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With reference to the films you have studied for this topic, how far can it be said that different kinds of documentaries offer different kinds of spectator experiences?

The spectator experience is dependent on a number of factors including environment of reception for example (where it is seen) and specifically purpose, whether to entertain, inform, educate or persuade. Documentaries are diverse in content and can suggest degrees of realism. Mediated content is often apparent in terms of the selection and...

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‘A common experience for the spectator when watching a documentary is to be manipulated by the filmmakers’. How far do you agree with this statement? (35)

Generally, documentaries are created in order to impart information and, in the main, to persuade the audience into believing a particular viewpoint. The contract between audience and filmmaker is considered along with the code of ethics with regard to documenting the real. For example, there are questions around the time and space created within the story and...

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Key Texts

• Amores Perros (Love’s A Bitch) 2000
• Y Tu Mama También (And Your Mother Too) 2001

Compare some of the stylistic features in the films you have studied discussing how far they make for a distinctive kind of cinema.

The study of so-called World Cinema tends to focus on common themes e.g. power, poverty and conflict, social class, gender representation et al within the confines of what has to be described as Hollywood Hegemony. Ironically ‘international film styles’ or World Cinema has heavily...

Despite the gesture of destroying symbols of corporate power at the end, Fight Club is a film about power and control, not liberation. How far do you agree?

Fight Club is a pre millennium, 1999 film directed by David Fincher. Fincher admits to wanting to create a discourse on corporate power, advertising and a crisis in masculinity which is developed also through the novel’s homoerotic connotations. The film’s screenplay was developed by Jim Uhles and as such, remains close in narrative content to book.

The whole idea of pre millennium...

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Students can find studying spectatorship challenging.  There are many theories of spectatorship, but starting with the theory can lead students to list theoretical ideas rather than engage with the texts. Let’s not forget this A2 Film Studies unit is about “emotional responses” more than critical ones.

This is a good place to start with students. What is “emotion”? What is “popular film”? And what elements of the film experience trigger emotional responses?

Emotion and Popular Film

The term emotion,...

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Crime and cinema have a longstanding relationship.

Going right back to early cinema one of the landmark silent films was The Great Train Robbery (1903). There is a shot in that film which is overtly referenced as the last shot that we see in the American crime film GoodFellas (1990).

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However, whereas we might argue that the criminal life that’s represented in the Hollywood-produced GoodFellas is somewhat glamourised and told in an overtly artificial way (think of how music is used...

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In 1950, when he was only nineteen years old, Jean-Luc Godard, one day to become one the great filmmakers, wrote a piece for the French publication Gazette du Cinema called Towards A Political Cinema. Even at this young age, Godard was aware of cinema’s power to communicate ideas.

Jean-Luc Godard examines a strip of film

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Film history describes a wide range of film movements that have each had an often-short lifespan that’s been quite specific but the legacies of which have endured....[ read full article ] »

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Cinema is always evolving.

The constantly changing quality of film styles is exciting and since the beginnings of film history many nations around the world have developed their own distinct cinematic style and this continues today in the twenty-first century.

During the early part of the twentieth century one country that contributed very significantly to the development of early cinema, was Russia and now, in 2013, almost a century later, the particular film style that emerged from Russia continues to be an...

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Introduction

National identity and cinema are inextricably connected around the world. Within this national cinema dynamic is to be found the question of what it might mean to ‘be British’, or, more specifically, English. It’s a question that’s the basis of a longstanding narrative that relates powerfully to our filmic identity and, more immediately, our identity as an island nation, physically and culturally (and economically) separate to the mainland of Europe.

If you watch, read or listen to the news...

It is important to firstly consider the context of this unit as an exploration of world cinema. World cinema is difficult to define; with most definitions reverting to that it can be defined simply as any cinema outside of the globally dominant industry of Hollywood or any non English language cinema. Often discussed as an alternative to Hollywood’s ‘dream factory’, World cinema tends to be perceived as possessing certain features offering an insight into another country’s culture, a low budget gritty representation of real life or...

Ewan McGregor is a major British film star who has appeared in a wide range of films that have been released globally since 1994. His career has combined performances in a range of lower budgeted feature films and work in highly budgeted, event films released by the major film studios. Over the course of almost twenty years McGregor has appeared in nearly fifty films.

Professionally trained as an actor at London’s Guildhall, McGregor hails from Scotland and the narrative of his career progression from provincial Scotland to being an...

