Look inside the OCR A-Level Media Studies guide (H409)

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Look inside the OCR A-Level Media Studies guide

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OCR · A-Level · H409
Media Studies
Active Recall Guide
1,986 questions
Media StudiesContents
Contents
10 topics, 143 subtopics
  1. Contexts of Media139
  2. Media Language233
  3. Media Representations237
  4. Media Industries214
  5. Media Audiences235
  6. News, Online and Participatory Media195
  7. Advertising, Marketing and Magazines194
  8. Music Video151
  9. Film, Radio and Video Games209
  10. Long Form Television Drama179
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Media LanguageQuestions
Media Language
Signs, codes and conventions in media language
  1. What does the term media language refer to?
  2. Define the term code as it is used in the analysis of media products.
  3. What is the difference between a technical code and a symbolic code?
  4. Give an example of a written code and explain what it contributes to a media product.
  5. Define the term convention.
  6. What is the difference between a code and a convention?
  7. Explain the difference between form conventions and genre conventions.
  8. What does it mean to say a media text is polysemic?
  9. Why do producers rely on shared codes rather than inventing new ones for each product?
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Media LanguageAnswers
Answers
Signs, codes and conventions in media language
  1. Media language is the whole set of elements a product uses to communicate, including its visual, audio, verbal and written choices, together with the codes and conventions that tell an audience how to read them.
  2. A code is a system of signs whose meanings are broadly agreed within a culture, so that an audience can decode them without being told what they mean.
  3. Technical codes are meanings created by equipment and process choices such as framing, lighting and editing, while symbolic codes are meanings carried by what is placed before the camera or on the page, such as costume, setting, colour and gesture.
  4. A newspaper headline is a written code, and its wording, size and capitalisation push the reader towards a particular attitude to the story before a word of the article is read.
  5. A convention is an expected way of doing something in a media form or genre that has become established through repeated use.
  6. A code is a sign system that carries meaning, whereas a convention is a habitual practice of the form or genre, so low-key lighting is a code that has become a convention of the thriller through repetition.
  7. Form conventions are shared by every product in a medium, such as a masthead on a magazine, while genre conventions belong only to a type of product within that medium, such as the cover lines used by a fashion title.
  8. It means the text carries more than one possible meaning, so different audiences can reasonably decode it in different ways.
  9. Shared codes let an audience decode a product almost instantly, so meaning can be established in a few seconds and the producer can borrow existing associations instead of explaining everything.
13
Media AudiencesQuestions
Media Audiences
Psychographics, lifestyle and taste categories
  1. What are psychographics?
  2. State the essential difference between a demographic and a psychographic profile.
  3. In the 4Cs lifestyle typology, what characterises the Mainstreamer?
  4. Describe the Aspirer in the 4Cs typology.
  5. Describe the Succeeder in the 4Cs typology.
  6. Describe the Explorer in the 4Cs typology.
  7. Describe the Reformer in the 4Cs typology.
  8. Which lifestyle group is characterised by rigid values and loyalty to long-established brands?
  9. Describe the Struggler in the 4Cs typology.
34
Media AudiencesAnswers
Answers
Psychographics, lifestyle and taste categories
  1. Psychographics group an audience by attitudes, values, aspirations, personality and lifestyle rather than by measurable social facts.
  2. A demographic profile describes who a person is, while a psychographic profile describes what they believe, what they want and how they choose to live.
  3. The Mainstreamer is the largest group, seeks security and belonging, and prefers familiar, well-established mass-market brands.
  4. The Aspirer is driven by status and the opinion of others, and buys for image, so responds to visible brands and markers of success.
  5. The Succeeder already has status and control, and looks for quality, reliability and reward, so responds to premium products that promise those things.
  6. The Explorer is motivated by discovery and new experience, is among the first to try an unfamiliar brand, and responds to novelty and difference.
  7. The Reformer values self-realisation, authenticity and social responsibility, distrusts status-driven advertising, and is drawn to ethical and independent products.
  8. The Resigned, who are usually older, seek familiarity and survival rather than change, and stay with the brands they have always known.
  9. The Struggler has limited means, lives for the present and seeks escape and immediate gratification, so responds to cheap and impulse purchases.
35
Music VideoQuestions
Music Video
Music video as a form: performance, narrative and concept
  1. What is a performance music video?
  2. What is a narrative music video?
  3. Define the concept music video.
  4. Why are most music videos hybrids of more than one of these approaches?
  5. Explain what lip sync contributes to a music video.
  6. What did Andrew Goodwin argue about the relationship between a song's lyrics and a video's images?
  7. State two features Goodwin identified as characteristic of music video, other than the relationship between lyrics and visuals.
  8. Why is cutting to the beat treated as a defining technique of the form?
  9. Define elliptical editing and explain why music video depends on it.
56
Music VideoAnswers
Answers
Music video as a form: performance, narrative and concept
  1. One built around footage of the artist delivering the track, using staging, lighting and camerawork to sell the performance and the performer rather than to tell a story.
  2. One that tells a story in images alongside or instead of performance, so the audience follows characters and events across the length of the track.
  3. One organised around a visual idea, aesthetic or metaphor rather than a story or a performance, in which imagery, choreography or effects carry the meaning.
  4. Performance sells the artist while narrative or concept holds attention, so producers combine them to do both within the running time of a single track.
  5. Miming the vocal ties the artist's body to the sound, confirms ownership of the track, and gives the editor a fixed point to cut around.
  6. He argued that visuals can illustrate the lyrics, amplify them by adding meaning, or contradict them, and that a video normally does one of the three.
  7. A visual style tied to the musical genre, and record company pressure for repeated close-ups of the artist.
  8. Because it subordinates the image track to the music, which reverses the usual relationship in audio-visual media where sound is fitted to the picture.
  9. An edit that leaves out time or connecting action; three minutes cannot carry a full story, so gaps are left for the audience to fill.
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1,986 questions
Across 143 subtopics, every one of them from specification H409.
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How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

  1. Step 1 · Closed book

    Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.

  2. Step 2 · Open book

    Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.

  3. Step 3 · Closed book again

    Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.

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