I suppose a good place to start would be to consider answering the question – why study film? but as you’re already sitting here I can assume that each of you has and answer of your own to that question. So let’s begin with that by taking a few minutes for you to write down a short response : why are you studying Film?
In an increasingly media-saturated world, the study of film, in all its forms, holds a prominent place in our critical understanding of the modern world.
For well over a century, film has represented one of the most powerful global means of communicating the local, national, and transnational stories that matter to humankind. Understanding the power of films to reflect reality is part of being a culturally literate and engaged citizen in the fullest sense. The study of cinema is important on a microcosmic and a macrocosmic scale: it allows you to explore the interconnectedness of personal visions, artistic and technological developments, social changes, as well as processes by which cultures and nations are defined through audiovisual means.
• Young adults spend a great deal of their leisure time watching films. it has been so for much of the twentieth century, but the multi-channel streaming on demand world of the twenty-first century means this is ever more so the case.
• Film has become a vitally important part of contemporary culture which is more and more saturated by visual media.
• Our culture depends on literacy of the electorate – an electorate which gleans its information largely from visual media.
• Film consists of codes, images, and messages, just as traditional literature does, and we develop our means to make meaning when we study this form of expression.
• The way that good film makers manipulate our understanding by the use of colour and motifs, camera angles, editing, lighting and sound is reminiscent of the way that good writers use language to create understanding at a deep level. We need to study and understand these mechanisms as much as those of Shakespeare or Dickens
• Such film analysis can help us gain a better understanding of the director’s intentions. By examining camera movement, camera angle, sound, editing, time manipulation and other aspects, and then discussing and writing about these elements, we consider the narrative and the choices the director made in a critical way that leads to his purpose.
• Because film as an immediacy and all-encompassing manner, it is all too often passively viewed. We as the audience need to develop not only an appreciation for it to move us but realize how and why it does so.
• There are films that require more from audience than to simply watch. films that challenge our assumptions or allow us to consider new ideas or old ideas from new perspectives. Films are part of the reflection and shaping of a culture.
• Film has become a vitally important part of contemporary culture which is more and more saturated by visual media.
• Our culture depends on literacy of the electorate – an electorate which gleans its information largely from visual media.
• Film consists of codes, images, and messages, just as traditional literature does, and we develop our means to make meaning when we study this form of expression.
• The way that good film makers manipulate our understanding by the use of colour and motifs, camera angles, editing, lighting and sound is reminiscent of the way that good writers use language to create understanding at a deep level. We need to study and understand these mechanisms as much as those of Shakespeare or Dickens
• Such film analysis can help us gain a better understanding of the director’s intentions. By examining camera movement, camera angle, sound, editing, time manipulation and other aspects, and then discussing and writing about these elements, we consider the narrative and the choices the director made in a critical way that leads to his purpose.
• Because film as an immediacy and all-encompassing manner, it is all too often passively viewed. We as the audience need to develop not only an appreciation for it to move us but realize how and why it does so.
• There are films that require more from audience than to simply watch. films that challenge our assumptions or allow us to consider new ideas or old ideas from new perspectives. Films are part of the reflection and shaping of a culture.
