MEST 2 Blogs

For all Year 12 students...

In your production groups, set up a new blog that will record your progress in MEST 2 (Creating Media).

We expect this to help you because...

• It will be a place where your group can suggest ideas, make decisions and draw up action plans.
• As a result you will be clearer with each other about what needs to be done - how, when and by whom.
• You will receive comments, feedback and peer assessment about your ongoing work from other groups, as well as reflecting on it yourselves - writing weekly progress reports, carrying out self-assessment by identifying www/ebi and next steps.
• Over time it will serve as on online record of your achievements (the group's and yours, as an individual) that you can use as evidence of the pre-production work - research and planning - needed for submission to the examiner.
• This will be monitored by your teachers and will ensure you are rewarded fairly when it comes to assessment.
• It will be helpful to refer back to when writing your formal 1500 word evaluation (for the examiner).

Once the blog is set up you each have the following tasks to complete and submit as separate posts on your blog before Tuesday 4th January 2011...

• A short outline of your project so far (obviously this may change but use info from the film pitch - above - you're also doing for homework).

• Information about the research that you have done so far and the ideas it has given you.

Remember - every individual in the group must make their own separate posts. Also, make sure you include your name at the end of each one so you can be identified. And, crucially, make sure that one person in the group posts up the blog web address, project working title and group members at the end of this message so that a quick link to it can be added on this page.

You will be required individually to add to this on a weekly basis, to cover the following...

• outlining the work planned and equipment to be used;
• reporting on what was achieved;
• reflecting on the outcome and whether it was different from what was planned and why.

It will also be expected for there to be photos and stills from your shoot and production as it starts to take shape...storyboards, still frames from the footage you've shot, print production drafts, etc.. The whole thing should eventually look like a big online scrapbook of your project that will culminate in the finished piece - uploaded and streamed into people's homes via the internet. Of course there will be credits, commendations and perhaps even prizes for the most committed and interesting bloggers.

Also, for homework, check out the MEST2 Blogs from last year (MEST2 CW Blogs 09-10) and the year before (12C1 Groups 08-09) that you can get to via the links on the sidebar to the left (scroll down a bit). In particular, look at the outstanding examples from last year: The Night Has A Thousand Lies, Screwed and One Step 2 Far; and from the year before: the group that produced the horror trailer, Obsession - all of these, understandably, got a grade A.

It's also worth looking at some Med 3 blogs from earlier years (when the specification was a bit different but where they still completed a video production). Particular good ones include Lost is a Reflection, Teenage Daze, Guilt, A Life of Grime, and Three Shades of Red. Get going!!