Film & Media Studies

This course starts off by investigating whether montage appears as a general artistic principle across the arts approximately at the same time or whether we can identify a single art medium as its birthplace. Drawing on pinnacles of modernist art including futurist and dada collages and photomontages, film city symphonies, and city novels the course analyzes stylistic, narratological, and perceptual aspects of montage in different media and their relations to broader cultural formations such as urban modernity and radical politics.

This course introduces what is journalism, meanings of media, news, model and system of news, news organization and news production and news readers.

In this foundational course, students are introduced to key concepts, approaches and perspectives in the academic and public debates on the role of digital media in contemporary culture and society. Students learn about the history of digital media from a global perspective, which enables them to qualify claims about the newness of so-called ‘new media’ and challenge universalizing claims about the impact of digital media not only on Western but also on non-Western communities. The course develops students’ understanding of the cultural, social, political, economic, and technical contexts in which digital developments emerge and helps them think about digital media holistically, from their design and production to their content and use. Historical milestones in digital transformations are highlighted, along with discussions of the very latest technological developments and their potential impact on diverse communities around the world.

Content creators serve as powerful cultural intermediaries. They have the power to shift representation away from traditional screen industries, bringing into sharp focus key questions of social justice in the digital age, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class, while evolving, reiterating and challenging textual traditions and conventions of film and television. In exploring the interplay of technologies, creativity, screen works and everyday life, this course applies prior learning in film and television to the emergent cultural form of content creation as social media entertainment, analyzing processes of both production and reception. 

This course introduces the storyboard as a thinking tool, through which creative ideas are developed and given detail. Students learn to employ artistic tools like framing, camera movement, character movement and key visuals within the larger structure of the entire narrative. Topics include the role of the storyboard within the animation pipeline and its relevance to concept development, script development, animatics and production design. The course focuses on the aspects of animation production design that support the dramatic impact of the story. Further insight will be gained into the connection between visual development and storyboard through exercises and assignments on character design, environment and prop design.

This course examines the role of the media in shaping the global and local societies, as well as the ways in which growing access to information fosters knowledge sharing and citizen participation in public affairs and creates social problems such as privacy infringement, misinformation, and polarization. It explores if the global media really changes the power structure of information flow, production, and dissemination or actually reinforces the imbalance. It questions whether media technologies amount to an individual’s emancipation or serve as another form of exploitation. It explores the role of the media in Hong Kong, China, and the rest of the world and how in a multipolar cultural world, how citizens contribute to the conversation on local and global issues. The course reflects on critical social values such as the freedom of expression, information, privacy, transparency, and investigate the impact of the social media, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.

The discovery of "The Seventh Art" of cinema can also take place through documentary cinema, which is not so much an “alternative cinema” as an art that is simply less visible. The course provides an opportunity to explore together—during the first half of the 20th century—this “alternative cinema” (G. Gauthier) or this “other side of cinema” (J. Breschand) in order to understand its definitions and evolution.

In this upper division course, students acquire skills and techniques to be effective as a film and media producer. The course covers creative producer's responsibilities, including working in various genres and formats, working with talent, creating a joint vision, pitching, managing a budget and shooting schedule, and developing a marketing and release strategy. This course is only open to third year students and above. 

This course teaches the basic building blocks of radio and podcasting. Students learn how to use recording and editing equipment as well as creative approaches to interviewing and sound design. Though primarily practical, there is an emphasis on learning techniques for telling audio stories through listening and discussion of works produced by audio producers both here in the UK and around the world. Students are expected to pitch, record, and edit a seven-minute documentary. 

This course explores the representation of love and romance in Hollywood, Bollywood, global art and European cinema. Romantic movies invariably revolve around the obstacles that the couple has to negotiate, overcome, or succumb to. Obstacles such as the social marginalization of the couple, death, jealously and rivalry, differences of class, race or ethnicity tend to be genre specific. The course juxtaposes and compares films and genres from different cultural contexts. Examples include melodramatic love stories, queer romance in European arthouse films, wedding films in global art cinema, interethnic romantic dramas and films about the end of love or the breakdown of marriage.