That Blue Square Thing

Creative iMedia

This page is part of an archive of the old iMedia spec – the one that existed until Summer 2023. People seem to find the resources helpful and I've had a number of requests to put them back online. I should think they'll stay here until I'm confident that the new spec is properly covered. Please be aware that this is out of date material and may not apply in the same way to the new iMedia syllabus.

R081 - Pre-production Skills - exam unit

Quick jump menu:

Exam Preparation

This page provided key learning resources for the content you need to know for the exam paper. It also provides sample exam questions for each section of key learning.

You can print the learning resources and work on them or you can view the questions on screen and write on paper.

There are online quizzes for most of the units as well. You can use these to check your understanding, but it's not the same as actually writing an answer on an exam paper.

Note that I've written these exam questions but they're closely based on original OCR questions. So they will be similar to those you'll see on real exam papers.

1. Visualisation Diagrams

Start with the key learning. View the slides and then answer the questions on the workbook. Then take the quiz to check your understanding.

Key Learning: Presentation slides - Key Questions - Quiz 1 - Quiz 2 (T/F)

Then you can try the exam questions. There are three sorts of questions - knowledge ones (papers 1, 3 and 5), ones that ask you to produce a visualisation diagram (papers 2, 4 and 6) and essay ones which ask you to discuss the pros and cons of a visualisation diagram (paper 7).

Exam questions: Exam 1 (Fresh n fruity) - Exam 2 (Fresh n fruity 2) - Exam 3 (WalkyTalk) - Exam 4 (WalkyTalk 2) - Exam 5 (City Rocks) - Exam 6 (City Rocks 2) - Exam 7 (Norfolk Museums)

The answers are here

How to write better answers
How to get marks when writing about audiences
Types of hardware and software

There is more detail about visualisation diagrams available, including examples.

2. Mind Maps

Start with the key learning. View the slides and then answer the questions on the workbook. Then take the quiz to check your understanding.

Key Learning: Presentation slides - Key Questions - Quiz 1 - Quiz 2 (T/F)

Then you can try the exam questions. There are three sorts of questions - knowledge ones (papers 1 and 3), ones that ask you to produce a mind map (papers 2 and 4) and essay ones which ask you to discuss the pros and cons of a mind map (paper 5).

Exam questions: Exam 1 (Maths Wizards) - Exam 2 (Maths Wizards 2) - Exam 3 (Norfolk Museums) - Exam 4 (Norfolk Museums 2) - Exam 5 (WalkyTalk)

The answers are here

How to write better answers
How to get marks when writing about audiences
Types of hardware and software

There is more detail about mind maps available, including examples.

3. Mood Boards

Start with the key learning. View the slides and then answer the questions on the workbook. Then take the quiz to check your understanding.

Key Learning: Presentation slides - Key Questions - Quiz 1 - Quiz 2 (T/F)

Then you can try the exam questions. There are three sorts of questions - knowledge ones (papers 1 and 3), ones that ask you to produce a mood board (papers 2 and 4) and essay ones which ask you to discuss the pros and cons of a mood board (paper 5).

Exam questions: Exam 1 (Winter Wonder) - Exam 2 (Winter Wonder 2) - Exam 3 (Team Pony) - Exam 4 (Team Pony 2) - Exam 5 (City Rocks)

The answers are here

How to write better answers
How to get marks when writing about audiences
Types of hardware and software

There is more detail about mood boards available, including examples.

4. Storyboards

Start with the key learning. View the slides and then answer the questions on the workbook. Then take the quiz to check your understanding.

Storyboards have some quite complex elements to them - especially the bits about camera shots, angles and movement. These are in a separate set of Key Learning.

Key Learning: Presentation slides - Key Questions - Quiz 1 - Quiz 2 (T/F)

Questions: Key Jobs slides - Key Jobs questions

Questions: Camera shots slides - Camera shots questions - Quiz version of questions

The answers are here

There are videos to help with this work on the Storyboards page.

Then you can try the exam questions. There are three sorts of questions - knowledge ones (papers 1 and 3), ones that ask you to create storyboards, sometimes using a script to work from (papers 2 and 4) and long questions that ask you to evaluate a storyboard (paper 5).

Exam questions: Exam 1 (Mexican Fiesta) - Exam 2 (Wilderness Alive!) - Exam 3 (Space Explorer) - Exam 4 (City Rocks) - Exam 5 (Our Planet)

The answers are here

How to write better answers
How to get marks when writing about audiences
Types of hardware and software

There is more detail about storyboards available, including examples.

5. Scripts

Start with the key learning. View the slides and then answer the questions on the workbook. Then take the quiz to check your understanding.

You should note that scripts are a bit different to the other pre-production documents you need to know about. Take care to learn the detail here.

Key Learning: Presentation slides - Key Questions - Quiz 1 - Quiz 2 (T/F)

Then you can try the exam questions. There are two sorts of questions - knowledge ones (papers 1 and 3) and ones that ask you to identify items on a script (papers 2 and 4). There has never been a long, 12 mark essay question set on scripts.

Exam questions: Exam 1 (Winter Wonder) - Exam 2 (Team Pony) - Exam 3 (Space Explorer) - Exam 4 (East Norfolk Railway)

The answers are here

How to write better answers
How to get marks when writing about audiences
Types of hardware and software

There is more detail about scripts available, including examples.

6. Work Plans

Start with the key learning. View the slides and then answer the questions on the workbook. Then take the quiz to check your understanding.

Work plans are totally different to the other pre-production documents. You'll use them in each portfolio unit, so they should be familiar. But make sure you know the list of key elements.

Key Learning: Presentation slides - Key Questions - Quiz

There is a video and a useful table to go with it on the Work Plans page.

Then you can try the exam questions. There are three sorts of questions here - ones where you identify parts on a work plan (exam 1), ones where you have to list elements of work plans (exam 2) and ones where you have to complete a work plan (exam 3).

Exam questions: Exam 1 (Hopton Tourist Board) - Exam 2 (Max Mouse) - Exam 3 (Lemur Land)

The answers are here

There is more detail about work plans available, including examples.

7.1 File Management and Formats

There are always some marks on exams for other things. One of these is file management and formats.

You'll already know quite a bit of this. There are marks on all the portfolio units for file organisation and naming and the graphics unit has marks for knowing about the different image file formats.

But you still need to make sure you can answer exam questions about this sort of thing sensibly.

Key Learning: File management - Workbook

Image file formats - Table to complete

Video and audio file formats - Table to complete

Exam question: Exam 1

The answers are here

7.2 Research Methods

There is often a question on research methods. There are some important words to learn here, so make sure you do the key learning.

The marks for this are really easy to get - if you know the key words to use and the differences between primary and secondary research.

Key Learning: Research methods - Workbook

Exam question: Exam 1

The answers are here