1.16 & 1.17 Evaluating

Learning Outcomes 1.16 & 1.17 and Core Action Verbs

The official specification defines the two outcomes that govern evaluation as follows:

• 1.16 explain their creative decisions.
• 1.17 evaluate their work, assessing the extent to which aims/goals set were achieved and identify the reasons associated with this outcome.

Learning Outcome 1.17 contains three distinct obligations: you must evaluate, you must assess the extent to which aims were met, and you must identify the reasons for that outcome. Stating that an aim was only partly met without explaining the root cause fulfills only two of these three requirements.

Five official action verbs from the specification glossary govern this work:

• Explain: Give a detailed account including reasons or causes.
• Evaluate: Collect and examine work to make artistic judgements and appraisals; make artistic judgements about the ideas or methods.
• Assess: Judge, evaluate, or estimate the nature, ability, quality, or value of something. In LO 1.17, this means placing outcomes on a graded scale rather than settling for a simple yes or no.
• Appraise: Evaluate, judge, or consider information or a piece of work. The 2027 brief uses this verb to direct Section E: 'Using this excerpt, you should appraise the performance or the short piece of film presented.'
• Reflect on: Give thoughtful and careful consideration to your actions, experiences, values, and learning in order to gain new insights and make meaning for yourself.

The Portfolio Versus the Project Journal

Students frequently confuse the portfolio with the project journal. They serve distinct purposes across Senior Cycle:

The Drama, Film and Theatre Studies Portfolio

Your portfolio is an ongoing, two-year collection that belongs to you and remains in school. It stores learning logs, design sketches, rehearsal notes, table-reading feedback, audio-visual experiments, records of your three Applied Creative Tasks (Strand 3), and your written responses to the mandatory live public theatre performance and live cinema screening. It is not sent to the State Examinations Commission (SEC). The specification requires you to use your portfolio to record the creative process as it happens and compare your final achievements directly with the aims in your original pre-production documents. Without an active portfolio, you have no dated evidence to draw on when writing your final evaluation.

The Project Journal

The project journal is the formal document developed specifically for the Creativity in Practice Project (worth 50% / 300 marks) and submitted to the SEC in a digital format. It has a strict ceiling of 1,700 words across six structured sections, accommodates up to 20 images, and must be submitted alongside a continuous two-minute excerpt.

Explaining Creative Decisions: Decision, Cause, Impact, Verdict

Every artistic choice on stage or screen must serve a dramatic purpose. Section C of the project journal (Developing and Refining, 400 words, 80 marks) explicitly requires the identification and explanation of two significant creative decisions.

A four-step planning chain helps structure these explanations to ensure they remain analytical rather than descriptive:

1. Decision: State the exact technical, design, or staging choice made, using precise discipline vocabulary.
2. Cause: Explain the dramatic problem, thematic goal, or practical condition that required this choice, noting alternative approaches considered and rejected.
3. Impact: Detail the concrete effect produced on the stage or screen, such as adjustments to mood, visual rhythm, or proxemics (the dramatic meaning created by the physical distance between performers).
4. Verdict: State the degree to which this choice realised the intention, backed by tangible evidence from rehearsals, camera tests, or audience feedback.

Changing your original concept is normal and expected. The official guidelines anticipate it: your first vision may prove overly ambitious, practical constraints may force a change, or an unanticipated setback may require an amendment. What matters is that you can explain and justify any significant decision you make as the work evolves.

Measuring Outcomes Against Pre-Production Benchmarks

Evaluation requires an objective benchmark. In theatre, this benchmark is your statement of intention; in film, it is your treatment. These pre-production documents record your narrative concept, aesthetic choices, visual style, and intended audience impact before staging or shooting begins. You evaluate against evidence, not memory. Annotated documents from your own planning do this job: the original brief and concept, your statement of intention or treatment, design sketches, ground plans, storyboards, shot lists, mood boards and lighting cue sheets. Annotating one of these — marking on it what you intended and what actually happened — is also a good use of your 20 permitted images, and it is how you support an explanation in Section C.