Associated Resources

• GCSE Film Studies Paper 2 Non Hollywood High Level Exemplar.doc
• GCSE Film Studies Paper 2 Non Hollywood B Grade Exemplar.doc
• GCSE Film Studies Paper 2 Non Hollywood C Grade Exemplar.doc

Origins and Development

Social Realist films originate in the 1950s/1960s but drew in terms of their form and style from the British documentary tradition of the 1930s popularised by the GPO Film Unit (Nightmail) who ultimately became the Crown Film Unit at the start of WW2 (Fires Were Started, Britain Can Take It). In the 1960s social realist films became critically and commercially successful and benefitted from the fact that television was only a feature in some middle class households – people flocked to the cinema to see films like...

Introduction

Welcome to FilmEdu’s Film Studies Revision Workshops link. Here you will find a range of workshops tailored to your individual needs and specification, whether at GCSE, AS or A2 or WJEC or OCR. We also run workshops and cpd for GCSE and A Level Media Studies via MediaEdu, our dedicated support site for Media. Click on the links below for further information.

GCSE Film Studies Revision Workshops

• WJEC GCSE Film Studies Superhero and Film Outside Hollywood Revision Workshop

AS / A2 Film Studies Revision Workshops

• OCR AS Film...

Book A Half or Full Day Revision Workshop in Your School

Programme Details

• FilmEdu provides visually dynamic, interactive Revision Courses on Varieties of Film: Issues and Debates dedicated to, and focusing on specification requirements.
• We have experts on all areas of the specification from FM4 Section A: Aspects of a National Cinema, Section B: Spectatorship Topics to Section C: Close Critical Study. It is envisaged that centres will inform FilmEdu prior to the session about key areas, topics and texts you would like us to focus on e.g....

Book A Half or Full Day Revision Workshop in Your School

Programme Details

• FilmEdu provides visually dynamic, interactive Revision Courses on British and American Film dedicated to, and focusing on specification requirements.
• We have experts on all areas of the specification from FM2 Section A: Producers and Audiences, Section B: British Film Topics to Section C: American Film Comparative Study. It is envisaged that centres will inform FilmEdu prior to the session about key areas, topics and texts that you would like us to focus on e.g. two...

Book A Half or Full Day Revision Workshop in Your School

Programme Details

• FilmEdu provides visually dynamic, interactive Revision Courses on Global Cinema and Critical Perspectives dedicated to, and focusing on specification requirements.
• We have experts on all areas of the specification from F633 Section A: Messages and Values in Global Cinema to Section B: Critical Engagement with Film and Cinema. It is envisaged that centres will inform FilmEdu prior to the session sbout the two non English language case studies you would like us to focus...

Book A Half or Full Day Revision Workshop in Your School

Programme Details

• FilmEdu provides visually dynamic, interactive Revision Courses on Contemporary English Language Film dedicated to, and focusing on specification requirements.
• We have experts on all areas of the specification from F631 Section A, covering a range of British and American texts and exploring key areas of representation, messages and values. It is envisaged for Section B that centres will inform FilmEdu prior to the session about key areas, topics and texts that you would...

Book A Half or Full Day Revision Workshop in Your School

Programme Details

• FilmEdu provides visually dynamic, interactive Revision Courses on the Superhero film genre and Films from outside Hollywood dedicated to, and focusing on specification requirements.
• Pupils will study for Paper 1 Superhero Films and be fully prepared for unseen analysis. Focus will be on micro and macro elements including film language, genre and narrative and also a complete understanding of marketing and promotion (including audiences, film production, technology,...

Associated Resources

• Technical and Symbolic Codes - Moving Image.ppt

Institutional Factors | Distribution

Submarine was written and directed by Richard Ayoade and released at UK cinemas in March 2011 after significant critical success at festivals including the London Film Festival (LFF) but particularly the Toronto Film Festival. Toronto success secured the film a distribution contract with the Weinstein Company (formerly Disney owned Miramax) – Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s company in essence can be described as a ‘Mini Major’ film distributor, large enough to cope with the distribution of academy...

Associated Resources

• GCSE Film Studies Micro Analysis A* Grade Example.doc

The Thinking Film project is comprised of DVDs of selected film clips, CD-ROMs containing downloadable, curriculum-related teaching materials to accompany the extracts as well as online CPD and additional supporting materials.

Please click on the relevant subject icon below for further information on each pack as well as training programmes and other supporting materials.

This project has been made possible through the generous support of the Film Distributors’ Association and all of its members.

Order Thinking Film

• Click here to...

What is Making Movies Make Sense?

‘Making Movies Make Sense’ is an all-new interactive resource to help you run film viewing and filmmaking activities with children and young people.

