The Process
There are a number of important steps required to successfully prepare, produce and present a
Portfolio Project. Several of these steps should be completed prior to enrolling in the Master
Portfolio Seminar
1. Decide on the nature of the project. Is it going to be a fiction film, a documentary, a
multimedia program or a script?
2. What is the underlying idea, subject matter or property for the project? A one-page treatment
or outline is helpful. Backup ideas are also very helpful.
3. Find a Project Advisor, who must be a full-time faculty member or Adjunct in Residence in
the Film & Media Arts division. Normally, this Project Advisor is someone you know from a
previous course who you think you can work with and who will be the most helpful to you based
on the nature of the project. Faculty members are generally (but not exclusively) associated with
an area of concentration: documentary (social, personal, public information, broadcast, wildlife
and environmental, science, education, etc.), narrative, experimental, new media. Faculty
members in a particular concentration group will individually be the lead professor for one or
more of the candidates in the group and probably on the committees of others. At different times
during the semester these groups/committees will meet to review pitches, and after the approval
of the pitch, the proposals which are submitted by the student with a transmittal memo from the
candidate's lead faculty to the committee of senior faculty. The review committee will provide
notes sent through the Division Director to the lead professor who will communicate comments
and concerns to the candidate. Faculty in the concentration will review rough cuts, and final
projects, before being reviewed by all faculty members.
4. Working with your lead advisor, develop a 5-7 page treatment for the project. This should
outline the project and give your advisor(s) a clear sense of what the film is and how it will be
structured, who the key participants are and their role in the story, what resources and experts
you will be drawing upon, who your intended audience is, why you are compelled to make this
film, and your production schedule. It should have a section that indicates your research into the
topic as well as into the market for your production. Once your advisor has approved the
treatment, you will present the project in an oral pitch to the F&MA Faculty for additional advice
and guidance. The pitch sessions are scheduled near the beginning of the semester and again
during the rough cut screening session. You will have 5-10 minutes and will present to the class
and faculty (see the schedule). This is not an automatic “green light”session. In some cases, the
division faculty has recommended the project not go forward without serious revision. A second
pitch session can be scheduled during the rough draft screening session..
5. Once the pitch has been approved, if you haven’t yet done so, form a Portfolio Review
Committee, which consists of the Project Advisor and two other persons. At least one other
person should be an American University faculty member. One person can be someone from
outside the University who has a particular expertise or relevance to the Project. The Project
Advisor must approve the selection of a committee member from outside the University.
6. Develop a proposal for the Portfolio Project. The proposal should include:
●
The name of the faculty member who has agreed to serve as your lead faculty advisor or
Project Advisor
●
A brief narrative description of the project or statement of purpose.
●
A treatment or sequence outline as appropriate.
●
A production plan that includes the formats to be used for production and editing and the
courses that prepared you for their use; the production plan would also include the key
personnel who will work on the project. Equipment needs and resources should be
specified and linked to your production schedule so we can plan for your use of
university equipment and facilities.
●
A production schedule, including a timetable for pre-production, dates of production and
post-production. This schedule should include a schedule of contact times with your
Project Advisor and faculty committee advisors. I recommend you do this on an Excel
sheet and send it to your lead faculty advisor, your Project Advisor as well as to me.
You should up-date this schedule on a regular basis.
●
A budget as appropriate.
●
A description of the resources and sources of funds needed to produce the project as
appropriate
●
The proposed end-use and outreach for the project including festivals and contests,
ancillary products or uses; how your project will be distributed and how it fits into your
career plans as a showcase of your talents. You should demonstrate awareness of the
requirements for the festivals, and a staged approach, since some require premieres,
regional premieres, etc. You should clearly demonstrate your interest in using your
production as a calling card with the people most likely to want to hire you for other
work. A good book on festivals and entering them (available in our library) is “The
Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide" by Chris Gore.
Some helpful websites for festivals are:
http://www.withoutabox.com/
http://www.filmfestivalworld.com/calendar#start
http://edendale.typepad.com/weblog/2008/02/in-depth-the-25.html
moviebytes.com
The following site is also good place to track festivals:
http://www.independent-magazine.org/magazine/08/2009/nofeefestivals
Profiles of the world’s leading academies, professional guilds and awards
organizations, and an annotated selection of film blogs, academic journals and cinema
ezines at: http://www.filmfestivalworld.com/resources.
And here’s the link for the caucus foundation (we award grant monies &
mentoring to thesis students to complete their film/video/docu et al projects –
http://www.caucusfoundation.org/.
