A2 Examiner's Report

GCE EXAMINERS' REPORTS

FILM STUDIES AS/Advanced SUMMER 2013

Grade boundary information for this subject is available on the WJEC public website at: https://www.wjecservices.co.uk/MarkToUMS/default.aspx?l=en Online results analysis WJEC provides information to examination centres via the WJEC secure website. This is restricted to centre staff only. Access is granted to centre staff by the Examinations Officer at the centre.

Annual Statistical Report The annual Statistical Report (issued in the second half of the Autumn Term) gives overall outcomes of all examinations administered by WJEC. This will be available at: http://www.wjec.co.uk/index.php?nav=51

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FM1

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FM2

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FM3

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FM4

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FILM STUDIES General Certificate of Education Summer 2013 Advanced

Principal Moderator (FM3): Principal Examiner (FM4): Chief Examiner:

Freddie Gaffney Patrick Phillips Patrick Phillips

FM3: Film Research and Creative Projects (Freddie Gaffney, Principal Moderator, FM3) General Points The majority of centres have used the research element of FM3 to develop their candidates’ research abilities and accordingly have produced engaged, vibrant and exciting academic work. Candidates produce the best work when their research topic stems from and reflects their interests and enthusiasms and centres that spend time at the start of the project working with their candidates on framing the research and identifying possible directions tend to produce best results.

The full range of Film Studies ‘frameworks’ have again been engaged with, though again auteur, genre, and star still dominate, the latter unfortunately often becoming little more than biographies of the chosen star. Candidates do therefore need support in recognising that their chosen topic (‘area of investigation’) should be studied within one of the identified Film Studies framework. Candidates therefore need to be given support about how their area of investigation relates to star and/or performance studies. It was mentioned in last year’s report but giving choice to candidates over the film studies ‘framework’ they explore as well as their topic produces the best work. Centres are strongly encouraged not to give their candidates uniform frameworks and topics.

The Creative Project was approached (as always) with enthusiasm and a clear sense of applied learning from elsewhere in the specification. There was strong work across all the components, with some displaying high levels of skill and maturity. Filmmaking and Scriptwriting were again the dominant options, though the Documentary Step Outline showed a marked increase in take-up.

Whilst the mark scheme was largely applied consistently, accurately and transparently across most centres, there is still a tendency not to use the full range of marks available, particularly in rewarding both the highest quality of work and the weakest work. It should again be noted that centres should avoid sending drafts of work, the catalogue items themselves, or multiple copies of films for moderation.

The Small Scale Research Project This year, a fantastic range of enquiry was undertaken by candidates, with a further increase in subjects around issues in European and World Cinema. Hollywood film and British film tended again to dominate, though this year saw an increase in film periods (beyond the contemporary) being explored. It is testament to the tenacity of candidates that there were very few pedestrian ideas offered, with some candidates stretching their research subjects into some extremely advanced areas and approaches.

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Candidates engaged more successfully with primary research this year, often through ‘learning conversations’, with some candidates actively seeking out industry figures relating to their subject so that they can obtain first-hand information that is of benefit to their study.

This is definitely best practice.

Skills in secondary research are well-evidenced and certainly within the capabilities of most candidates. In the Annotated Catalogue, it should be noted that multiple entries from collation sites (such as IMDb and Wikipedia) should be viewed as one source with multiple pages, and should be referenced as such. Including YouTube clips from the chosen focus films should not be included in the Annotated Catalogue as they do not represent additional material or separate items. Other YouTube clips (directors speaking, clips from documentaries, etc.) are to be encouraged.

The Annotated Catalogue was generally completed effectively this year and covered a range of varied sources, though at the weaker end of the range the annotations could be more precise in indicating how the item contributed to the development of the project. Similarly, many catalogues did not achieve the marks they were capable of achieving due to an absence of, or a perfunctory set, of de-selected items. Centres are also advised to introduce their candidates to appropriate academic referencing techniques – whilst there is no official or preferred form, Harvard Referencing or something similar will be of benefit to candidates’ work. Each item in the Annotated Catalogue can therefore be appropriately referenced.

