MA Filmmaking (Cinematography)

This module teaches you a range of skills that equip you to perform your specialist role in Cinematography to a professional level. Competence in these skills equips you to participate in a variety of connected Programme activities and in work that leads toward your Final Project.

Cinematography Specialist Skills:

• Tuition in a broad range of camera, lighting and grip equipment (Black Magic, Red Epic, Arri SR2)
• Insight into the role of the cinematographer across a broad spectrum of screen formats
• Introduction to critical and theoretical aspects of visual narration for the screen
• Introduction to the principles of screen grammar and alternatives
• Experience of a broad range of camera department roles: Director of Photography, Camera Operator, Focus-puller, Gaffer, Camera Assistant, Spark and Grip
• Introduction to standard on-set procedures
• A stimulating environment in which to develop your creative, aesthetic and visual narration skills
• Encouragement to experiment, research and present your work in progress
• The opportunity to develop your collaborative, communication and organisational skills on live film projects

This module explores broad questions including what narratives are, how they differ from non-narratives, what forms they may take and what functions they serve. It also looks at how elements of narrative creation and screen production contribute to the intellectual and emotional impact of various screen narrative examples.

The speakers include a mix of practitioners who work in the screen industries and theorists who study narrative in traditional, alternative, cross-cultural and new media forms. Examples will be drawn from a range of fiction and non-fiction sources, depending on the speakers’ own interests, and include short films, documentary and feature films, tv drama, and online media.

Can film and digital media bring about social and political change? How do such films work, and what models are there for how filmmakers might relate to their subjects? Further, how are such films funded and distributed - how does their reach differ from conventional cinema and broadcast products?

This module will introduce you to activist filmmaking and digital media for social change. The module will be relevant for you both if your interest is primarily theoretical, and/or practical - for instance if you are interested in working in this area.

The module will give you a grounding in current debates in the field and, as well as exposing you to a range of contemporary projects and practices, some of the history of activist media.

Amongst the sessions and topics covered will be current film representations of activism, the history of activist and alternative media, a workshop in participatory media techniques, and case study sessions and in contemporary web-based projects.

The module will help you gain a practical and critical knowledge of contemporary approaches to activist media practice across different platforms, as well as the history of activist/community/participatory media.

Tanya Nash

This module will look at adapting stories for a variety of platforms – film,
television, the web and gaming. Each week will focus on a specific case study. Students will discover how to assess the components of the source material: its concept, its characters and its story potential for both a marketplace and a specific platform.

The adaption of ideas, stories and characters is happening continually across a range of screen media and platforms. Understanding adaptation is key to working successfully in media industries today. This module will look at adapting stories for a variety of platforms – film, television, the web and gaming. Each week will focus on a specific case study. Students will discover how to assess the components of the source material: its concept, its characters and its story potential for both a marketplace and a specific platform.

The process of adaptation also involves the skills of script editing and rewriting. And this will also help students to edit and rewrite their own original material.

Reading List:

Aronson, Linda (2010) The 21st Century Screenplay, Allen and Unwin (Ch 19, pp155 - 158)

Seger, Linda (1992) The Art of Adaptation: Turning fact and fiction into film
(Henry Holt & Co)

Krevolin, Ricard W (2003) How to Adapt Anything into a screenplay, John
Wiley and Sons

Hutcheon, Linda (2012), A Theory of Adaptation, Routledge

In order to be able to make sense of what is happening now in our culture of moving images, we need to understand its past – not in the sense of teleological development but in terms of how untimely sensibilities and ideas embodied in obsolete images and technologies keep on reappearing, inadvertently perhaps, in the present. This module situates itself within the emerging field of inquiry called “media archaeology,” which searches through the archives in order to account for the forces that make up the contemporary world. The module will look at the deep history of audiovisual mediations through specific “turning points” so as to understand the recurrent forces, motives and forms of experience that have animated the movement of images for the past 400 years. Furthermore, it seeks new methodological approaches to understand the history of technical images, which bridge the rift between criticism and creation, that is, between thinking about and (re)inventing images. In this way, the module requires students to critically reflect on their own relationship to moving image media, relationships that may be productive, poetic and arbitrary as much as they are disciplined, rationalised and controlled.

This module introduces you to the fundamentals of video camera operation. Over 5 practical hands-on workshop sessions you learn how to effectively operate a video camera. A new topic is introduced each week and you spend the majority of classroom time developing operational skills and completing hands-on assignments.

