TV Drama: Revision With just three weeks to go to the exam, here are a few tips for the TV Drama Exam. 1. Practice a bit of writing on TV Drama and particularly in organising your notes. You'll find a whole presentation of tips on that part of the exam on the AS TV Drama blog www.citycollegetvdrama.blogspot.co.uk . You need to go into the exam knowing how you will organise your notes. The grid below will give you a structure to look out for things and to ensure that you maximise the notetaking time. After the first screening, if you draw a grid in the answer booklet, like this:
It will give you all you need for the four categories miseenscene, camerawork, editing (continuity editing, at least) and sound. Down the side are the three categories P point, Ddata (or example) and Q question (how to relate point and example to the question set).
When revising for the exam, fill out a grid like this with the points you are going to be looking for on the day, then regardless of the extract, you will have things to look for. You won't be able to take one in to the actual exam, but you will have fewer things to memorise to cover! So, under miseenscene, you might be looking for key examples of setting, costume, props, colours, makeup, hairstyle, lighting, posture, gesture. For camerawork you want to make points about angles, shot distances, camera movements, framing and focus. For continuity editing you want examples of the 180 degree rule, match on action, shot reverse shot, eyeline match, parallel editing. For sound you will want examples of music, dialogue, sound effects, use of foley, counterpoint, sound bridges. If you have lists like this that you can then remember, that gives you plenty to look for. Once you have watched the extract through, during the second screening you can very quickly note down your grid and start to put in examples to support your points. Then you can start to relate the examples you find back to the question, by asking what they contribute to the representation. So, for instance, how is the setting being used, how are camera angles being used, how are features of continuity editing used to help establish differences between characters. You'll have 30 minutes in total for the notetaking, so make the most of it! A wellorganised answer will go a long way towards getting you a good mark!