Sir, my school website, I did with Tom Alexander and has already been taking off his user.

Last work to finish off

This blog is about to be presented to the exam board as your final work - and it is worth 40% of your mark . . .

1. Preparation

2. Research

3. Planning

4. Survey

5. Survey results

6. Annotation of your photographs

7. The seven point evaluation

You just have enough time to get this in.

Marking

The blog is really not complete and this will cost a lot of marks.

The domain file isn’t handed in, but the website works reasonably. It is missing some functionality, and there is no video at all, or audio.

This is generally level 1 to 2.

Your attendance has made this very difficult for you, and a lot of simple tasks just haven't been done - the lack of video and audio has cost many marks.

Work to do

Pierse

Please go through the list in the next post and make sure that your blog contains the seven points, evidence or your planning, and research.

We are very concerned that at this late point you haven't got the right work in place, and there is no time left. It takes a few hours of concentration and thinking to get this right - and no effort at all to get it wrong, so come on. Do it, OK?

Check list

Please check this entire list: time has run out!

Look for detail in your work, make sure that you follow every instruction on this page.

WEBSITE PLANNING: AS MEDIA STUDIES

MAIN WEBSITE: website brief

For your main website you must create an individual brief, and following that you must decide, on the basis of sharing your ideas, who you will work with.

Be clear about group work: if you don’t work as a team, your work will suffer

If one of you doesn’t work with the others, that person will be marked down

If one of you doesn’t work with the others, don’t feel you need to support them

You have to be a bit tough about this

1. Write a proposal.
2. What charity or campaign have you chosen?
3. Why have you chosen it?
4. Screen print six to eight similar sites and annotate them
5. Assess your potential audience
6. How will your website appeal to the audience?
1. what are your assumptions about your audience? What will make them respond?
2. Distribution - how will this website be brought to the attention of your audience?
3. what other sites are similar? How do they work?

1. Write a brief summary of what your site will do - write about:

1. appearance
2. functionality

Your brief is a kind of argument. You need to state what your idea is, and how you intend to implement it. At the end of your work on the website, your brief must be used to compare with your final product. This could be different because of the way your research and construction have developed. Not everything can be done along the lines of what you imagine, but your job is try and do that.

Level 4 16–20 marks

a) There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.

b) There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.

c) There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.

d) There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning

e) Time management is excellent.

Evidence to satisfy these criteria would be:

a) Research into a variety of websites for charity campaigns. You should have print screens with annotations using subject terminology, you should write up a short report based on your analysis and findings. What are the conventions? Do these sites follow or challenge conventions? Ensure you have samples of both. Minimum 6 websites. Home page + one other.

b) Are these websites part of a larger campaign for the charity? What other media have they used? Where have they advertised? Did they use an advertising company? Who built their website? Who is hosting their website? How could you have your website domain name registered and hosted? Where would the money come from to pay for your time and the hosting of this website?

c) Who are you hoping to target? Describe your target audience using media terminology. Who was the target audience for the sites you researched? How do you know? Use the answers to these questions to introduce your target audience research. Survey for internet usage. Feedback from audience on first draft.

d) Use a diary format to evidence your planning – use the iCal on your Mac and print screen for scan your diary to put on Blogspot. Put in as much information as possible to show names, times, locations, props, costumes etc.

e) Also use evidence of skills development here. Any evidence of skills development i.e. screen grabs of work in progress, before and after, Help topics and text book help references should be evidenced here.

f) Show sketches of photos in your planning. These should be annotated to give detail on shot type, lighting, expression etc. Have storyboards for your videos and create an animate with music. Scripts/Interview questions where relevant.

g) Your NEW AS blogspot should really sell your work and ideas. Ensure it has the most effective layout with careful consideration of colour design. Keep your blog updated and keep drafts of work (with comments) to show progress and development of ideas.

h) Get all your work in on time and at the required standard. Your teacher will keep a record of this and you will receive marks accordingly. Your posts are dated so if they are late it’s easy for the teacher and moderator to track.