For the remainder of the term, you work in pairs on two shooting exercises. In one exercise, you will perform the role of camera operator, and on the other you will perform the role of focus puller. Tutorial support is provided and you will participate in a group screening of completed film exercises in the final week.

The moving image created a revolution in perception. It changed much more than the media: it opened new ways of seeing. Fairly quickly after about 1906, the standard forms of the modern cinema began to stabilise; just as later TV would stabilise around the half-hour segment and the 30-second advert. This module focuses on those who refused to settle down, and who continued the immense deregulation of perception inaugurated by the cinema in 1896.

Between the industries of cinema, TV and digital on one side and art institutions on the other, generations of artists have worked in and on moving image technologies to offer alternative projections of the world. Sometimes personal, sometimes spiritual, sometimes political, this diverse body of work is both a treasury of advanced forms of creativity, and a storehouse of techniques and ways of thinking for new generations.

Experimental Media will address moving image and other recording technologies to analyse the breadth and boundaries of what might be considered an experiment, in artistic, activist and popular forms of media production. Topics may include the idea of beauty, medium-specificity, abstraction, sound, time ‘poor’ and ‘imperfect’ cinema, DIY aesthetics, expanded media and installation works.

This module will reflect on filmmakers who were/are also theorists: their
film work has an edifying relationship to their theory, which offers a unique
opportunity to see theory in action. Moreover, the intimacy such artists have
with the image-making process makes for passionate writing and strong,
compelling ideas. Not coincidently, these are important ideas with currency
for the problems one faces in both making and understanding moving images.
The course will address the work of five theorists drawing from a large pool
that includes Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac,
Sergei Eisenstein, Hollis Frampton, Hito Steyerl, Robert Bresson, Raul Ruiz,
and Bela Balazs.

Reading List:

Brakhage, Stan (1963) Metaphors on Vision, special issue of Film Culture,
n.30, Fall; extract republished in Sitney, P Adams (ed) (1978), The Avant-Garde
Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, Anthology Film Archives, New York.
Bresson, Robert (1986), Notes on the Cinematographer, Quartet Books
Limited.
Deren, Maya (2001) Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde, ed. Bill
Nichols, University of California Press.
Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed and trans Jay Leyda, Harcourt
Brace Janovich New York.
Epstein, Jean. (1981) ‘Bonjour Cinema and other writings’ trans. Tom Milne,
Afterimage no. 10
Epstein, Jean. (Spring, 1977) ‘Magnification and other writings’, October 3.
Espinosa, Julia García (2000), ‘For an Imperfect Cinema’ trans Julianne Burton,
Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26; reprinted in Robert Stam and Toby Miller
(eds) (2000), Film and Theory: An Anthology, Blackwell, New York, 287-297
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/ImperfectCinema.
html
Frampton, Hollis (2009), On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters, ed.
Bruce Jenkins, MIT Press.
Gidal, Peter (1989), Materialist Film, Routledge, London.
Gidal, Peter (ed) (1976). Structural Film Anthology. BFI, London.
Ruiz, Raul (1995), The Poetics of Cinema trans. Brian Holmes, Paris Editions
Dis Voir.
Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul (eds) Jean Epstein Critical Essays and New
Translations, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 287-310.
Solanas, Fernando and Octavio Getino (1976), ‘Towards a Third Cinema’
in Bill Nichols (ed), Movies and Methods, Volume One, University
of California Press, Berkeley, 44-64; also available online at http://
documentaryisneverneutral.com/words/camasgun.html
Steryerl, Hito (no date) The Wretched of the Screen, Sternberg Press, e-flux
journal
Steyerl Hito (November, 2009) ‘In defense of the poor image’ e-flux journal
Vertov, Dziga (1984) Kino Eye trans. Kevin O’Brien, University of California
Press.

This practice module gives an overview of what a film producer needs to understand about the development, production and distribution of film content.

Working in teams, the module enables you to develop a critical view of the different roles of a producer. The development skills include understanding the principles of script analysis and script editing; developing a project from source material; collaboration with writers and directors; pitching; negotiating the deal; publicity and marketing; sales, distribution and exhibition; co-production; financing; legal and financial.

