Urgent Media A2 exam help? (WJEC exam board)

hello!! basically im struggling with my media A2 exam revision and ive been seeing from other students who take the course on here that you arent supposed to go into the exam knowing which industry youre supposed to do for each section, but that's how we were taught it?? For section A we have to do TV (we were told to answer narrative/genre), and for section B we have to do Games (audience questions) and Music (for the other questions) and im starting to panic because the exam is next week and i feel so lost!! my teacher hasnt really explained any of this very well and im not sure how to go about revising efficiently, we havent been given any past example answers and im still not confident that i know how to construct a good essay properly for each industry. if anybody has any good or relevant past answers please could you link me?

(if it's any help, my case studies are:
TV: This is England 90, Community, Cyberbully
Gaming: GTA5, Minecraft, Sims4
Music: Rihanna, David Bowie and a Nigerian rapper called D'Banj)

It's totally fine to go into the exam knowing which industry you're using for each section - it's not necessarily recommended, but it's not a problem.The biggest thing is that you know enough about each of your case studies to talk about each part of the following diagram that someone else posted on another thread (or in your case, the parts about the industry you'll do for each section): http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=153968&d=1338840460

One of the tricky bits of this exam is being able to show that you understand how text, audience and industry all relate to each other, while still answering the question. So for instance if you're talking about how audiences are targeted, you're going to talk about how the text itself (its genre, narrative, and representations) targets particular audiences, and how the industry elements (e.g. marketing, promotions, exhibition, etc.) help to get the text out to its target audience. There isn't really a set structure, but I guess you could just do a paragraph on each of the three topics (e.g. introduce the target audience, then talk about text, then industry) for each case study? As long as they're really sharp and analytical and use specific examples from the case studies. You don't have to compare the case studies so you can just talk about each one in turn.

As for past answers, I just googled 'MS4 exemplars' and a bunch of teacher blogs and stuff came up, so try that. Good luck!

Same way you would in good old GCSE English: make your point, give an example from the text and analyse how it is constructed/why the choice was made/what effect it has on an audience. Such as: 'for example in the third episode of Community, Jeff refers to Britta as "..." which indicates...' or 'the narrative structure is unconventional as it does not seem to follow Todorov's theory of equilibrium: for instance the film begins at a point of disruption with the main character facing...and this makes the audience feel uncomfortable and unsettled from the outset...'

Hey we havent been taught the same way as you just because in the exam depending on the question certain texts/industry may fit better so you can be more flexible when choosing where to apply your industries. Basically even though you've been told to do TV for section A, in the exam if you think what you know about your texts for TV will fit a section B question better do that instead! To revise what 'sweet lemon' said is right we have been given a very similar diagram and just revise like 2 good points for every section for each of your texts and just keep it specific with examples e.g. episode numbers, actors names, directors, and apply them to the question (which will resemble one of the headings from that diagram).
For structure it really varies but we have always done one text after the other answering the question, this allows you to write a fully fleshed out case study and response for each text and shows youre clear and systematic raher than all over the place. But! i have seen example essays where the texts are melded together as the answer goes through each point which could also work.
As long as your specific and actually answer the question you should be fine.
Also! just as a tip if you're panicking for time if you can write a really good essay but only do two texts in the time you only drop 3 marks for not writing about all three texts, that can seem like a lot with grade boundaries but if you can get in the 20's with only two texts it can work out worthwhile to lose the 3 marks for the sake of writing a shitty answer.
Sorry for such a long paragraph hope it helps!!

Also! just as a tip if you're panicking for time if you can write a really good essay but only do two texts in the time you only drop 3 marks for not writing about all three texts, that can seem like a lot with grade boundaries but if you can get in the 20's with only two texts it can work out worthwhile to lose the 3 marks for the sake of writing a shitty answer.

As long as your specific and actually answer the question you should be fine.

I strongly disagree with this - 3 marks is 10%! If you're running out of time just give yourself a couple of minutes to fit in some very specific reference to the third case study, even if it's not fully developed or is very short. If you haven't got the marks by that point in your response, it's pretty unlikely that the two extra minutes spent on two case studies are going to get you >3 more marks!

That diagram is based on the content list in the course specification, so it's basically WJEC's outline of what to know for each case study.

Do you think Marketing will come up in section B?