CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts

The Student’s Guide to

A2 Moving Image
Arts Coursework

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CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts

The Student’s Guide to A2 Moving Image Arts Coursework

At A2 Level you are expected to be as creative as possible with the equipment and resources you
have available to you. Your film should take onboard the in-depth research you will carry out
for your illustrated essay and you should add your own ideas to the mix to come up with an
original piece of moving image art. At AS you were tested on your understanding of film
language, now you are expected to use these elements to manipulate an audience. The quality of
your filmmaking should be of a high standard and all areas of your production should be fully
considered.

This guide will lead you through the essential elements of your coursework for A2 Moving
Image Arts. The coursework unit (Unit 1) is worth 70% of your total mark, so it is important
that you understand what you are being asked to do.

The coursework unit is called Creative Production: Advanced Portfolio and it is made up of
several separate elements. Although these can be seen as separate tasks, there should be a creative
thread or idea running through them and joining each element to the next. At the end of the
unit all of the separate pieces should form one cohesive project. These are the various tasks and
should be carried out in this order.

An Illustrated Essay
Written and Illustrated Pre-Production Materials
Two Production Exercises
A Finished Film
An Evaluation

The following pages outline each of the tasks and give you some pointers to get you started.

What is the Illustrated Essay?

The Illustrated Essay is where you have the opportunity to study in depth the area of
filmmaking that interests you most. This might be the work of a particular director,
cinematographer, production designer or indeed any other major role in filmmaking or a craft
area, which might be camera work, editing, set design, costume design, sound or music. The list
is endless.

Once you have chosen who or what you are going to study find out as much as you can about
that person or craft area. View their work, read books, search the Internet and look for
connections between their work and other Art areas such as painting, sculpture, architecture and
photography.

After compiling this research analyse the work. Use these questions as a starting point:

• What influenced these filmmakers?

• What filmmaking techniques are being used and why?
• What visual style does the work have (quality of light, colour, texture, composition,
movement)?

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CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts

• How is emotion created in the work (fear, joy, sympathy, loathing, apprehension)?

It is now time to construct your illustrated essay. You may find it helpful to divide it into these
sections:

• Introduction (what or who are you going to study, give some background information)
• Influences (who or what has influenced this work)
• Analysis (conduct an analysis of carefully selected sequences of the work)
• My Thoughts (what you think about the work)
• What am I going to do for my film?

The purpose of this essay is to find an area of Moving Image Arts that interests you and to
inform your filmmaking. From the research you have conducted you must choose a theme,
technique or visual style to base your own work on. At A2 there must be a clear link between
your essay, production exercises and the final film.

There are three ways you can present your essay:

• A written illustrated essay (1500 – 2000 words).

• A PowerPoint presentation of 10-15 minutes in length to include sound commentary.
• A short documentary (digital video presentation) 10-15 minutes in length including a short
explanatory statement.

Choose the one that is most appropriate for you and agree with your teacher a series of
submission dates and review sessions.

What are the Written and Illustrated Pre-Production Materials?

The process of developing your pre-production materials is exactly the same as it was at AS
Level. You can take either the Traditional Film Production approach or an Art and Design
approach, however your planning at A2 must be more rigorous and in greater depth.

Your production at A2 must be based on the research your conducted for your illustrated essay,
so take your chosen area or person and from this develop ideas for your short film. At A2,
particular attention should be paid to:

• The Production Design/Art Direction

• Use of the Camera (position, framing, movement)
• Lighting/Cinematography
• Music and Sound
• Editing

Note: Remember you are trying to be as creative as possible and high production values are your
key to a mark in the upper levels. You should document how you have experimented
with/utilised the influences from your chosen area or person. Your production exercises should
be a part of this process helping you decide on the best way forward or which style or technique
to use in your final film.

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CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts

Whichever way you choose to produce your pre-production materials you must include these
basic elements somewhere in your planning:

• Production Notes
• A Screenplay
• Storyboards
• Evidence of Management, Organisation and Planning of Time and Resources.

All of your pre-production materials should be combined to form one portfolio of work. This
should be either a sketchbook or an A4 soft back folder. Additional items such as production
diaries may also be submitted.

What are the Production Exercises?

