FAO CGAA Year 1/Unit 4: Story-Telling - Greenlight IOR 15th Feb

Between your Unit 4 project working and preparation for your inaugural Time Machine Symposium, you all have a very busy schedule and unforgiving timeframe. Time is truly of the essence in Semester 2. You're now just 14 weeks away from the end of your first year on CG Arts...

Your Greenlight IOR on Tuesday 15th February is your opportunity to focus your efforts and manage your project successfully and you need to use this deadline to your advantage. You didn't need to be a mind-reader to intuit your tutor's supreme displeasure at Unit 3's high rate of failure and non-submission. Never again. You're a great group and you're making great work, and your improvement from unit-to-unit is undeniable - and yet too many of you have an all-too casual attitude to partial submission and slipshod presentation. Unit 4 is a watershed, folks - make no mistake. You'll need to prove in no uncertain terms that you've got the grit, determination and necessary chutzpah to 'shoot for the moon'.

With this in mind, I'm going to formalise the requirements for the Greenlight IOR. The Greenlight means that you want your 3 act stories etc. approved and signed off - so you can get stuck into the aesthetic nitty-gritty of realising your worlds. So, by Tuesday 15th, I'll be expecting to see:

• The Development
• The Treatment
• The Step Outline
• The Premise
• The Logline
• Character biographies
• 3 Act Structure Breakdown*

Obviously - anything in addition to this is to be actively encouraged - but this is the minimum I want to see from you at the halfway stage.

IMPORTANT - Your Story Development material MUST be presented at the IOR stage as an organised Scribd presentation. Prepare it professionally and make it easy to navigate. If you haven't used Scribd yet, you'll need to familiarise yourself with it, as it's the method by which you've been asked to blog-archive your 'Art Of' publication - so this is an opportunity to have a go in advance of final submission. For guidelines for using Scribd, go here - and for an example of Scribd in action on a student blog, go here.

In addition, I want to be able to read a finished introduction to your Unit 4 written assignment.

The introduction is where you establish the investigative boundaries/remit of your essay. Your introduction has a very specific, very practical function - it constitutes the road map of the territory you're exploring - and the order in which you're going to visit your specific 'places of interest'. Many of you are still writing blandly generic and waffle-tastic introductions and it's a truism shared by most tutors that you can tell a duff submission from its introduction alone! Take the time to craft your opening paragraph and be amazed how much easier the main body of your assignment will be to complete. So, by way of a refresher, your introduction should be in paragraph form and very clearly state:

• What enquiry/question the assignment will explore (e.g. the relationship between story and structure in film)
• What your enquiry will focus on specifically (e.g. the use of montage editing, or non-linear narrative or...)
• What specific examples your enquiry is based on and why (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope [1948] and its use of real-time narrative and continuous editing...)
• What key texts you have used and why (e.g. Ivor Camera's 'History of Editing', which deals historically with film editing and its role in shaping film narrative, and Janet Leigh's 'Hitchcock's Mcguffin', in which Leigh looks specifically at the technical challenges of bringing Rope to the screen...)
• The order you'll raise your points in (e.g. The assignment will begin by defining the different styles of editing, before looking at Hitchcock's Rope... In conclusion, the essay will examine the relationship between...)

Your ability to write your introduction will show me that a) you've done the necessary reading around the subject (context!), and b) you know how you're going to approach your material. If you do this - and I'm insisting that you do - I'll be able to offer practical feedback on your assignments while feedback is still useful - and you won't be saving up trouble and strife for week 5.

Also - in an attempt to keep you on track: I want to see all film reviews completed from weeks 1, 2, & 3 (Rope, La Jetee, Psycho, The Birds, and Reservoir Dogs), which are to include all the academic conventions as stipulated, and all Maya tutorials so far made available to you.

Use the IOR to clear the decks, get your head above the water line, and pave the way for a less stressful (ergo, more successful!) experience of weeks 4 and 5!

*For definitions of 'logline' etc. goto myUCA/Storytelling/Unit Materials/Script Writing Resources/Writing & Presenting Your Script.