Making Movies Make Sense shows you:

• What equipment you need
• The key principles: camera, lighting, sound and editing
• How to make a film step by step: planning, filming and editing
• Practical activities for classroom and out-of-school contexts
• What films to use

Making Movies Make Sense is illustrated with dozens of video clips and still images. The disc also...

In both the exam and in the coursework, candidates will be asked to study English Language Texts. They are NOT able to study the same texts for both sections and will prepare for this in different ways. For example, the coursework will act as a catalyst for their creative work in their portfolios. In the exam, students will have part of a two hour exam to answer a specific (unseen) question on an aspect of the film.

Both the coursework and examination texts will have shared aspects. This is mainly the understanding of both the micro and...

AS WJEC FM2: Producers and Audience

For FM2, British and American Film each question is worth 40 marks, and there is 2.5 hours to answer three questions. The paper is made up from resource material and 12 page answer book. Candidates are asked to explore the relationship between film producers and audience.

The resource material can include:

• Home page of a fan website
• Table illustrating box office figures
• Poster of a film
• Front cover of a magazine
• Press release
• Cinema programme
• Blog extracts

Candidates will be asked to use the exam...

Paper 1 | Superhero Films Case Study | Thor

Synopsis

Earth

Puente Antiguo, New Mexico. Three astro-physicists are in the desert: Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings).

They are studying atmosphere disturbances and aurora.

When a lightning storm starts, they head quickly towards it in their van. The van hits a man and they stop.

The victim is a handsome, well built young man. He is not dead, but semi-conscious.

Asgard

A voiceover (Anthony Hopkins) describes a battle in 900 AD between...

Urban Stories | Power, Poverty & Conflict | Case Study 2 | La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz , 1995)

Synopsis

La Haine (Hate 1995, France) focuses on a single day in the lives of three twenty-something friends from immigrant families, living in an impoverished and multi-ethnic French housing project. The housing project, or la banlieues (ZUP - zone à urbaniser en priorité), hosts a riot after a young man is shot by a policeman. The film follows the young trio in the immediate aftermath of the riot. Vinz, who is Jewish, is filled with rage. He...

Paper 2 | Non-Hollywood Film

Synopsis

8 year old Bruno doesn’t have a care in the world as he pretends to be a plane flying through the streets of Berlin, on his way back from school. He is blissfully ignorant of the terror happening around him – Jewish families being rounded up and transported out of the city. When he returns home however, his family are preparing for a celebration. His father, Ralf, has received a promotion that means they must all leave the capital; a move that will change Bruno’s life forever.

At his new stately...

We had an enquiry recently about Postmodernism which led to some productive responses. Ellen Grundy’s approach involved:

(L)ooking at representation and postcolonialism (as follows):

A research task on Gurinder Chadha and her films. How do her life and the themes of her films suggest a post colonial identity? For example Bend it like Beckham as a coming together of different ethnicities / cultures.

The classic clip of going for an ‘English’ in Goodness Gracious Me that turns representation on its head. Useful for debating how different...

Editsense & Filmsense

What is Editsense?

‘Editsense is a new approach to learning about film language and film-making’.

This is an interactive DVD with excellent, practical examples of film - perfect for teachers of moving image, be it English, Creative and Digital Media or Film Studies.

It has over fifty video examples and includes materials for the introduction and revision of film. 

What does it include?

It includes video examples of film language including camerawork, mise-en-scene, editing techniques, sound and even advanced...

What is it?

This is the post-production process of making a moving image text, by the selection and ordering of a range of shots (the footage) into a continuous sequence. Editing can bring in audio (dialogue, score and sound effects), titles (credits) and still images.

Editing can help to enforce a theme, narrative or atmosphere, due to the pace and combination of elements selected. This could be through the use of a montage, the use of continuity editing, or the timing of music combined with the footage to create a mixture of emotive...

Associated Resources

Superman Advanced Screening Questions.doc

Associated Resources

Spider-Man Advanced Screening Questions.doc

Initially ‘Saturday Movie Serials’ - e.g. Batman (1943) and Captain America (1944) - were successful with young audiences, but fundamentally Superhero Movies went into decline in the 1950s and 1960s, and did not pick up until much later. Occasional films like Batman (1966) with Adam West, borrowing from the success of the TV series, and Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik (1968) were exceptions, offering limited interest at the cinema.

With this in mind, it was not until Superman (in 1978) that the genre took off with the film scoring a...

There will be a choice of two questions for this final section of the exam; you need only answer one question. One usually asks you to focus on narrative and / or genre, whilst the other will reference themes or messages and values.

Unlike the other exam questions, for Section C it is imperative that you compare the two texts, so you will want to clearly define similarities and contrasts between the two in your plan. You should quantify why such similarities and contrasts exist by referring to the production context of each text.

