Your Film Blog

Whilst our blog is a way of sharing ideas and resources with you. You also need to record your exploration of film, your experiences of being a creative film maker and reflections on your learning.

This individual and personal record is called, ‘The Reflective Journal’.

Here is an example from last year.

This journal will be your course folder and you must spend approximately 2-3 hours every week maintaining it.

Your teacher will be regularly checking  (using the Film Studies blog league) to make sure that it is being maintained and that you are completing posts on the following:

Production Roles (Practical Tasks)

  1. Inquiry into techniques employed within specific production roles
  2. Identifying your creative intentions.
  3. Uploading planning documents, drafts and completed exercises / films sequences.
  4. Reflecting on what you have learnt and how you might do better next time.

Exploring Film (Analysis Tasks)

  1. Uploading your analysis of the films / clips we study.
  2. The explorations of the contexts which surround the films you watch.
  3. Reflections on your work and how you wish to develop your understanding.

START YOUR BLOG

The platform you are going to use to record and publish your Reflective Journal is going to be Word Press – Edublogs.

Starting your blog.

Right click here and ‘Open in new tab’. http://blogs.grammar.sch.gg/

1) Click on ‘Get a Blog’

  • Your username should be your name all lower case, no spaces e.g. ‘edgregson/filmblog’
  • You must use your school e.mail account, e.g. ’08gregsone01@web.grammar.sch.gg’
  • Get it to ‘Give you a Site’

2) Then you will be asked to give your site a name.

  • Your user name should be formal e.g. Ed Gregson (Reflective Journal)
  • Select ‘Search Engine Blocked’
  • Prove you’re not a robot.

3) You will then have to check your school e.mail

You should get an e.mail which looks like this.
  • You should follow the activation link.

The link should take you to a web page, which looks like this.

4) Login

You should now receive a second e.mail with your username and password, which you should use to log in to your blog, using the link in the email:
  • Login (using the username & password provided).
  • Change your password in the dashboard (record the password somewhere).
  • Update your profile so it suits.
  • Start blogging.

5) Join the Class Blog

  • Click on the ‘My Class’ button in the top left corner, just below the Edublogs logo.
  • Click search for a class and search ‘filmstudies2022’
  • Send a request to join
  • A link to your blog will appear in the border of the Film Studies class blog.

Choose a mobile friendly theme and one that scrolls down so that you don’t have to open and close posts all the time.

6) Structure Your Blog

You need to give your blog a bit of structure so that you can backtrack and find your work later on. To do that you need to set up some categories:

Go to “Posts > Categories”

Create the following categories:

  1. Cinematographer
  2. Editor
  3. Sound Designer
  4. Screenwriter
  5. Director
  6. Textual Analysis
  7. Genre
  8. Narrative
  9. Representation
  10. Contexts
  11. Video Essay

Whenever you create a new post you should give it the corresponding category in the reflective journal league.

7) Set up your widgets

You should have selected the following three widgets and drag them into a sidebar:

  1. Recent Posts
  2. Categories
  3. Meta (quicker to login)

Blogging Help

Before asking a teacher for help with any aspect of your blog that you are stuck on please use the Edublogs ‘Help and Support’ page. Its accessible through the Edublogs logo in the top left hand corner of the screen.

Task 2:

  1. Create a new post called ‘My Favourite Film’.
  2. Embed the slideshow you created into that page and write a brief, 50 word, reflection on what micro or macro features of the film attracted you to it.

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