Module description
This module provides students with experience and training in the making of short films on digital video based on the principles of 'critical media practice'. By this, we mean short films that argue against or question dominant conventions, values, and beliefs in media and society, especially with regard to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and/or urgent social and political issues inherent in technology, landscape, environment, cityscape, public space, temporality, labor, political power, social justice, inequality, democracy or threats to it, post-coloniality, and migration.
Students taking the module will have some prior practical experience of filmmaking on digital video (ideally in an academic setting) and of using at least 'prosumer' or 'semi-professional' digital video equipment, although the module will still provide practice-based training and experience in various aspects of pre-production, production, and post-production (e.g. screenwriting, directing, cinematography, sound recording, screen performance, and editing).
Students will work collaboratively in small teams, and with supervision, on the creation of original audio-visual outputs, which will be mainly non-fiction or documentary films not longer than 30 minutes in duration. The module will be taught by ten weekly 3-hour workshops, supplemented by supervised practical work and self-guided learning.
All practical work will be expected to be informed by relevant scholarship. Hence, the module will teach techniques and skills of audio-visual communication and argumentation, complementary to the verbal techniques and skills typically required in other MA modules. At the end of the module, the films will be shown to an audience consisting of the whole class and invited guests, at which the student filmmakers will take questions about their films from the audience.
Based in the Department of Film Studies and mainly catering to MA Film Studies students, the module will be innately interdisciplinary and therefore open also to MA students from the Departments of CMCI, DDH, Music, and Liberal Arts, providing they can demonstrate sufficient prior practical experience of filmmaking on digital video.