Task number	Possible evidence ticklist	Date to be completed	Have you posted it?
1	Print screens of at least 6 websites, annotated using media terminology	Wednesday, 25 November 2009
2	Report on website research findings. Which follow conventions, and which challenge conventions? What can you learn from this?	Thursday, 26 November 2009
3	Details on full campaigns and advertising company. Institutional Research.	Friday, 27 November 2009
4	Details on web hosting and domain name registration.	Monday, 30 November 2009
5	Target audience report. Using media terminology.	Tuesday, 1 December 2009
6	Diary or similar record of planning and log of activities	Wednesday, 2 December 2009
7	Internet usage survey sample & analysis	Thursday, 3 December 2009
8	Target audience feedback & changes you will make	Friday, 4 December 2009
9	Skills development evidence- research & screen grabs	Tuesday, 8 December 2009
10	Photography planning sheets	Wednesday, 9 December 2009
11	Storyboards/Scripts/Sound research & planning	Thursday, 10 December 2009
12	Blog posts made by set deadlines

Analysing other websites, and your own:

placement and position:

Where is the font/photo/graphic placed?

What effect does this have on the reader - ie is it made more or less important because of the objects position? If it is an important object, is its position correct, or could it be corrected by moving it?

colour:

There is a basic rule about colour (which you can break, but you need to see that the rule works well) that there should be three dominant colours only on a page.

How do the colours work against each other? Do they provide a contrast against photos/graphics/font colours? Do they make it difficult to read and understand, or do they enable? Are they right? Do objects and images conform to the colour scheme?

fonts:

Are the fonts easy to read? Most websites use a size 12 for the body text. But more websites are increasing the size to 14 for body text (this is because of better internet speeds, larger memory, CSS and Web2).

What kind of font is it? Originally the web would only accept Times Roman, Times, Verdana, Arial and Helvetica fonts. Now you can load any font you like (this is because the technology has moved on).

Thin, handwriting styles are sometimes difficult. Solid fonts like Arial or Impact are easy to read. Fonts like Comic Sans are just horrible and shouldn’t ever be used.

message:

Is the message immediately clear when you open the page? What is the site wants you to do - ie what should the audience response be? Does the page deal with this well, or not?

rollovers:

Are rollovers clear? Can you immediately see where they should be and that they are useable? If they aren’t obvious, is there a reason for this (such as forcing you to explore a home page in order to stimulate your interest - see ‘Frank’, ‘Aardman’, ‘BBH.com’).

The same applies to drop-downs.

layout conventions:

How conventional is this layout?

The most frequent convention is a layout of a header bar and three columns. The left hand column is usually ‘indexed’ to the site and takes you to different places in the site. The right hand column is usually for links to other sites. The centre column is usually to sell some of the ideas of the site, to welcome you and make you aware of what is going on.

The header sometimes does some of these things as well, and can also carry the dropdowns that work instead of the left hand column.

There are variations, always: often there are only two columns. Sometimes there is a sub header (below the top head bar) and sometimes a footer bar.

Conventional layouts are in square blocks and use headers.

Uncoventional layouts use a far more graphic layout, and the access to different parts of the site is more concealed (look at ‘Frank’, ‘Aardman’, ‘BBH.com’ again.

White, or pastel colours are the most commonly used conventional backgrounds. Most shopping and information sites are like this.

Graphics, photos and other kinds of object are used where sites are asking audiences to be more interactive. Music sites can be very usual, and film companies, advertising agencies and the creative world often use unconventional home pages.

video and audio:

Where video is embedded, how does it operate? Does it start automatically, does it have controls, and what player does it use (Quicktime, Flash or other?).

Where audio is embedded, how does it operate? Is it automatic, controllable, and what player does it use? To find out what player is being used, either hover over the image, or right click and you should get the information.

photos::

Why are the photos chosen? How glamourised is the photo - ie has it been processed a lot, tidied up, cropped and framed and generally given a boost to create the most effect? How ‘straight’ is the photo? Has it been left alone for you (the audience) to make your own decisions about it?

Just remember that photos are always selective, that a photographer has to make a decision about where to point the camera, and what to keep in the frame. Try to make a decision about whether the picture carries a really good message - regardless of whether it has been highly processed or just left alone.

contact:

The web site must have a human touch, and conventionally this is in the form of contact forms, email buttons, phone numbers etc.

interactivity:

When the audience uses the site, does it create pleasure? This means is it rewarding, fun, easy to use, logical, sensible. Do the links take the viewer to other closely related sites? Do the rollovers make sense? Is it easy to return to a previous page? Do survey, contact and other kinds of forms work properly?

In answering these questions, you are gathering evidence. The evidence is the core of any argument that you might be exploring about websites, and this is evidence that you are going to gather for your own sites.

These are the seven questions that the examination board want you to have answered, as clearly and fully as possible. They are compulsory questions.

Seven questions

1	In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2	How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3	What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4	Who would be the audience for your media product?
5	How did you attract/address your audience?
6	What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7	Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?