Delivery

2-hr weekly workshop.

These workshops would alternate between a. Seminars (discursive workshops in which key concepts, texts and screen works are discussed) and b. Labs (concepts are applied to the students own screen work in a practical, workshop setting).

In the Lab, students begin to conceptualise, plan, shoot and edit short screen works.  Students would be given instruction in technologies related to:

-       camera operation;

-       lighting;

-       sound acquisition and

-       editing.

Key Texts:

Bordwell, David (2006). The way Hollywood tells it : story and style in modern movies. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif. ; London

Campany, David & ebrary, Inc (2008). Photography and cinema. Reaktion, London

Creeber, Glen (2013). Small screen aesthetics : from TV to the Internet. New York a BFI book published by Palgrave Macmillan

Cubitt, Sean (1998). Digital aesthetics. SAGE, London

Rabiger, Michael (2008). Directing : film techniques and aesthetics (4th ed). Elsevier/Focal Press, Amsterdam ; Boston

Rothman, William & American Council of Learned Societies (2004). The "I" of the camera : essays in film criticism, history, and aesthetics (2nd ed). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ; New York

Key Screen Texts:  TBA

Please refer to ILearn for current information.

This unit wll be delivered through two-hour weekly workshop.

These workshops would alternate between a. Seminars (discursive workshops in which key concepts, texts and screen works are discussed) and b. Labs (concepts are applied to the students own screen work in a practical, workshop setting).

In the Lab, students begin to conceptualise, plan, shoot and edit short screen works.  Students would be given instruction in technologies related to:

-       camera operation;

-       lighting;

-       sound acquisition and

-       editing. 

Week 1 (Seminar)

Topic – Art or Non-art?

Readings:

Thomson-Jones, Katherine (2008). Aesthetics and film. Continuum, London ; New York. Chapter 1 Films as Art.

Jarvie, I. C. (Ian Charles) (1987). Philosophy of the film : epistemology, ontology, aesthetics. Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York. Chapter 2 Arguments Against Films as Art

Wollen, Peter (1976). 'Ontology' and 'Materialism' in Film. Oxford University Press

Introduction to the unit.

Discussion:

-       The relation of film to the profilmic world

-       The relation of film to the other arts

-       Is ‘pure cinema’ possible?

Week 2 (Lab)

Topic – Art or Non-art?

Tour of facility.

OH&S

Introduction to the technology to be used.

Using IMovie or any other NLE tool students attempt to create a short piece of “pure cinema”

Students may shoot their own material or use the material provided.

Week 3 (Seminar)

Topic: Cinema & Photography

Readings:

Campany, David & ebrary, Inc (2008). Photography and cinema. Reaktion, London. Chapter 2 Stillness

Image and Text at Work: ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’ and the Photographic Essay Catharina Graf

Discussion

-       Traditions of photography in screen works

-       Photos in cinematic contexts

-       Photo Essays

Week 4 (Lab)

Topic: Cinema & Photography

Students to make a short screen work that demonstrate a relation between screen culture and photography (for example a digital photo essay).

Week 5 (Seminar)

Topic: The Classical Cinema & Realism

Readings

Hansen, Miriam (1999). The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism. The Johns Hopkins University Press

Watson, Robert (1990). Film and television in education : an aesthetic approach to the moving image. Falmer Press, London ; New York. Chapter: Snapshots to the Long Take

Bordwell, David (2006). The way Hollywood tells it : story and style in modern movies. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif. ; London. Chapter: Intensified Continuity: Four Dimensions

Thomson-Jones, Katherine (2008). Aesthetics and film. Continuum, London ; New York. Chapter 2 Realism.

Week 6 (Lab)

Topic: The Classical Cinema & Realism

Students are to script and shoot a short scene in the bedroom set in the Screen Production Studio following the rules of continuity.

Week 7 (Seminar)

Topic: Montage

Readings:

Eisenstein A Dialectic Approach to Film Form

Aumont, J., & Barnard, T. (2013). Montage. Montréal: Caboose. Chapter: The Fate of Montage

Week 8 (Lab)

Topic: Montage

Film and edit a sequence that demonstrate the functions and techniques of montage. 

Week 9 (Seminar)

Topic: Experimental

Readings

Ruiz, Raúl (2005). Poetics of cinema. Editions Dis Voir, Paris. Chapter 5 For a Shamanic Cinema

Small, Edward S (1994). Direct theory. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale. Chapter: Experimental Film/Video as Direct Theory & Experimental Film/Video as Major Genre

Week 10 (Lab)

Topic: Experimental

Make a short experimental screen work.

Week 11 (Seminar)

Topic: Digital Aesthetics

Creeber, Glen (2013). Small screen aesthetics : from TV to the Internet. New York a BFI book published by Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 1: Towards a new methodology of Media Aesthetics.

Landesman, O. (March 28, 2008). In and out of this world: digital video and the aesthetics of realism in the new hybrid documentary. Studies in Documentary Film, 2, 1, 33-45.

Lev Manovich The Paradoxes of Digital Photography in Photography after photography: Memory and representation in the digital age. (1996). Amsterdam: OPA.

Manovich – What is Digital Cinema

Cubitt, S. (1998). Digital aesthetics. London: SAGE. Chapter: Reading the Interface

Discussion:

-       Purity, pristine and perfect or errors, glitches and artefacts. 

-       Transparency/illusion

-       Digital vs analogue aesthetic

-       Return of manifestoes e.g Eryk Salvaggio’s Six Rules of net.art,

-       Recombinant strategies of re-use, appropriation, media-critique, re-presentation, cut-up, etc

Week 12 (Lab)

Topic: Digital Aesthetics

Make a web mash-up using tools available on YouTube.