Under Learning Outcome 1.17, you must measure your finished excerpt directly against these initial benchmarks. A practical method is to review each initial goal against an evaluative scale before writing:

• Fully achieved: The intention was communicated clearly on stage or screen, supported by observable audience responses and visual evidence.
• Largely achieved: The core idea was communicated to most spectators, though minor technical inconsistencies or performance slips slightly blunted its impact.
• Partly achieved: Elements of the concept came across, but competing staging choices, poor lighting, or muddled sound compromised the intended reading.
• Not achieved: The dramatic choice failed to communicate its purpose, requiring honest diagnosis of whether the concept was unfeasible, the blocking ineffective, or the technical execution flawed.

The published Descriptors of Quality reserve the top mark band for 'a considered and insightful reflection on the creative process'. You cannot demonstrate insight if you describe your production as flawless. Diagnosing why an artistic choice fell short shows higher aesthetic judgement than offering uncritical praise.

Coursework Project Requirements: 2027 Common Brief

The Creativity in Practice Project represents 50% (300 marks) of your grade in this subject. For 2027, the common brief topic is The Use of Colour in Theatre and Film to convey mood, emotion, theme, character, time, or location.

Time Allocation and Project Stages

The project is designed to take up to 25 hours. Evaluating is formally scheduled as Stage 5 (2 to 3 hours). Stage 6 is dedicated to reviewing and finalising the journal: verifying that all section headings match the brief, ensuring word counts are compliant, checking the 20-image limit, and compiling references.

Word Counts and Mark Allocations

• Section A: Imagining and Conceptualising (300 words, 40 marks)
• Section B: Exploring Creative Ideas (400 words, 60 marks)
• Section C: Developing and Refining (400 words, 80 marks)
• Section D: The Performance / Production (300 words, 60 marks)
• Section E: Evaluation and Reflection in Practice (300 words, 40 marks)
• Overall Coherence and Communication (20 marks across the whole journal)

The journal must not exceed 1,700 words in total; if it does, you may lose marks. Any words used to annotate images count toward this 1,700-word ceiling.

Overall Coherence and the Reference Section (20 Marks)

The 20 marks for overall coherence and communication evaluate four specific factors: engagement with the stimulus material, development of points, coherence and expression of ideas, and relevant referencing. You must record all sources, research citations, and any permitted use of artificial intelligence tools in the reference section at the end of the journal. Words in the reference section do not count toward your 1,700-word total.

The Two-Minute Excerpt

Your submission requires a continuous two-minute excerpt in MP4 format (maximum 1GB). For film students, this excerpt is taken from the short film as screened to an audience. For theatre students, it must be taken from the unedited recording of the performance, captured in full by a single fixed camera positioned to represent an audience member's perspective (the audience must not appear in frame). Penalties may apply where the video length exceeds two minutes or the file size exceeds 1GB.

The Five Prompts for Section E

Section E (suggested maximum 300 words) asks you to appraise the presented work using your two-minute excerpt across five prompts:

1. The extent to which you achieved your creative vision and the reasons for this (budget roughly 70 words).
2. What worked well / did not work well and why (budget roughly 80 words).
3. How your creative choices impacted the performance or short film (budget roughly 60 words).
4. The audience response to the production (budget roughly 50 words).
5. Your overall experience of engagement in the creative process (budget roughly 40 words).

To attain the highest descriptor of quality ('evaluate their creative output with all stages and decisions explained'), your evaluation cannot look only at opening night. You must reference your choices across conceptualising, developing, refining, and performing.

Collaborative Dialogue and Evaluating External Influences

Collaborative Discussion and Individual Submission

While projects can be created collaboratively, every student must write and submit an individual project journal. The specification directs students to hold a structured group discussion after the performance or screening to evaluate whether the initial brief and concept were realised. Use this discussion to gather different perspectives on where timing dragged, where technical cues failed, or how spectators reacted. In your individual journal, evaluate your own specific role, how working with others influenced the outcome, and how disagreements over artistic choices were resolved.

