Fiction Film Production

This unit is designed to develop your skills in film production from the conception of an idea and to successfully realising it on screen.

The aim is to undertake a practical investigation of the standard rules of film production such as compiling, blocking, choreographing and sequencing shots and studying the continuity system.

There will be an emphasis on continuous practice to enable you to build your ability to make successful films supported by a series of structured workshops and practical exercises.

This unit aims to assist you in fully understanding how to work as part of a production team and how to work with performers.

You will have the opportunity to make successful creative and technical decisions enabling you to become a more fluent and effective filmmaker in fiction filmmaking.

Practical Post-Production

This unit aims to enable you to apply the techniques and technologies used in professional post-production.

You will learn how to edit and create a variety of digital effects. You will then be given a series of digital film based challenges that demonstrate that you can apply what you have learnt in your own practice.

The unit will equip you with an understanding of the techniques and technologies that underpin post-production and digital effects work in digital film production and give you the opportunity to explore in a systematic and creative way the relationships between post-production technologies and the creation of meaning in a moving image text. It will also develop your capacity to critically evaluate current and emerging digital film post-production techniques and technologies and enhance your practical skills in the selection and operation of appropriate tools and technologies for a digital film-based post-production.

Truth And Telling

This unit focuses on the creative issues and decisions that lie at the heart of storytelling through documentary, or experimental form. It will look at the role of the filmmaker in the meaning-making process through their choices, uses of technology, and cultural influences. 

It will consider the different ways in which filmmakers understand their own experiences and those of their viewers.

You will learn about the importance of different approaches to filmic techniques that reflect, cultural, ethical, technological, and phenomenological scholarship in film theory and practice.

You will develop the relevant analytical skills needed to work as a self-reflective film practitioner. You will learn how different modes of production can be utilised to become a more conscious filmmaker.

In the course of the unit, you will make a short factual film. The film can be documentary, or it can be an experimental work. You will also produce a critical contextual study that documents and reflects on your understanding of the ideas introduced in this unit in relation to your working processes throughout the making of the film, from initial idea to finished film. 

Film Analysis

Central Syllabus Question: Does the meaning of a film reside in the narrative of the film itself or in the relationships that viewers have with the film?

Understanding fiction films is a complex process. This is reflected in the current state of film theory, where a range of analytical strategies competes for our attention, each succeeding in offering only a partial view of any film. The impact of this is that the meaning of a film becomes something that is not absolute; instead a film’s meaning is subject to change, and is more a matter of negotiation between viewer and film. 

This process of exchange is transacted in a variety of theoretical currencies, and you need to select the most appropriate mode of analysis, and to understand the limitations that of necessity, this imposes. To encourage you to develop these skills, the module takes a range of film texts and gradually introduces a range of film theories. 

This shows: the diversity of contemporary film theory; the shifting nature of film texts; how meaning is influenced by theory; and suggests that understanding films requires considerable sophistication, and ability, on the part of the film analyst. 

Aims: 

• To enable you to adopt an informed and sophisticated approach in using film theory. 
• To deploy a wide range of analytical strategies in the critical appraisal of cinema forms and institutions. 
• To enable you to produce coherent analytical appraisals of contemporary and historical cinema through the deployment of a range of theoretical models. 
• To understand the limitations and strengths of a range of film theories. 
• To develop an awareness of the historical development of film theory. 
• To acquire skills in detailed textual analysis. 
• To enhance your awareness of the specificity of meaning within films. 

Digital Film Project

• To understand how critical thought, research and theory can feed into practice to assist production development.
• Effective production, by working in production groups or individually with a supervisor, leading to a film or written outcome.
• A systematic and creative way to handle the relationships between the proposal, treatment, synopsis, script, shooting script and other applicable production documentation and potential production outcomes.
• An understanding of the film industry and its processes