Write an essay demonstrating the research skills and select one of the research methods and/or topical frameworks that are mentionned down below. You are free to adapt these methods and topics to a case study of your own choice.
Examples of approaches you might take include:
a) The essay may research into the audience contexts that relate to Documentary in general.
b) It can explore a genre of screen content that directly informs the practice of factual filmmaking, or may investigate a particular programme or filmmakers or content creators methods;
c) The essay focuses on researching the area of Factual Screen content
d) The essay shows evidence of research into screen history of documentary filmmaking.
Option 1: Close analysis and storytelling
What is research? How can research and theory be relevant to me as a practitioner? Where does it intersect with my practice? How can I manage information for research purposes and find the right sources for information?
Have you ever watched something and not quite been able to explain why it made you feel a certain way? Close analysis is a key way of understanding screen works effectively, and explaining why they have the impact they do. This session gives the tools for analysing the form of a screen text and places close analysis in a historical context.
Example screening: Citizenfour (Laura Poitras, 2014)
Option 2 Signs, meaning and ethical storytelling
How can two people watching same screen text have two completely different interpretations of it? Why has your understanding of a screen text changed over time? This session explores the creation of signs in screen practice and explores how meaning is generated and understood, and what this means for your ethical responsibilities as a practitioner.
Example screening: The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)
Option 3: Cultural Identity + globalisation
What is a British film or TV show or online video? Does that category even make sense? Now more than ever, practitioners need to develop a critical awareness of their own screen cultures and contexts. This session will consider the problem of thinking of film as based primarily on national identity and will consider the notion of cultural identity.
Example screening: This Is England 86 [TV series] (Shane Meadows, 2010)
Option 4: Genre + diverse narratives
Genre is one of the first methodologies most people develop for judging and explaining screen works, but it is often reduced to simple categories. This session looks at how genre can be used as a way of understanding a screen text but also as a tool for creating and distributing work.
Example screening: Get Out (Jordan Peel, 2017)
Option 5: Ethics + ethics of casting
Every decision you make, whether in front of the camera or behind it, has an ethical consequence. This session asks how ethics impacts the whole industry, asking: how can stories make me think ethically? And what ethical decisions might I have to make as a screen practitioner?
Example screening: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)
Option 6: Digital platforms and new media
What impact has Netflix had on what you watch? How has the digital age changed our expectations about what we will see and what we can make? This session looks at how to exploit the digital revolution as a practitioner, and places the movement in a historical context.
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