What the exam asks
Because Paper 1 is a printed examination, audio-visual texts appear on the page in specific ways:
- Screenplays and broadcast transcripts: You analyse the written blueprint or record of a spoken/visual text, including scene headings, action lines, camera directions, sound cues and spoken dialogue.
- Print or online interviews: Often paired with a studio photograph of the subject, showing how an editor has framed a conversation for a specific readership.
- Stills and storyboards: A sequence of frames accompanied by captions, subtitles or voice-over transcripts.
In the individual oral, a film, documentary series, music video collection or podcast can be your non-literary body of work. Your extract must be one continuous piece (no cuts or ellipses) of no more than 40 lines; for a scene where lines do not apply, your teacher judges how much can be discussed in depth in the time. A scene can be presented as a transcript of its dialogue with brief, factual descriptions of the key shots and sounds: agree the format with your teacher, and bring a clean copy with no notes of your own. (HL only: in the HL essay, you refer to scenes and choices from across the whole body of work rather than using an extract.)
Core ideas
Film and television: camera, scene and editing
When analysing moving-image texts (or stills and screenplays that represent them), treat the director and editor’s technical choices as authorial choices that position the viewer (Criterion B).
| Feature | Key terms | Analytical focus (how it shapes meaning) |
|---|---|---|
| Mise-en-scène | Lighting (high-key: bright and even; low-key: dark, with deep shadows; chiaroscuro: a strong contrast of light and dark), colour palette, costume, props, blocking (actor positioning) | Everything placed inside the frame. Low-key lighting and cramped blocking can build claustrophobia or moral ambiguity before a word is spoken. |
| Shot type & angle | Extreme close-up (ECU), close-up (CU), medium shot (MS), long/wide shot (LS/WS), high angle, low angle, Dutch tilt (a tilted frame) | Controls intimacy and power. A close-up forces empathy with a character’s micro-expressions; a high angle shrinks the subject, suggesting vulnerability. |
| Camera movement | Pan (the camera turns to one side), tilt (it tips up or down), tracking/dolly shot (it travels along with the action), handheld, zoom | Guides audience attention. Smooth tracking suggests control or an all-seeing view; shaky handheld movement mimics panic or documentary realism. |
| Editing | Cut, jump cut (an abrupt cut that makes time jump forward within what looks like one shot), cross-cutting (parallel editing), montage (a run of short shots that compresses time or builds an idea), dissolve (one shot fading into the next), pacing (fast vs slow cuts) | Connects ideas and controls time. Cross-cutting between two locations creates tension or ironic contrast. |
| Sound & narration | Diegetic sound (inside the story world), non-diegetic sound (score, voice-over), ambient sound (the background noise of a place), silence, synchronous (matched to the picture) vs asynchronous (out of step with it) | Shapes emotional tone. A cheerful non-diegetic song played over a bleak visual scene creates unsettling irony. |