to NOT do something else that has already been suggested. For example, the ancillary tasks of designing a magazine advert and box art need their own research conducted and should be done AS WELL AS the tasks below. 

Planning tasks

1. Video games you like with basic explanations.
   
2. Advertising for 1game.Should be a range of examples, ideally across
   differing media.
   
3. Game cover analysis for 3 different covers/games,with clear
   reference to the target audience
   
4. Research into1genre,ideally as a Prezi. This ideally should be about the genre you're looking to make a game for, but at the very least, should be for a genre you like. This task should cover lots of different aspects such as game mechanics, key games, important characters, etc.
   
5. Range of screen shots from 1 genre, not the genre from task 4.Each screenshot should be in game and needs to be presented as a 3 by 3 square with a basic written commentary to explain what games and what mechanics we can see are.
   
6. iMovie project of your ideas in total.
   
7. Product proposal sheet.
   
8. Story/treatment.
   
9. Character concept art.
10. Weapon concept art
11. Level concept art
12. Actual level design on squared paper
13. Actual character models from game-with commentary explaining
14. Differences and reasons for these from initial ideas.
15. Actual weapon models from game with commentary explaining
16. Differences and reasons for these from initial ideas.
17. Planned script of spoken parts. If necessary, should be labelled on
18. Level design to reflect when they would be spoken. Potentially include narration for a cut scene before the game to set the scene. 

Evaluation help for A2 Media

Question 1: This part of the evaluation asks you to explain what examples of 'real' products that you have looked at have influenced your final designs. This needs to be done to explain what you wanted to create for your own videogame, print advert and front cover design. For each, you will need to include a range of examples, either as screen shots or in the case of the game, or perhaps as an embedded YouTube version of the game, done as a play-through style video? For each example you need to explain the specific, technical things that you've done, as well as explaining what influences you had or where your ideas came from. For each section, once you have explained what you were influenced by you will then explain how these ideas fit in with your own ideas and final products.

For your game, using the 9 shot grid as key moments from your game is an excellent idea that allows you to communicate about a range of ideas and production techniques. This is an example of what this could look like from a music video:

Again, you need to offer a quick explanation as to what each square shows an how/why you created them.


 Some good examples of question 1 can be seen here:
http://chloestevenson.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/a2-g324-evaluation-of-music-video/ and http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nine-key-frames.html http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/evaluation-task-one-part-two.html

I particularly like this evaluation question 1, as it takes examples from existing products (again, from music videos) and then compares them to the actual product that the candidate has made herself. This is a really nice and immediate way of showing how your product meets things that already exist.

 This will be a long blog post with much detail in it. Use the examples above as a guide if unsure.



Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
This question asks you to think about what the point of your work is and how well you managed to achieve what you set out to achieve.
Is your game like any of the game that influenced yours? Does your game include any features or techniques that you wanted to use, such as ones that you identified in your research? Does your game match the target audience in the way that you wanted to?
Don't forget about the technical side of things-did your use of graphics, sound, props or planning of the level help to create an exciting game that works, for example?

You also need to think about how your other products combine and work with your game to promote the game as something that you want people to buy. How well have you managed to make your magazine advert look like it's part of the same campaign as your box art for example? Have you used a feature or technique in one product that you've used in another that helps to make all of your products look 'similar', like they have an identity? What could you do better? How could you create a clear identity for your products by changing them? What sorts of things might you do differently when creating the 'whole package'?

Make sure that there are plenty of clear and obvious links and evaluations between products. Here are some good examples, but obviously bear in mind that these are from music video examples...

Though it doesn't go into a huge amount of detail.
A better version that uses more interesting technology would be a Prezi such as this:

Of which there is a link to here: http://prezi.com/sp-itp45hvrx/question-2-how-effective-is-the-combination-of-your-main-p/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Feedback is tricky, ideally you'd get a range of people to both play your game and to also look at your final products. Getting people to play isn't really an option, hence my feedback a while ago. I can't feedback to you on your final products on your blog, as it will then be clear that your feedback has only come from me. SO, this means that you WILL need to get feedback from people on your final two products.
The best way to do this is to get some people to look at your final products and then ask them to complete a questionnaire about it and their feelings of it. Survey Monkey is useful for this.
Then you will need to evaluate what you have learnt based on this feedback.

The kinds of questions you need to ask include the basics such as 'would you buy this game based on this advert/box art? What stands out? Who do you think the target audience is? How much would you pay for the game based on the advert/box art etc? Does it look professional? Etc. etc.


From this, you then need to consider things like: Was the feedback positive? Was it negative apart from one specific area? What was the audience's favourite aspect of your game (if you can remember?!)? What did they like specifically about your box art/advert?

What is crucial here is not to simply explain what your audience told you about your products, but more about what you learnt from this feedback and how this would change or affect your choices if you were to make these products again.

