Film & Media Studies

This course examines the significant theoretical approaches that inform Film Studies. Topics will vary from year to year but may include realism, formalism, semiotics, narratology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and/or postmodernism.

An introduction to Film and Television Studies explores the relationship between film and television and provides students with a range of tools and techniques for analyzing screen texts. The first half of the course examines the conventions of feature film and television production, exploring the impact that technical and aesthetic techniques have on meaning and audience responses. Areas of study include: mise en scène, cinematography, editing, and sound design for film and television. The focus of the second half of the course is on the industrial and institutional history of film and television with emphasis on the Hollywood film and TV industry. Areas of study include: the production, reception, and characteristics of cult media, art film, and of film and television genres; and the historical development of the star system, blockbusters, auteur studies, and the contemporary celebrity industry.

This course exposes students to the challenges of listening critically to music in all styles and media, and expressing a considered argument about its cultural significance, aesthetic quality, and ideological implications using non-specialist, accessible language. By indicating and exemplifying an appropriate scholarly recourse to today's multi-media resources for musical study and research, it lays the groundwork for on-going investigations of music, both as a distinct discipline and an integral component of diverse cultural practices.

Cinema has typically been conceived of as an essentially visual phenomenon – films, it is often said, are essentially moving pictures. Sound has, nevertheless, played an important role from the beginnings of cinema, a fact which has been acknowledged in the detailed historical, theoretical, and critical work on film music, and film sound more generally. This course provides an overview of this field of research, and provides students with a clearer understanding of and greater sensitivity to the soundtrack. The course begins by setting up an introductory framework for the understanding of sound, which considers the relationship between music and other aspects of film sound (speech, ambient sound, sound effects), as well as the nature of the relationship between sound and image. Subsequent sessions consider the evolution of sound technology and its impact on the aural aesthetics of film; the use of classical and popular music in film scores; the emergence of sound designers, in contemporary cinema; and the distinctive and innovative use of sound and music by a number of "sound stylists."

The Art of the Short Fiction Film begins in a basement in Paris in 1895, with the Lumiere brothers` screening of twelve short films, an evening program that heralded the advent of the modern industry of the moving picture. It concludes with the contemporary dominance of YouTube, Vimeo and Netflix, in an age in which digital filmmaking has catapulted the short film once again to international prominence. Between these two dates, the class will look at the subordinate role of the one- and two-reeler "short subjects" during the Hollywood Studio Era; analyze the role of the European and North American film schools and international film festivals in the elevation of the short film after the mid-1950s; study classical and post-classical cinematic technique; trace the reimagining of the Hollywood film studios in the digital era by examining the role of the short film, both as filmed scenario and as possible harbinger of a change or mutation in the viewing habits of its global audience.

This course guides students to conduct "inquiry learning", in order to stimulate film research interests, expand artistic knowledge, and enhance artistic aesthetic experience. Through the course, students interpret Chinese and foreign classic films and establish universal application Movie analysis mode. Starting from the language of the film, it analyzes cases of excellent Chinese and foreign films, and explains and discusses the basic aesthetic characteristics of film art. It mainly involves six aspects of Chinese and foreign film history, film theme, film plot, editing and montage, picture language and sound effect dialogue.

The course responds to key contemporary events within the creative industries. It presents cutting-edge research that analyses current issues within its specific cultural, social, and political contexts e.g. decolonization, value, entrepreneurship, digitization, labor, globalization, Brexit, and Covid. The course provides students with the building blocks to generate their critical analyses of the sector, and the capacity to apply theory to practice and real-world case studies.