Film (Extended Degree) BA (Hons)

This module will introduce students to experimental filmmaking and encourage them to explore modes of creativity beyond the mainstream. It will provide critical overviews of selected experimental filmmakers and movements and encourage students to combine practice and theory through critical evaluation of their own productions. The module will alternate critical and historical sessions with practical sessions that will encourage students to produce critically informed work that challenges prevailing conventions. Students will also explore different types of experimentation and interrogate the boundaries between experimental and mainstream film.

In a landscape of abundant media platforms and fragmented viewing habits, how can traditional media content be reconfigured to take advantage of the potentials offered by transmedia storytelling? The 360-degree commissioning process is part of the media production landscape, meaning traditional forms of film and TV routinely extend their range and interact with audiences across multiple platforms, screens and formats. Although transmedia storytelling plays an important part in film marketing, it also allows filmmakers to expand the core content of their narratives, offering opportunities to create resonant and 'deep' (Rose) media experiences that engages audiences and adds value to the traditional standalone filmic content. In this module, you will learn how to develop your own transmedia portfolio, as well as critically evaluating the potentials of expanded storytelling via (for example) web and mobile content. You will learn techniques for expanding the narrative universe of your core film content across wider platforms. Working from Henry Jenkins’s (2010) idea that the non-repeating spreadability of transmedia entertainment, means that it “is increasingly prominent in our conversations about how media operates in a digital era", in the taught sessions we will critically examine the power of mythmaking, the importance of fan-cultures, and the pleasures of digital archival research, all of which are key to telling stories across media.

This module will give students the opportunity to explore the history and development of the horror film - perhaps the most consistently popular and stylistically experimental of film genres. The module will engage with the ways in which horror has been defined not only through its textual qualities (particularly its uses of sound, music, mise en scene, acting styles and special effects) but also through a variety of production and marketing strategies. The module will therefore enable students to identify and critically explore the film and media cultures through which horror films are made, distributed and understood.

This module is the capstone project in your degree and enables you to concentrate on an area of film practice that is of great interest to you. The module invites you to conduct significant practice-based research utilising your creative skills. Your choice of topic may arise from a specific interest developed through theoretical and/or practical experience on the degree in previous years and/or from extra-curricular or professional contexts. The module is flexible to your interests, passions and future directions: tutors will work with you to help you develop topics that are exciting and innovative. Your in-depth research skills will translate into polished final outputs, equipping you with knowledge of contemporary film practice, technological insight and a professional and employable skill set and expertise relevant to further study at MA and PhD level.

In Screen Adaptations you will examine the practical and theoretical debates around the translation of a variety of ‘texts’ into films and television programmes. A broad-range of case studies is covered, from adaptations of ‘high art’ such as Shakespeare and literary fiction, to the conversion of popular fiction, comic-books and supposedly ‘unfilmable’ sources. As well as considering issues of authorship and originality, you will consider the complex relationship between film, television and other media forms, from music and video-gaming to theme-park rides. Films and programmes under discussion are likely to include examples such as Adaptation, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Sherlock, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Band of Brothers, and The Lord of the Rings franchise amongst others

This module will introduce students to transnational cinema with an aim to help them understand creative practices and filmmaking contexts beyond Europe and North America. It will provide critical overviews of transnational cinema, migration and diaspora, national and anticolonial positionalities in relation to film movements, and production and distribution contexts. The module will enable students to critically engage not only with films beyond the western mainstream or arthouse cinema but also with how globalisation necessitates transnational collaborations as a survival strategy to counter Hollywood’s dominance in the global market. Students will also engage with debates and discussion on, for example, Transnational vs Global/World cinema, First/Second/Third Cinema, Imperfect Cinema/Aesthetics of Hunger and film manifestoes from the Global South. Through critical, historical, and productional sessions along with screenings of films, the module will enable students to produce critically informed work that challenges prevailing understanding about cinema furthering the goal of decolonising the film curriculum.

This module involves researching and writing an 8,000-10,000 word dissertation on a topic of your own choosing. The module offers you the opportunity to engage with a contemporary topic and a set of case studies that you are personally invested in. The learning materials for this module will guide you through the fundamental requirements of preparing and researching a dissertation. Our supervisory team will also share their research experiences and tips on overcoming research problems. You will also be assigned to a supervisor who will offer guidance on how to shape your particular idea into a sustained argument. As the culmination of your degree programme, the dissertation allows you demonstrate your individual engagement with your subject area, and to display the critical skills that you have developed while studying within the Media & Film subject group.

Through critical and theoretical study of gender, sex and sexualities across a wide range of media this module untangles the relationships of community, entertainment, identity, pleasure and media technologies. It explores key theoretical approaches to gender and sexuality and engages with the heated social, cultural and political debates over how gender, sex and sexuality ‘should be’ represented. We examine framings of masculinity and femininity, and explore gender beyond the binary, building on both developments in queer and transgender studies, as well as on the long history of different understandings of gender in cultures around the world. This module thus takes a broad and transnational approach to questions of gender, sexuality, media and human rights, and works to decolonise understandings of these concepts. Similarly, questions of sex and sexuality – recognised as more than effects or questions of biology – will be interrogated. Exploring ideas about, and attitudes to, gender and sexuality and the role(s) that media of various kinds have played in making meanings about intimate life students will examine contemporary media texts and the conceptual framings of ‘the sexualisation of culture’, alongside social media practices and experiences in order to investigate identity politics, sexual subcultures and theories of mediated representations and practices. Our analyses will trace the ways dominant discourses of sexuality from the past jostle for position in contemporary media particularly about gendered and 'normal' vs 'transgressive' sexualities. Gendered relations within media industries themselves are also explored. As we engage with the ways people have moved beyond ‘simple’ consumption of media, to become producers of their own representations via social media platforms, digital technologies and other media artefacts we also explore the possibilities for subverting traditional understandings of what it means to gendered and/or sexed in the 21st Century.

Following a case study approach, you will investigate the idea of film festivals in historical, conceptual and organisational terms. The module will explore how film festivals are developed, structured and organised. The aim is to consider how we, as scholars of film, media and culture, might understand and navigate film festivals and in so doing gain a clearer understanding of their dynamics, practices and their impact upon industry and society. As such, the module will illustrate the key ways in which film festivals have been framed in scholarship and how these ideas might begin to be applied in the real world. In this way, the module encourages you to develop a critical response to filmic events and, in so doing, reflect upon their broader historical, cultural and socio-political significance. The lectures will introduce key concepts that will be explored in the seminars. The main part of each seminar will focus upon group tasks and discussion of the theme, specific event or set texts. Seminar discussions are also intended to develop your communication skills and your ability to develop and respond to ideas in a collaborative environment. You are expected to prepare for the sessions by studying the set text(s) for each week, and also by carrying out additional recommended reading/viewing (which will be indicated in the module guide and on the e–Learning Portal).

You will develop your understanding of academic conventions in UK higher education aligned to your level of study, including expectations around critical analysis, structure, argumentation, evidencing, and referencing. The module focuses on developing communication strategies that will help you express your ideas clearly and coherently in written assignments and spoken activities. You will also reflect on your current academic and language skills and develop strategies for development ahead of your assessments.