The production exercises should not be seen as a discreet element of coursework. They are part
of your pre-production planning. At A2 Level you should try to be as creative as possible with
your exercises, trying to find an original or interesting way to tell your short story. You should
also showcase your skills as a filmmaker, making sure that all of your work (especially your final
film) has high production values.

Remember that all of your work this year should stem from the person or area that you studied
in your essay. Therefore your exercises and final film should be directly linked to your chosen
area of study. The exercises do not have to have their own narrative or be complete pieces of
film. They can be made up of several shorter sequences.

You must produce two one-minute exercises and it is recommended that you cover both the
visual style of your film and the filmmaking techniques you will use. The best exercises will
show an “outstanding ability to develop ideas which show genuine originality and creativity
when investigating and experimenting”.

The production exercises should not be segments from your finished film. They should be
completed quite early in the pre-production process and there should be a direct link to the final
film through the visual style, techniques or themes used.

The Finished Film

The finished film is the most important piece of work in A2 Moving Image Arts. It is the
culmination of many weeks of planning, shooting, and editing.

To do well at A2 in this subject it is essential that you produce a well-crafted film with high
production values. The quality of your short film is much more important than its length. The
best films will have fully considered camera positioning and movement, lighting, sound and
editing.

A good film will be well shot (shot size, camera angles and camera movement will be of a high
standard). The lighting for each individual shot will have been considered and the sound will
have multiple layers (the diagetic sounds of the world the film is set in, a sound effects or Foley

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CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts

track and a music track or score). It is recommended that you do not use music (or other
elements) in your film that you do not have copyright for.

Tip: A much better approach to finding music for your film is to use applications like
Soundtrack (which comes with Final Cut) to create your own musical score. Or, why not try
recording a range of sounds and use an application like Audacity to edit them together to create a
unique sound environment for your film. At AS all films had to be based on a narrative
structure, the same is true for A2 however films can be much more experimental with alternative
or non-linear film approaches.
The duration of your final film should be between 5 and 7 minutes. It will show that you have
experimented in-depth with the visual style, filmmaking technique or theme used in your film.
The production values will be high and it should be edited in a style to complement the theme,
tone or pace of the production.

What should I say in my Evaluation?

The evaluation is where you analyse how effective your film has been. These are some questions
that you can ask yourself to help you construct your evaluation:

• Has my film worked technically?

• Was my creative vision realised?
• Did the audience react the way I wanted them to?
• How have I overcome problems encountered in my production?
• What did I learn from the process of making a short film?

Good evaluations will compare the outcomes of your production with what you set out to do in
your statement of intentions. They will be personal reflections of your experiences and will
focus on how challenges were faced and problems were overcome.

Tip: Don’t make excuses! Concentrate on how problems were overcome rather than stating
why you could not do something.

A useful source of information for your evaluation will be your production diary (for those who
chose to keep one). It will remind you of the things that went wrong and how you dealt with
them, and also of the times you changed a shot on location to make use of something unexpected
(a sunset, rain on a window, strange reflection).

A basic structure for your evaluation might be:

• What did you do?

• How did you do it?
• Why did you make these choices?
• Was your film a success?

Your evaluation should be no less than 800 words and no more than 1200 words. You may
choose to include stills from your film to illustrate a point you are making. It may also be useful
to get several people who have not seen your film to watch it and then question them about:

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CCEA Exemplar Scheme of Work: GCE Moving Image Arts

• How it made them feel?

• Did they understand it?
• Which character did they relate most to?

Your finished evaluation should be seen as the last piece of your production work and should be
put at the end of your portfolio.

Submitting your coursework

Throughout the year you should agree a series of submission dates and review sessions with your
teacher, so that you know how you are performing in regard to the assessment criteria. When
you have completed all elements of your coursework the written materials should be bound
together in an A4 soft backed document holder. Or, if you were working in a sketchbook then
you should submit this and your production diary for assessment. The production exercise and
the final film should be exported from your editing software as either a fill resolution .DV,
.MOV or a .AVI file and then burned to DVD (note: this is not a DVD video disk). All items of
coursework should be clearly labelled with your candidate number, centre number and the title
of the piece of work. Your teacher will give you the submission date for your centre and you
will receive your results with the rest of your subjects in August.

If you need to resit a module remember that there are no January resits in Moving Image Arts so
you will have to wait until the following year to resubmit your work.