Job roles in the media industry: R093 revision

Creative roles come up with the ideas and the look, sound and words of a product.

• Animator: creates moving images, frame by frame or with keyframes, in 2D or 3D, for films, adverts, games and websites.
• Content creator: plans, makes and posts content, often for social media, and responds to the audience. Many do the whole job alone.
• Copywriter: writes the words of a product, such as slogans, advert text and web copy, matching the tone to the audience and purpose.
• Graphic designer: designs visual products such as logos, posters, packaging and page layouts, following the brief and the client's house style.
• Illustrator or graphic artist: draws original artwork by hand or digitally for books, comics, games and adverts.
• Photographer: plans and takes still images, controlling the lighting, framing and composition, and often edits them.
• Script writer: writes scripts for films, television, radio, adverts, podcasts and games: the dialogue, scene headings and directions.
• Web designer: plans how a website looks and how people use it: layout, navigation, colours and fonts, usually as wireframes and mock-ups.

Technical roles operate the equipment and software that turn the plans into a product.

• Camera operator: films the shots planned on the storyboard, with the right framing, angles and movement.
• Games programmer or developer: writes the code that makes a game work, from the controls and rules to the menus.
• Sound editor: works on recorded audio in post-production: cleaning up dialogue, adding sound effects and music, and balancing the levels.
• Audio technician: sets up and runs the sound equipment during recording, places microphones and monitors the levels so the recording is clean.
• Video editor: assembles the footage into the finished sequence, cutting shots and adding transitions, titles and sound.
• Web developer: builds the website in code from the web designer's plans, makes it work on different devices and fixes faults.

Senior roles lead the project, make the big decisions and are answerable for the result.

• Campaign manager: plans and runs a promotional campaign across platforms, setting its goals, schedule and budget, and checks how well it works.
• Creative director: sets the creative vision and style of a project, leads the creative team and approves their work.
• Director: decides how a film, programme, advert or game sequence is performed and filmed, and directs the cast and crew to achieve it.
• Editor: in publishing, decides what is published and checks it for accuracy and quality, leading the writers (for example the editor of a magazine).
• Production manager: organises the practical side, such as crew, equipment, locations, schedules and budget, so production runs on time.

Watch the word 'editor'. A video editor is a technical post-production role; an editor in publishing is a senior role.

Products move through pre-production (planning), production (making) and post-production (finishing). Some roles belong mainly to one phase. A script writer works in pre-production, a camera operator and audio technician in production, and a video editor and sound editor in post-production.

Other roles span several phases. A director is involved from planning the shots to approving the final edit. A production manager or campaign manager keeps the whole project on track from the first meeting to the launch. A web designer plans before the web developer builds, and both may test the finished site together.

A big production has a specialist for every job. A small project, such as a local café's social media video or a one-person YouTube channel, cannot pay for a team, so one person may plan, film, edit and post. Many creatives also work freelance, hired for one project at a time, and take on whichever roles that project needs.

The specification asks you to explain this link: the size and scale of a project decide how many people work on it, and so how many roles each person covers. It does not ask for the specific skills each role needs, so spend your revision on what each role does and how it contributes to the product.

Job roles were worth between 6 and 10 marks on each of the four papers we analysed. Typical questions ask you to describe one responsibility of a role (two marks: the task, then what it achieves), to explain how a role would contribute to the product in the scenario, or, for six marks, to explain two ways a named role contributes to a campaign. Those six-mark questions are marked in levels, so each way needs a clear explanation tied to the scenario.

For how the long answers and pre-production documents are marked, see how R093 is marked.