Eduqas GCSE Film Studies US film comparative study overview quiz quiz

Three global non-US films chosen from different continents, studied closely for their shared themes and their many contrasting cultures

One UK mainstream feature film only, examined closely for its use of film form, genre and British social context

Two US mainstream films (1950s and later 1970s or 1980s), key developments in film and technology, and one US independent film

A documentary paired with a silent film, compared for how the moving image and its techniques developed

By the same director

By the same actors

By being released in the same year

By genre

Comparing the two films directly, setting them against each other on the same feature

Describing the first film fully on its own, then describing the second film fully afterwards

Retelling both plots from beginning to end in your own words

Listing the main cast and crew of each of the two films

The total amount of money that is spent on making and then marketing a film

A type or category of film with shared conventions and iconography

The overall running time of a film from its start to its end

The particular country in which a film was filmed and produced

The number of sales representatives a studio employs to promote its films

The way cinema tickets are priced and sold to the watching audience

How a film presents people, groups, places and ideas, carrying values

The editing together of the shots that make up a film's trailer

Past, present, future and imagined times in the film

Camera, sound, editing and lighting techniques used on set

The budget, the cast, the crew and the filming location

Social, cultural, historical, institutional

Woven into close analysis, explaining a formal choice or a representation in light of its era

As a single separate paragraph of background facts placed right before any analysis of the film begins

Left out entirely so that the answer focuses only on the film itself

Only in the introduction and never again in the main body

Any film at all that happens to have been made anywhere within the USA, whatever its studio, its budget, its size or its genre

A film made outside, or with limited support from, the major studios, usually on a smaller budget with more creative freedom

A film made entirely without any actors, using only landscapes and objects

A film that is shown only on television and is never released into cinemas

As part of the comparative pair, set directly against a mainstream film

Only through a short multiple-choice question worth a few marks

In its own single-film extended response

It is not assessed in the written exam at all

Retelling the whole plot in careful detail from the opening scene to the very end

Comparing it only to a big mainstream blockbuster instead of closely analysing the independent film itself

Listing all of the film festivals and award ceremonies it played at

Reading film form for meaning and connecting it to the film's themes and independent qualities