7. Submit the proposal for the project to your Project Advisor. Once the proposal is approved by
the Project Advisor, submit it to me. (This should be done electronically). Use the Cover sheet
found at the end of this syllabus: Thesis Project Information Sheet . I will submit
it to the Portfolio Review Committee, a committee of senior faculty for review and approval.
They will review it and give feedback, if appropriate to me. I will pass comments along to you
and your advisor. A proposal may have to be revised to meet the requirements and/or suggestions
of the committee.
8. Once your proposal has been approved, I will notify you and your project advisor and also
take the administrative steps necessary to provide you with access to the necessary equipment
and facilities, as described in the production plan in the proposal.
NOTE THAT STUDENTS DOING PRODUCTIONS WILL NOT RECEIVE SECURITY
ACCESS TO FIELD EQUIPMENT AND EDITING FACILITIES UNTIL A PROPOSAL
HAS BEEN APPROVED BY THE FACULTY COMMITTEE AND A COPY OF THE
PROPOSAL, APPROVED BY THE FACULTY ADVISER, IS GIVEN TO THE
SEMINAR PROFESSOR.
9. Produce the Portfolio Project. During this period, you should maintain regular contact with
your lead faculty professor and committee members as well as me as to the progress of the
project. Remember to up-date your schedule with your Project Advisor, committee members as
appropriate and me. In the past, we have found that some students fail to effectively utilize the
knowledge and expertise of the Project Advisor and members of the Portfolio Review
Committee to the detriment of their final project.
10. Present rough-cuts of the project to your Project Advisor and committee members for
comments and suggestions as scheduled in your proposal. When submitting rough cuts and on
through picture lock the project must be submitted with burn-in timecode on the visual and also
in the script (a third column for two-column doc scripts and in dialogue and/or narrative
description in standard scripts.) This will help the faculty to better give specific feedback.
11. Present your final rough cut screening during this seminar for faculty and other graduate
candidates. This is usually held a week to 10 days before the final deadline for thesis submission
and you should considerer this screening mandatory.
12. Revise and prepare a final version of the Portfolio Project. The final project should credit
The American University School of Communication Film & Media Arts Division and include
the name of your Project Advisor and committee members.
13. Present the final version of the project to your Project Advisor and appropriate members of
your committee. Following their approval, the project will be screened before the F&MA
division faculty and other graduate students at a special screening arranged for that purpose. The
faculty will provide critique and sometimes suggestions for ultimate end use of the project. The
Project Advisor will, on behalf of the committee and division faculty and often in coordination
with them, recommend a grade for the project to me. I will submit the final grade to the
Registrar. The grade for the project must be submitted no later than the last day of the final exam
period.
Note: you must receive a “B” or better for the project for it to satisfy degree requirements
13. You must submit two copies of the completed work on DVD or the appropriate format for
the project to the Seminar Professor to be maintained as a record of your achievement by the
University. One copy may be an authored DVD (standard MPEG2). We can use this one to show
at the faculty screening. The second must be a high quality Quicktime movie stored as a file on a
DVD. This file should be a direct export from your editing application (Final Cut Pro,
Avid Media Composer, Premiere, whatever). It should be exported using the best quality
possible and still keep the file size small enough to store on a DVD. We suggest using the H.264
codec for video (29.97 fps, sized at 720x480). The aspect ratio of HD material will be different
depending on the specific format, (1920x1080, for example) but it should be full screen. The
audio should likewise be exported at the highest quality settings (16 bit stereo, 48 kHz/sec,
encoded with AAC or Apple Lossless). These high quality Quicktime movies will allow us to
not only preserve the quality of your work, but it will allow us to migrate the file to another
format down the road and/or derive any lesser-quality version (for web streaming) as required.
If you have questions, please contact our Technical Services,
Although you hold title to the final project, by enrolling in this course, you grant the University
permission to have your work, which you created in conjunction with this course, copied and
distributed (in print, electronic, and/or any digital medium) and to incorporate your work, in
whole or in part, into derivative works for educational, research, archival, promotional, and other
purposes consistent with the mission of American University.
14. If you are not finished with your project by the end of this semester or any semester in which
you are registered for the Seminar, but are making satisfactory progress towards its completion, a
grade of “IP” (In-Progress) will be submitted to the Office of the Registrar. This grade will be
changed to a standard A-F letter grade when your work is completed and evaluated.