Practical Work, Project and Viva Voce
The practical component carries marks for demonstrable skill and for explaining it. The exam and viva test whether you can set up and operate equipment safely, submit a documented project, and defend your creative and technical choices in plain language.
What is assessed
- Hands-on tasks: camera setup on tripod, white balance and focus, microphone choice and placement, mixer gain staging, timeline assembly and export.
- A short project, typically a 3 to 5 minute video or an audio piece, submitted with documentation.
- Viva voce: spoken questions on equipment, decisions, terminology, safety and troubleshooting.
Project documentation
A defensible report contains title, objective, target audience, synopsis, script, storyboard, shot list, equipment list, schedule, budget, location and permission notes, production log, edit decision notes, screenshots of the timeline, and a short evaluation of what worked.
Viva technique
- Answer with the decision, the reason and the setting. For example, "I used a cardioid condenser at 30 cm because the room was live and I wanted rear rejection, with the preamp peaking at −12 dBFS."
- Know your own project data: duration, frame rate, codec, microphone models, number of shots.
- Be ready for safety questions about tripods, cabling, phantom power and batteries.
Worked example. Viva question: "Why is your shutter at 1/50 s when you shot at 25 fps?" Model answer: the 180-degree shutter rule gives 1/(2 × 25) = 1/50 s, which yields natural motion blur and matches the PAL 25 fps standard; 1/500 s would look stroboscopic.
Traps
- Submitting clean pictures with unmonitored, clipped audio; sound is judged equally.
- Not knowing the model or pattern of the microphone you used.
- Unlabelled diagrams of the signal chain in the report.
- Having no backup copy of project files at the viva.