The Presentation Script generally worked well with many centres following WJEC guidance and exemplar material to demonstrate an appropriate form of script to candidates. It is recommended that an essay format is not used for the presentation script. The best candidates were able to use the script to reflect a real or imagined presentation that utilises a range of presentation tools and approaches. Most candidates were able to express their research subject within one of the Film Studies ‘frameworks’ and were able to support this with direct reference to the Annotated Catalogue items. Candidates should be reminded to make direct reference to the catalogue items in their presentation – the easiest way to do this is by referencing the relevant catalogue item number. Again it is worth noting that the Film Studies ‘framework’ for the investigation (Auteur, gender issues, institution etc) is sometimes overlooked in weaker, more descriptive work. Candidates must ensure that the chosen framework is at the forefront of the presentation, framing the investigation and the findings.

Creative Project The Creative Project work continues to go from strength to strength across all options and most importantly demonstrates that the work is being informed by study. Some centres appear to provide little or no guidance for the creative project and this sometimes leads candidates to produce less well-developed and informed work.

It is sometimes difficult to see what candidates were trying to achieve. The ‘Aims and Context’ should therefore be completed on the FM3a coversheet and centres should ensure that candidates are fully aware of the aims and context of their work (see WJEC website for Guidance) in order to provide an accurate context for assessment and external moderation.

In the best centres, the screenwriting option is being informed by appropriate study of screenwriting texts and film analysis texts, leading to some thoughtful, sophisticated pieces that play with narrative and with form. Some centres appear to allow candidates to produce dialogue-heavy work or work that uses a ‘shooting script’ (where shots are described rather than alluded to) rather than a screenplay form. Candidates must research and work to a ‘master-scene script’ form.

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The Documentary Step-Outline option continued to attract more candidates with some very strong work being developed from the research projects. The best candidates used extensive research into documentary form to structure their work, allowing the structured application of their knowledge and understanding to produce some valuable documentaries.

The Film Production option again produced some imaginative work, some of which reflected the leading edge of the form. There were candidates engaging with diverse technologies and film concepts in creating outstanding cinematic work. At the other end of the scale, there is still much derivative work being produced (such as narratives based on ‘walking in the woods and being chased’, zombie/slasher horrors). Centres are encouraged to be more active in helping candidates develop ideas and be able to demonstrate as creative an approach to filming as possible. It should be noted that music videos (based on an artist’s performance) or extracts from television shows are not appropriate forms for this Film Studies task. Centres should offer strong advice on appropriate filmic forms. An increasing number of centres provided films on discs that could not be opened or that had not been finalised when burned. Centres must supply films on DVD that can be read on a standard DVD player and ensure that they are checked as viewable (preferably on a different DVD player from the one on which the disc was authored) before being dispatched.

Candidates have largely engaged very well with the Reflective Analysis and this is proving an extremely effective approach to candidates engaging closely with their own work.

Candidates have been able reflect dynamically on their own work and, in group work, on their own individual roles. It is important that centres highlight the difference between a more traditional evaluation and the Reflective Analysis and promote the latter as the correct approach. Please see the A2 Notes for Guidance (WJEC website).

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FM4: Varieties of Film Experience: Issues and Debates (Patrick Phillips, Chief Examiner & Principal Examiner, FM4) General Points FM4 continues to offer a rigorous academic test, one that is surely ‘facilitating’ in preparing candidates for the most demanding of universities. Overall, performance in Summer 2013 was on a par with Summer 2012. Most candidates are very well taught and well prepared for a range of testing questions across the paper’s three sections and respond with enthusiasm and engagement across the ability range.

The usual problems emerged, although not on a significant scale. Chief among these remains the choice of films made by some centres. Advice is available on WJEC’s website (eg., A2 Notes for Guidance). Sometimes the choice is simply inadmissible, more often it is inappropriate. The use of inadmissible films, like English Language films as the principal films for the World Cinema section, are rubric infringements and may be penalised.

Inappropriate films, like films made in Spain or the US by a Mexican director and claimed for Mexican national cinema, create unreasonable additional levels of difficulty for candidates.