Evaluating Practitioner Influences

Your creative choices should be informed by established practitioners, including the prescribed options in Circular 0061/2025. For the 2027 examination, schools choose one prescribed film focus: European Art Cinema (An Cailín Ciúin, dir. Colm Bairéad, 2022), Spielberg's directorial style (Jaws, dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975), or Romance (Past Lives, dir. Celine Song, 2023). They also select one drama/theatre focus: Non-naturalistic production elements (Fíbín sa Taibhdhearc's 2018 production of Tóraíocht), Verbatim Theatre (National Theatre's 2013 production of Home, dir. Nadia Fall), or Tragicomedy (Druid's 2023 production of The Shadow of a Gunman, dir. Garry Hynes).

Influences are not confined to this list; they can include unprescribed works, historical movements, paintings, garments, or music. When evaluating an influence, follow three steps: identify the specific technique observed, explain how you adapted it using your school's resources, and evaluate the artistic outcome.

Worked Practitioner Influence Model:

• Technique observed: In An Cailín Ciúin, Colm Bairéad employs a desaturated, cool palette in early sequences to communicate Cáit's domestic isolation, allowing isolated warm hues to carry intense emotional weight.
• Practical adaptation: In our short film, I graded the opening kitchen sequence to a desaturated slate-blue, keeping only the amber glow of an electric kettle saturated.
• Evaluative outcome: In close-ups this effectively established internal loneliness, but in the wide shot our practical fluorescent tube cast green ambient spill that compromised the colour balance, teaching me that colour grading cannot remedy ungelled practical lights on set.

Evaluating in the Written Examination

The terminal written examination accounts for the remaining 50% (300 marks) of your grade in this subject: Section A carries 100 marks, Section B carries 160 marks, and Section C carries 40 marks. The paper examines learning across all three strands and your study of the Specified Areas of Learning.

Because June 2027 is the first official examination sitting for Drama, Film and Theatre Studies, no archive of past exam papers exists. Students and teachers must consult the sample examination papers published by the SEC to inspect question formats. Written examination questions may ask you to explain creative staging or camera choices, justify revisions made in response to peer feedback during rehearsal, evaluate how effectively a production design supported dramatic meaning, or appraise designated live performances you attended.

Key terms

Explain

To give a detailed account including reasons or causes for an artistic or technical decision.

Evaluate

To collect and examine creative work to make artistic judgements and appraisals about ideas, methods, and outcomes.

Assess

To judge, evaluate, or estimate the nature, ability, quality, or value of something, such as grading the extent to which dramatic aims were achieved.

Appraise

To evaluate, judge, or consider information or a piece of work, specifically applied to reviewing the submitted continuous two-minute excerpt in Section E.

Reflect on

To give thoughtful and careful consideration to your actions, experiences, values, and learning in order to gain new insights and make meaning for yourself.

Statement of Intention

A foundational pre-production document in theatre outlining the story, dramatic concept, visual design, and intended audience impact before devising or rehearsals begin.

Treatment

A foundational pre-production document in film detailing the narrative arc, visual concepts, cinematography style, and mood before a screenplay is written or filmed.

Portfolio

A school-based, two-year repository containing learning logs, design sketches, ACT records, and live performance appraisals, used to track learning and compare outcomes against intentions.

Project Journal

The formal 1,700-word digital document submitted to the SEC for the Creativity in Practice Project, structured into six specific sections.

Two-Minute Excerpt

A continuous two-minute video extract (MP4, maximum 1GB) submitted with the coursework journal; taken from the screened edit for film, or from an unedited single-camera fixed recording for theatre.

Audience Response

Observable spectator behaviour and structured peer feedback (such as hushed silence, gasps, or targeted post-show comments) used as evidence to evaluate dramatic impact.

Iterative Process

A working methodology of moving back and forth between developing, testing, receiving feedback, and refining work, rather than following a rigid linear sequence.