Planning - Reflection on moderators report

10 points i found useful from last years report:

1. Several centres failed to submit research/ planning despite this also being a requirement. 
2. It was to be hoped that a comparable amount of time would be spent developing both. Websites in particular seemed to suffer here, with some seemingly created in a short amount of time and being overly reliant on platform-provided templates with limited extra content from candidates. 
3. The weakest statements tended to repeat the brief without explaining how the requirements and production details were to be achieved while others had clearly been based on a centre-devised model leading to virtually identical documents. 
4. Music videos - The best products demonstrated that candidates had understood the specific requirements of the brief relating to genre, representation and industrial context and clearly researched this before planning their own pieces. 
5. The best work emphasised the performance aspect, filming the artist performing the track a number of times in different locations with different mise-en-scene and utilising a variety of camera shots and movement; which was then effectively edited with accurate lip-synching throughout. 
6. General missed key elemens. - Failure to mention the name of the band/ artist/ track at the start or end of the video and editing which did not match the pace/ BPM of the track 
7. Some videos demonstrated very well-performed lip-synching, although this was more often a weaker element.  
8. Videos where some sort of simplistic narrative, e.g. a chase or use of a candidate’s holiday footage (a huge number of airplane windows were filmed through this session!), was imposed with little or no consideration of the content/ mood/ tone of the track. 
9. Lots of videos this year which shot actors from behind walking away from camera, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not. This is not a convention but seems to be very popular and should be avoided and vertical mobile phone footage should be avoided at all costs. 
10. In general, less successful websites either demonstrated a lack of attention to detail or missed key elements of the brief/ codes and conventions of the form.