Interpretation of questions is a skill in itself as is responding directly to the precise wording of a question set. Question 17, for example, asked for the application of ‘a’ critical approach whereas many candidates discussed several critical approaches, answering therefore in a more superficial way. Candidates do need to be trained to respond to the question set.

‘Cinematically’ appeared twice on the paper, once in relation to Documentary (question 12), once in relation to Vertigo (question 21), causing difficulties for some candidates. A recurring question formula this year was one which invited comparison between a particular film or film practice and ‘mainstream’/‘Hollywood’ – including question 5 (Urban Stories), question 7 (Empowering Women) and question 26 (Fight Club). Candidates were able to respond in each case but often they made overly crude distinctions.

The ability to refer in detail to specific moments in a film is generally good although similarly accurate reference to the spelling of film titles, the names of key personnel and the names of characters and places was often absent. This tended to impact negatively on the overall sense of authority the candidate should be bringing to their examination response.

Section A: World Cinema Topics Although there were some problems with inadmissible or inappropriate films, the vast majority of centres tended to reflect recommendations made in the A2 Notes for Guidance and elsewhere and enabled their candidates to produce extremely good work. There was excellent work generally on Mexican, Iranian and Japanese national cinemas and on the stylistic questions for the other three options of this section. Stronger candidates thrived on questions inviting debate, for example question 4 on the significance of individuals in the development of a film movement and question 7 on the difficulty of actually defining ‘female empowerment’. Some of the weakest answers were in response to the contextual questions, especially question 6 on the significance of ‘time and place’ in Urban Stories.

Candidates sometimes need to refer to more than their two principal films to answer broader-based questions about context. This is true of all four topics, but particularly Aspects of National Cinema. On the other hand, questions that focus on cinematic technique and stylistic elements, including reference to specific micro features, are often best answered by candidates restricting their response to their two principal films, which they can then refer to in the necessary detail. In preparing candidates, it is useful to train them to spot whether a question is textual or contextual and then to consider the different kinds of demand and response of each (notably, the number of films they need to refer to).

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Section B: Spectatorship Topics There continues to be an improvement in the level of focus on spectatorship in this section of the paper. We have for a very long time been urging centres to remember the primacy of spectatorship, no matter how compelling is the study of, say, documentary or early film as an end in itself. The topics, therefore, all provide a specific instance of spectatorship and should be taught with this priority clearly in mind.

There was very good work in response to all questions in this section, with a noticeable increase in the confidence of work on experimental and expanded film/video spectatorship.

Weaker answers in this section arose from candidates who deviated from the question asked – a trend most marked in Section B and in the Documentary topic in particular. An important part of all examination preparation must be to enable candidates to adapt their knowledge to the question set.

Some candidates produced some very thoughtful and considered responses to question 16, the ‘irresistible’ in film narrative and did demonstrate an ability to apply their knowledge to the question set.

Section C: Single Film: Close Critical Analysis Some of the most enthusiastic and committed work was to be found in this section. Fight Club, Vertigo and Talk to Her were once again the three most popular choices, while Les Enfants du Paradis and Solaris were the least popular. As is usually the case, candidates were generally more convincing when choosing the film-specific question rather than the generic questions 17 and 18. Question 17 required a response in reference to one critical approach – and this reference was missed by several candidates. Question18 required candidates to identify specific reviewers and critics – and name them. If candidates are to attempt these generic questions, it is recommended that centres ensure that candidates are familiar with, and can apply, at least one critical approach to their chosen film as well as be able to debate its effectiveness (for question 17) and have studied a range of specific film reviews and writing on the film to discuss its critical reception (question 18). Answers to these questions tended not to be appropriately supported by adequate reference to specific critical approaches or examples of critical reception.

Overall, most candidates did engage directly with the question set. In this section, questions are sometimes deliberately provocative and it was pleasing to see the level of maturity and confidence that candidates brought to the challenge. Recognising the opportunity to play with arguments and ideas – rather than be affronted by the apparent absurdity of a provocative statement – requires practice. It is a very positive development that so many centres are clearly offering this.

GCE Film Studies Examiners’ Report Summer 2013/HT

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