Film & Media Studies

This course addresses the effective use of cloud technology in digital cultural and creative projects including: versatile digital publishing, website design, web community development, digital imaging, animation, video and media production management. As a specific objective, we emphasize to cap off a team project more than an individual task. This course takes account of the inter-discipline of humanities and information technology through media application. The learning method focuses on problem solving oriented approach. The learning activity designates a hands-on assignment and requires a complete output in the form of publishable presentation.

This course examines film history and historiography through a series of case studies. In carrying out this investigation students are invited to work with secondary and primary sources held in the library and are encouraged to evaluate the aesthetic, technological, economic, social, and political histories presented in this course. Students examine the role and value of the contextual study of film and are given the opportunity to research and write on selected aspects of film historiography. 

This course examines theoretical concepts and approaches to genre, with an emphasis on the relationship between concept/theory and associated analysis method/approach. In the tutorials, the considerations discussed in the lectures are deepened. Close reading of literature helps to elaborate further on classical approaches to genre, and different ways of textual analysis (formal analysis, narrative analysis). Discourse analysis is also practiced in the tutorials. This course also works on repertoire knowledge: several television programs are shown as examples of specific genres and genre developments. The acquired knowledge and skills are used in an individually and independently performed genre analysis.

In this course, learn about theatre, film, television, and games as storytelling media. The course pays particular attention to the very different ways in which stories may be structured and constructed, and what that means for how the audience watches, experiences, or takes part in the story. The course addresses a number of narrative forms and -structures, such as the Aristotelian tragedy, the classic Hollywood-movie narrative, the television series (serial storytelling) and the narrative game (environmental storytelling). This list seems to suggest that each medium – theatre, film, television, and games – has its own form of storytelling, but that suggestion is incorrect. While it is perhaps true that certain narrative forms have developed in a specific medium, and certain narrative forms are more obvious choices for one medium than for another, media forms are also constantly borrowing from one another. In recent years, for instance, there have been numerous theatre performances that were inspired by games and game-based structures. In such performances, the audience does not merely sit in a chair watching a story unfold; rather, they are led along a set trajectory through various spaces as they themselves take an active role in the story being told. At the same time, an increasing number of game designers are creating digital games that are intended not for play on the computer, but rather on the streets and other public spaces. For that reason, this course focuses on the specific characteristics of various media and on what these mean for the way in which they are able to convey stories; on the other hand, the course also pauses to reflect on the fact that media never exist in isolation. Various media constantly influence one another in their development, meaning they also influence one another in the way they tell stories and the result they hope to achieve through those stories in terms of their audience.