QCAA Film TV & New Media cheat sheet

Technical codes: camera (shot size, angle, movement, focus, lens), lighting (key/fill ratio, direction, colour temperature), sound (diegetic/non-diegetic, diegetic sound that characters can hear), and editing (cut, dissolve, match cut, jump cut, cross-cutting).

Symbolic codes: objects, costume, setting, colour and body language that carry connoted meaning beyond their literal presence in the frame.

Written codes: titles, captions, subtitles, signage within the frame, voice-over text and graphics that anchor or contradict the image.

Audio codes: dialogue, music, ambient sound, silence, sound perspective and sound bridges; a sound bridge joins two scenes across a visual cut.

Shot-size ladder from widest to tightest: extreme wide, wide, medium wide, medium, medium close-up, close-up, extreme close-up; shot size governs the audience's proximity to character psychology.

Camera angle decision rule: low angle confers power, high angle diminishes, Dutch tilt signals instability, eye level is neutral; the rule is a convention, not a law, and can be inverted for effect.

Mise-en-scène is everything visible in the frame - set, props, costume, lighting, composition, actor blocking - and is analysed as a single designed system rather than a list of items.

Continuity editing (180-degree rule, eyeline match, shot/reverse shot) constructs coherent space; discontinuity editing (jump cuts, axis breaks) deliberately disrupts that coherence.

Interactive narrative branching models: linear with false choices, branching tree (combinatorial explosion risk), and foldback/state-machine structures that reconverge to control production cost.

Agency versus immersion: agency is the player's meaningful capacity to affect outcomes; immersion is absorption in the world; increasing one can reduce the other if choices break narrative pacing.

Web series convention: short episodic runtimes (commonly 3–15 minutes), serialised hooks at episode end, platform-native vertical or horizontal framing, and distribution via streaming or social platforms.

Transmedia storytelling distributes story content across multiple platforms, each entry contributing distinct rather than duplicated material; the 'mothership' text anchors the spread.

Participatory culture (Jenkins): audiences act as producers through remix, fan fiction, memes and fan editing; spreadability describes how content travels through networks by audience action.

Platform logic: algorithmic recommendation, engagement metrics, autoplay and vertical video shape narrative form; a text's runtime and hook rhythm are often shaped by the host platform.

Virtual and augmented reality codes: presence, spatial sound, first-person embodiment, and the reduction or removal of the cut as an organising device.

Interactive documentary and serious games use procedural rhetoric - arguments made through rules and systems rather than through spoken or written statement.

Pre-production: script and treatment, storyboard, shot list, recce, risk assessment, budget, schedule, casting and location permissions.

Production: camera operation, lighting set-ups, sound recording (boom and lavalier), continuity supervision, and clapper/slate sync reference.

Post-production: ingest and backup (3-2-1 rule: three copies, two media types, one off-site), rough cut, fine cut, sound design, colour grade, titles, export and delivery masters.

Key roles: director (interpretive vision), producer (finance, logistics, compliance), cinematographer (camera and lighting), editor (rhythm and structure), sound designer, production designer.

Frame-rate and shutter decision rule: 24 fps for cinematic motion, 25 fps for PAL broadcast, 50/60 fps for slow motion or high-motion content; the 180-degree shutter rule sets shutter speed at twice the frame rate.

Aspect ratio and delivery: 16:9 horizontal broadcast, 9:16 vertical social, 2.39:1 widescreen; safe areas protect titles from platform cropping.

Colour workflow: log or raw capture preserves dynamic range; LUTs are viewing transforms, not final grades; the grade is applied after edit lock.

Licensing and compliance: music and footage require clearance, talent requires release forms, and classification or content warnings apply before public distribution.

Analytical sequence: identify the element (shot, sound, edit), describe it precisely, explain its connoted effect, then link to the text's broader meaning or purpose.

Auteur reading: traces recurring stylistic signatures (framing habits, colour palette, sound design) across a director's body of work and treats them as authored expression.

Genre reading: identifies repetition of iconography, narrative formula and expected audience affect, and analyses innovation as deviation from those expectations.

Ideological reading: examines whose values are naturalised - gender, class, race, nation - and how form positions the spectator to accept those values.

Reception and audience-positioning reading: considers the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings a text invites, and which audiences are addressed by its mode of address.

Formalist versus contextual analysis: formalist attends to internal pattern and structure; contextual attends to production conditions, industry, history and audience.

Evidence standard: claims must cite a specific timestamped moment or repeated pattern, not a general impression of the whole text.

Interpretation is contestable: competing readings of the same sequence are evaluated on the strength of textual evidence and coherence, not on authorial intention alone.

Institutions include broadcasters, streaming platforms, funding bodies, regulators and production companies; each constrains what can be made and how it reaches audiences.

Funding models: public broadcasting licence or government appropriation, commercial advertising, subscription, and grant or screen-agency funding each carry different creative constraints.

Regulation and classification: ratings and content descriptors vary by jurisdiction; broadcasters also operate under codes of practice covering accuracy, fairness and harm.

Audience measurement: ratings panels and sampling, streaming platform internal metrics, and social platform engagement analytics produce different and non-comparable data.

Public sphere and nation-building: public broadcasters are often mandated to reflect national identity, cultural diversity and local production quotas.

Cultural context: texts circulate within national, diasporic and global flows; global formats are localised through casting, language and cultural reference.

Ownership and concentration: vertical and horizontal integration shape what gets commissioned, and independent producers negotiate access to distribution.

Ethics and representation: stereotyping, consent in documentary, and the ethics of depicting real people are analysed as institutional as well as creative questions.

Extended-response structure: a contestable thesis, sequenced argument paragraphs, integrated textual evidence, and a conclusion that resolves rather than restates.

Thesis test: a thesis must be arguable, specific to the text, and answer the question's key terms rather than merely naming the topic.

Paragraph template: claim, evidence (precise moment or pattern), analysis of technique and effect, then link back to the thesis.

Question verbs map to demands: 'analyse' requires decomposition and effect; 'evaluate' requires criteria and judgement; 'discuss' requires multiple positions; 'how' requires mechanism.

Creative response must demonstrate control of the chosen form: a screenplay uses slug lines, action and dialogue; a pitch uses logline, synopsis and audience rationale.

Reflective statement links creative decisions to the codes and conventions studied, naming the specific technique chosen and the intended audience effect.

Terminology precision: use exact terms (diegetic, match cut, Dutch tilt, three-point lighting) rather than vague descriptors such as 'good camera work'.

Time allocation rule of thumb: roughly one minute of writing per 10 marks, with several minutes reserved for planning and checking the response against the question.