Choosing a form, and the two constraints
The problem this standard sets
- Ideas develop over time. A still image has no time. That difficulty sits at the centre of AS91477, and it decides what you should make.
- A single poster can state an idea powerfully. It struggles to develop one, because development means arriving somewhere you did not start, and whatever the viewer notices second was present at the same moment as the first thing. There is no order in a single frame, only emphasis.
- This is why the form decision matters more than any other. It is taken before any making, it cannot be revised cheaply, and it sets a ceiling on the grade.
The three forms open to you
- A sequence of still images — three or four frames read in a fixed order. Development happens between the frames, and this is the cheapest form to redraft and the easiest place to show structure.
- A navigable text — a website, an interactive, a zine, a fold-out. The viewer's path through it is the structure, and hyperlinks are structural: what you link, from which word, and what the viewer finds are all authorial decisions.
- A moving-image text — a short film, a video essay, an animated piece. Development happens in duration, exactly as in a speech: the most room and the most risk, since an unedited three-minute video usually has one idea in it.
- The Explanatory Notes support all three. Camera shots, hyperlinks and music are on the Level 3 feature lists, and none of them belongs to a single static poster. Most students never realise this is allowed.
- A single image is still permitted and can reach Achieved, but it makes the central requirement harder than it needs to be.
Choosing a subject that can develop
- A subject with no change in it cannot develop, however well arranged. No amount of design rescues that choice.
- Three tests, applied before you make anything:
- Is there a before and after? A closure, a repair, a season, a shift.
- Is there a change of scale? Something meaning one thing close up and another from a distance.
- Is there a process? Steps that must happen in an order.
- A subject passing none of these is a topic, not yet an idea. Recycling is a topic. The bin is emptied by someone, and that someone is the part nobody pictures is an idea, and it has a change in it.
- Narrow until one concrete object can carry it — a single window, one road cone, one pair of boots. Concrete objects are photographable, repeatable across frames, and give the viewer something to track.
- Let the subject choose the form. A before-and-after subject wants a sequence; a subject about scale wants widening camera shots; one with many parallel parts wants a navigable text.
The two constraints from the Explanatory Notes
- The text must be stand-alone. It works with you absent.
- An artist's statement is not part of the text. If your submission needs a paragraph of explanation, the explanation is doing work the text should do.
- Test it cold. Hand it to someone who has not spoken to you. If they ask what it is about, it is not finished.
- The text must be primarily your own work, and primarily in English.
- Components may be sourced — a photograph, a font, found footage — but the construction must be yours, because the arrangement is what is assessed. Keep a record of what came from where.
- Other languages may be included; the EN's own example is a greeting, and a mihi or a te reo Māori phrase is explicitly allowed. Check spelling and macrons rather than approximating — a macron error in 60-point type is the most visible mistake available in this standard.
How the grades work
- Achieved — fluent and coherent: the text develops, sustains and structures ideas using verbal and visual features.
- Merit — convincingly: the same text, reasoned, clear and sustained.
- Excellence — effectively: the text commands attention.
- Each grade adds to the one below it, so a striking text that does not develop ideas cannot reach Excellence. Later pages name these grades without re-explaining them.
Worked Example
Worked Example
Three candidate projects, all described specifically for this page. Choose one, and justify the form.
| Candidate | |
|---|---|
| A | Mental health matters — four posters, each a portrait with a supportive slogan |
| B | The main street is losing its shops — four posters, four empty shopfronts |
| C | Our netball courts flood every winter — one poster of the flooded court |
Answer:
1 — apply the change test.
| Before and after? | Change of scale? | A process? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | No | No | No |
| B | Yes | Yes | Partly |
| C | Seasonal | No | Yes |
A fails at the first step, and the reason is worth stating: the slogans already contain the conclusion, so the text begins at its destination. B is strongest — it has time in it twice over.
2 — narrow to one object. A street is not photographable as a single subject, and four different shopfronts give the viewer nothing to track. Narrow it: one window with a hand-lettered sign reading BACK IN 10 MINS — concrete, repeatable, and it contains the change by itself.
3 — form follows the kind of change. The change here is a change of distance, and distance is what a fixed-order sequence of camera shots controls. Decision: a four-frame still sequence.
4 — check the constraints. The photographs are the student's own; the sign is a found object, photographed, which is fine because the arrangement is assessed. Captions are in English, and the street's Māori name is checked against the council's signage rather than guessed.