Evaluation for Foundation Portfolio

Time to start on your evaluations of your magazines.

The OCR specification reminds you that you need to approach this task in a creative way and produce an interesting mulit-modal evaluation. It encourages you to use images, audio/music, video and links to other sites in your evaluation. Overall, your evaluation should be: well -organised under headings (the seven questions); full of colour and creativity; rich in content, so son't just write a paragraph for every question; and, it should round up all your learning from your initial research and your preliniary task, as well as discussing your finished product.

From the spec: "In all cases, candidates should be encouraged to see the evaluation as a creative task and the potential of the format chosen should be exploited through the use of images, audio, video and links to online resources. Marks should be supported by teacher comments and may be supported by other forms such as audio or video presentations. "

In the evaluation the following seven questions must be addressed:

·         In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

·         How does your media product represent particular social groups?

·         What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

·         Who would be the audience for your media product?

·         How did you attract/address your audience?

·         What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

·         Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I really want to see you think outside the box.

Consider setting up a facebook page for your magazine and inviting people who fit your audience profile to like it and comment on your finished product. That way you can link to the actual page itself, as well as quoting the comments/reactions of your target audience in your blog.

Why not interview a "typical" reader of your magazine and ask them what features really appeal to them and what it is about your front page that would make them want to pick it up off the shelf and flip through it. Or you could print your finished product, take it around to several members of the target audience and film their initial reactions. You could edit it together, post it onto youtube or vimeo and embed the video into your blog post under the right heading.

Try to do a screen cast of some of the techniques you used on picnik or fireworks, filming some of your edits and commentating your creative and technical process.

Compare your final product to simialr real-world media products and annotate them, highlighting features that are similar/different. This will allow you to SHOW where you used/adapted/challenged conventions and representations. For example, you could pate the cover of King magazine alongside your own and circle where you conformed to the convention of the head over the masthead, or a provocatively dressed female cover star. Perhaps you could circle cleavage/headphones/puffs/fonts etc to show where you used or adpated specific conventions and ad a commentary at the bottom of the post.

Consider linking or embedding some of the music from the genre that your magazine covers. Take some screen shots to support how you used/adapted/challenged conventions of mise-en-scene in your own photography.

Show a timeline of your photography, commenting on your how your style/ideas/skill changed as you experimented.

Video yourself talking about representation and add this to your post about representation. Include images that show common constructions of gender/age/ethnicity in similar products.

Use some of your screenshots from your production to show how you edited your work and which tools you used.

Research a range of magazine publishers to figure out which one is best positioned to distribute your product. Talk about their current titles. Is your product filling a gap in their list or is it in direct comeptition with other titles they publish? Is it similar to another title, but aimed more at audiences of the opposite gender?

The more interactive, creative and media-rich your evaluation, the better it will be.

Good luck!