Use graphs and charts to explain your findings. Perhaps ask for feedback via twitter, instagram or on your blog. Use screenshots of their replies and include these in a blog post to show your feedback.
Some useful examples can be found below. Again, these are examples for a music video, but scored VEY highly and you should look to get ideas from these.

 

This example shows a wonderful range of techologies and varieties of responses: http://rominamusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/evaluation-question-three.html

A good website to use for gaining responses electronically is https://www.surveymonkey.com
but as you can seen in the link below, paper questionnaires are perfectly fine, though not effective in showing off your range of media skills.

A more interesting suggestion would be to create a director's commentary which includes clips from the game and vox-pop reactions (mini-interviews, 10 seconds or so) from the audience.


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

This final question asks you to consider what technology has allowed you to do in the making of the game AND the final product, as well as the research AND this evaluation.
The key thing with this question is NOT to simply list every form of technology you've used, instead to explain how and why you chose certain things and what you did when you used these. You should have plenty to talk about as you should have used a large varieties of products, apps, programs and websites, so go through and highlight the key differences and how each one suits the task.

This question should be by far the easiest for you to evaluate, remembering that this IS an evaluation meaning that you need to draw conclusions and suggestions for improvement if you were to do this again and crucially, showing what you learned.

Have look here http://rominamusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/ for an excellent blog (it scored an A* if I recall) and the evaluation is well worth looking at and reading as it shows a really good insight, great level of detail and crucially, constantly compares her work with products that already exist, explaining how she created things and why/how she changed them and developed them throughout.

Finally, this how-to guide from another teacher goes into a LOT of detail for students working on a music video https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/44103017?access_key=key-532n4jjlv6aoya1dtg7 . It's really useful though, as it shows the kind of detail and level of work you need to put into to get a good grade. It shows how you can demonstrate how you developed/worked your game to  a point that you were happy with and give examples that show the different technologies you used.


If you've got any questions, issues, problems or general worries, drop me a mail, tweet me or leave a comment on here. I'll try and get back to you asap in all instances, usually and hopefully within 48 hours.

Evaluation questions

Just leaving this here for now, I'll add more details, including examples, later:

G324 is marked and internally standardised by the centre and marks are submitted to OCR by a specified date, a sample is then selected for external moderation.

The unit is marked out of a total of 100 marks: 20 marks for the planning and research and its presentation; 60 marks for the construction; 20 marks for the evaluation. In the evaluation the following four questions must be addressed:
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Ancillary task 2-Magazine advert

Ancillary task 2:
• a magazine advertisement for the game;

NOTE: This is one of those tasks that was created a while ago and in the modern media environment, doesn't work quite as well. This is essentially because print advertising doesn't exist in 2015 the way that it used to and finding examples can be tricky. As an example, I looked through the last physical copy of Edge magazine that I bought and there are precisely ZERO adverts for games. Part of that may be that Edge is as much for game developers as it is players, but I was surprised to find that in August 2014 there were no adverts for games in there.

Regardless, you should still approach this task in the same way as task 1.
Do some research into magazine adverts, highlight the similarities and then design something that looks similar.

Again, in order to get the best results, I'd include a range of different magazine adverts, ideally from the same genre as your game (though this could be difficult) and even better if you include a range of adverts from across the years. This is useful as it allows you to show some good research (this will get you marks) allow you to analyse a range of examples (which will get you marks) and then when you design your own show that you have avoided making something that looks old or out of date, and instead modern and relevant.

Below is a range of examples, and while I won't post a significant analysis/commentary for all of them, you can see how older examples relied on headlines, puns and long detailed text about the game, whereas as time has gone by layouts are much more simple, much less text, less puns and 'gimmicks' and more reliance on things from the game itself. To highlight this, I've posted the images below in order from oldest to most recent (more or less):

Ancillary task 1

Ancillary task 1:
• the cover for the game’s package; 

Steps:

• Identify the common features of cover art for that platform and genre. 
• Create a drawn/rough version of your cover art. 
• Produce a digital version of your final design and host on your blog in a separate post. 

Make sure that you use a range of websites/apps/methods to do this work. 

Best way to approach this is is to find some example covers. As a minimum, find a range of covers that exist for the system you identified that allows you to pick out key features. This will then allow you to pick these out and use them for your own cover. For example...

Which eventually leads you to be able to produce something like this:

Notice how they use the actual logos, copyright notices (ironically), game info boxes and other logos. This allows you to not only develop your own idea but show that you can match the specific requirements of the platform, genre and audience you identified earlier. 

A better way of approaching this would be to not just find current examples, but images of cover art from the same genre of your game to find common features. 

Even better would be to find examples of old cover art examples for the genre and then show how these have developed. This let's you show how you have taken these influences and then followed the style of modern examples. 

Some good resources for finding examples:

http://www.thecoverproject.net/

http://vgboxart.com/

Useful resources for creating cover:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/27732688/

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1288485

http://wegraphics.net/blog/tutorials/creating-dynamic-video-game-cover-art-in-adobe-photoshop/

Drop me a comment/tweet if you need help/assistance for this.