Research & Planning - Examiners Report January 2013

• Some real excellence and technical flair at the top end of the moving image work but, interestingly, work from a wider range of candidates seem to have benefited from moving away from low end video cameras towards DSLRs. DSLR cameras appears to have increased the quality of candidates' production work.

• Moving image work made very good use of sound, many creating their own diegetic and non-diegetic soundtracks, doing foley work etc.

• Original images were clearly used.

• There were several centres in which the ancillary tasks appeared to have been given insufficient attention in terms of the preparation of candidates' skills, confidence with relevant software as well as research and planning.
• Font choice seemed to be weak, with many candidates seemingly taking little time to consider suitable fonts for the genre.

• Candidates generally needed to take more test photographs and consider framing, lighting and mise en scene so that they had better images to work with.

•  Some excellent examples of detailed textual analysis research for all three texts, and audience research which informed the planning. Research into existing media texts was more comprehensive in this series than in the past.

•  Evaluations were generally relevant and were usually organised as discrete responses to each of the set questions.

•  Work was generally submitted promptly by centres and with the correct paperwork.

• The majority of centres had taken note of previous moderation reports and created blog hubs for the submission of candidates’ work, which is excellent practice.