What is R093?
R093 is the exam component of the J834 course and is worth 40% of your overall grade. The theory that you learn will help you in your other 2 coursework modules.
The R093 exam module is mandatory for the course – you have to complete the exam.
The exam is marked out of 70 marks and you will be given 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete it.
Schools can choose to sit the exam either in the January exam series or the Summer exam series but this is the choice of the individual schools.
What is covered in the R093 exam?
In the exam you could be asked questions on the following:
Topic Area 1
1.1 Media industry sectors and products
- Traditional media
- New media
- Products in the media industry
1.2 – Job roles in the media industry
- Job roles in the media industry creative, technical, senior roles
Topic Area 2
2.1 – How style, content and layout are linked to the purpose
- Purposes of media – advertise/promote, educate, entertain, inform, influence
- Style, content and layout – colour, conventions of genre
- Formal / informal language, positioning of elements, style of audio / visual representation, tone of language
2.2 – Client requirements and how they are defined
- Client requirements – type of product, purpose, audience, client ethos, content, genre, style, theme, timescales
- Client brief formats – commission, formal, informal, meeting/discussion, negotiated, written
2.3 – Audience demographics and segmentation
- Categories of audience segmentation – age, gender, occupation, income, education, location, interests, lifestyle
2.4 – Research methods, sources and types of data
- Primary research methods – focus groups, interviews, online surveys, questionnaires
- Secondary research methods – books and journals, internet sites / research, magazines and newspapers, television
- Research data – qualitative and quantitative information
2.5 – Media codes used to convey meaning, create impact and engage audiences
- Media codes
- Ways that meaning, impact or engagement are created
- Camera techniques
- Colour
- Graphics
- Interactivity
- Lighting
- Mise-en-scene
- Movement
- Transitions
- Typography
Topic Area 3
3.1 – Pre-production planning
- Components of workplans
3.2 – Documents used to support ideas generation
- Mind map
- Mood board
3.3 – Documents used to design and plan media products
- Asset log
- Flow chart
- Script
- Storyboard
- Visualisation diagram
- Wireframe layout
3.4 – The legal issues that affect media
3.4.1 – Legal considerations to protect individuals
- Privacy and permissions
- Defamation
- Data protection
3.4.2 – Intellectual property rights
- Protecting intellectual property
- Using copyrighted materials
3.4.3 – Regulation, certification and classification
- Organisations responsible for regulation
- Classification systems and certifications
3.4.4 – Health and Safety
- Health and safety risks and hazards in all phases of production
- Actions to mitigate health and safety risks and hazards
- Risk assessments
- Location recces
Topic Area 4
4.1 – Distributed platforms and media to reach audiences
- Online
- Physical platforms
- Physical media
4.2 Properties and formats of media files
4.2.1 – Image files
- The properties of digital static image files
- Static image file formats
4.2.2 – Audio files
- The properties of digital audio files
- Audio file formats
4.2.3 – Moving Image files
- The properties of digital moving image files
- Moving image file formats
4.2.4 – File compression
- Lossy compression
- Lossless compression
R093 exam sections
OCR have split the R093 exam into 2 specific sections.
Section A
Section A is due to have between 7 and 10 questions which will be either multiple choice or short written answers.
This section will contain only 10 available marks.
Section B
Section B will relate to a given scenario, much like previous exams have and all questions will be based around this scenario. This section will include a range of questions as well as three extended questions.
This section will contain 60 marks.
R093 Resources
We’re hard at work creating new resources for this new module.
Our aim is to split up our resources using the same topic areas that the OCR specification is in so that you can relate learning directly to the specification.
As ever you can expect courses, flash cards, quizzes and more.
Keep you’re eyes peeled!
Similarities to R081
There are certainly lots of parallels to the old specification exam which was called R081. There are a number of things that appear in both:
- Client requirements
- Target audience (audience demographics)
- Research methods and types of data (primary / secondary)
- Pre-production planning (documents etc)
- Legal issues
- Certification and classification
- Health and safety
- Properties and formats of digital media.
However there also new elements to this exam module including:
- Traditional media
- New media
- Products in the media industry
- Job roles in the media industry
- How styles, content are linked to purpose (previously assessed in R082 coursework)
It is not surprising that there is extra content given that a larger portion of the mark is now placed on the exam (40% as opposed to 25%). It also appears that in some of the topics OCR want students to develop a deeper understanding than they did before with more information and knowledge required by the students.
There are also 10 extra marks available in the exam (70 marks in R093 as opposed to 60 in R081) and the exam is a quarter of an hour longer at 1 hour and 30mins compared to the previous 1 hour and 15 minutes.
It will be interesting to see the new style of exam from OCR when it is released, and be able to see how they word the questions and what answers and to what depth they are expecting.