The production skills include budgeting and scheduling; managing the production; post-production techniques; editing, sound and music. The module will provide an introduction and context for the development of a ‘reflective practitioner’ approach to the producing process.

This module considers the relationship of documentary to re-presenting ‘reality’ and its various ‘truth claims.’ It explores documentary production in its changing social and historical contexts, and across its different distribution platforms, and deals with current debates about documentary ethics and aesthetics. Taught by a range of lecturers (mainly) from the Media & Communications Department, it encompasses both Anglophone and some international documentary traditions, and historical examples from the early Soviet avant-garde to contemporary documentary.

This module introduces you to the fundamentals of sound recording.

In the first five weeks you will learn recording, manipulation and editing techniques that are appropriate to the design of sound for narrative film and television.

For the remainder of the term you undertake a practical project with tutorial support. You present your completed project to the class in the final week and evaluate your work in a short reflective essay.

Photography has been understood as the founding innovation for all that we have in our visual world today. But what was that innovation? To bring a world in motion to a halt? The first verifiable evidence that there is such a thing as the past? The start of an all-out mania to get hold of an object or an experience with an image? When these static images were aligned in a sequence and run through a projector, we called them movies.

This module will examine the values and meanings once attached to photography and film as regards their relationship to objective reality, to history and to the part they play for our sense of intimacy in being in the world. Much of photography and film theory have required a second thought these days, as the way we make, look at, and more importantly value images has changed significantly many canonical texts. This module will question the differences between still and moving images and assess their significance in today’s visual social world.

Visual Storytelling invites you to make an engaging visual sequence consisting of between 8-12 still images. Inspired by artist-photographer Duane Michals, the module challenges you to create a sequence of still images that conveys a story, an idea, an impulse or an emotional tone that develops between the opening frame and the end-frame. And beyond.

Module Premise:

1. Only the impossible is worth attempting. Only the invisible is worth photographing.

2. The cut (between frames) is the primary locus of meaning in sequential art.

3. Arranging your images to prioritise meaning in the cuts (not vice-versa) is the path to engaging visual story content.

Your sequence may be linear or non-linear and may be classically structured, circular or experimental in nature.

This is a short course focusing on writing for existing TV drama series,
focusing on the two series Doctor Who and Holby City. You will be expected
to analyse episodes and story arcs of an existing TV series and present a
verbal critique of that show.
You will also develop original episode stories using the characters from and
operating according to the rules of the world of your designated show in
‘beat sheet’ or ‘step outline’ form.

Reading List:

Bignall, Jonathan & Lacey, Stephen, 2000. British Television Drama: Past,
Present and Future. London: Pan MacMillan. Day, Martin and Cornell, Paul,
The Discontinuity Guide (Dr Who).
Del Valle, Robert, 2008. The One-Hour Drama Series: Producing Episodic
Television. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press. Douglas, Pamela, 2011. Writing
the TV Drama Series. Studio City: Michael Weise Productions.
Grace, Yvonne, 2014. Writing for Television Series, Serials and Soaps.
Harpenden: Kamera Books.
Yorke, John, 2014. Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey into Story. London:
Penguin Books

The module investigates the nature of media law and ethical regulation for media practitioners primarily in the UK, but with some comparison with the situation in the USA and references to the experiences of media communicators in other countries. The students are directed towards an analysis of media law, as it exists, the ethical debates concerning what the law ought to be, and the historical development of legal and regulatory controls of communication. The theoretical underpinning involves a module of learning the subject of media jurisprudence- the study of the philosophy of media law, media ethicology (the study of the knowledge of ethics/morality in media communication), and media ethicism (the belief systems in the political context that influence journalistic conduct and content). The module evaluates media law and regulation in terms of its social and cultural context. It is taught in one and a half hour lectures and one-hour seminars that involve the discussion of multi-media examples of media communication considered legally and/or morally problematical. Media Law and Ethics is a dynamic subject with dramatic and significant changes and developments occurring from year to year addressing acute issues in journalism, current affairs and politics. As a result, the module content is substantially revised year after year in response to these developments.

This is a practical module teaching essential law for film-makers to an advanced level through the provision of five one hour lectures followed by five two-hour discussion workshops focused on analyzing and problem-solving of actual and fictional scenarios where film productions needed to make correct decisions in relation to the law of the United Kingdom. While the five topics focus on UK film-making law, the principles and concepts apply to other legal jurisdictions.