A grid...

There will be a choice of two questions for this final section of the exam; you need only answer one question. One usually asks you to focus on narrative and / or genre, whilst the other will reference themes or messages and values.

Unlike the other exam questions, for Section C it is imperative that you compare the two texts, so you will want to clearly define similarities and contrasts between the two in your plan. You should quantify why such similarities and contrasts exist by referring to the production context of each text.

A grid...

Structure of the Exam Paper

The A2 Film exam is constructed of 3 Sections:

• Section A: World Cinema Topics
• Section B: Spectatorship Topics
• Section C: Single Film: Close Critical Study

The exam is: 2 hours and 35 minutes

From each section you will need to answer 1 question. The marks available for each section are [35] for Sections A and B, then [30] for Section C. This means you have approximately 54 minutes to work on section A, and the same for section B, and 46 minutes for Section C.

You should aim to spend 10 minutes planning each...

Paper 1 | Superhero Films Case Study | Superman

Synopsis

1938. A child reads a comic book about a Metropolitan newspaper, The Daily Planet. Meanwhile Krypton, a planet which orbits around a red sun - six galaxies away - is inhabited by a race of super beings. Jor-El (Marlon Brando), the planet’s greatest scientist (sporting a ‘S’ shaped crest), is overseeing the trial and conviction of three criminals. The Council of Elders finds General Zod, Non and Ursa guilty. Zod (unsuccessfully) threatens Jor-El before being banished from Krypton to...

What is Auteur Theory?

There are various debates underlining the existence of Auteurs; how to define an “Auteur” has been much theorized. The original concept took birth in the pages of the Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s, particularly voiced by French Nouvelle Vague filmmaker, Francois Truffaut.

Truffaut was both very critical of the trend in French cinema to identify the author as the screenwriter and very aware of both his, and his other Nouvelle Vague counterparts’ signature styles. In 1954 Truffaut wrote an essay entitled A...

Paper 1 | Superhero Films Case Study | Kick Ass

Synopsis

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is Kick Ass. The film begins with his voiceover about superheroes and the story of his life. Six months ago, he was “the last person you would expect to be a superhero”. He is an American student who doesn’t belong to any clubs, “invisible to girls“, he fantasises about his English teacher and has a crush on Katie Deauxma, a cute girl who has a locker near his. His mother died 18 months ago of an aneurysm, and he lives with his dad. Instead of...

Guide for Teaching the Whole Text

When teaching the whole text there are several things to be aware of: some are planning, some are teaching and learning strategies. This guide is to help you be aware of what needs to happen before you start, so once you have that film on - you are confidence that the students will be analysing a text, rather than watching it. This is applicable for teachers of all ages and abilities.

You may also want to think about how other subjects prepare students for studying a moving image text in other subjects....

Functions of the Title Sequence

The functions of the title sequence in a film may seem to be fairly obvious. They are designed to tell the audience the names of the people and organisations involved with the making of the film and in this respect they do the job well.

Irrespective of the genre, there is a conventional way of presenting this information in the credit sequence. This information and the order in which it is presented follows a standard format. Later in this study we will be looking more closely at the title sequence in a James...

Click on the link below to download a frame for analysing the opening of the film Children of Men.

Film Opening Children Of Men.doc

‘It’s just an idea for group work deconstructing an interesting text (especially because, unusually, this one starts in the middle of the disequilibrium, rather than establishing an equilibrium first of all, so is good for narrative theory.  Also, our “hero” is rather unheroic (he doesn’t return to the aftermath of the bomb to rescue people, and appears to be using the bomb as an excuse to take a day off work,...

The basic concept of Synergy can be explained through this mathematical formula:

Whilst this may not make sense to mathematicians, in business it does, when we think of profit value. If you sell two separate products, for example a video game and a film, they could both do very well, giving you a profit of £200 million each.

However if the video game and film were linked, i.e. both Harry Potter projects, this is synergy because the profit value of each will be more, perhaps £300 million each. Therefore the product value of...

British and American Film Independent Case Study

Associated Resources

This is England Screening Questions.doc

Use your bibliography of British Film resources to research the following questions:

1. Who wrote and directed This is England? What other projects has he been involved in? What do you think his contribution to British Film has been?
2. What was the name of the Production Company and Theatrical Distributor? How would you describe the Distribution company? Where did the film get financial assistance from? Apart from cinemas, where else...

This guide is designed to cover the main issues regarding teaching Non-Hollywood Film for the WJEC GCSE in Film Studies for Paper 2 Exploring Film outside Hollywood and to explain what is likely to be asked of students in the examination.

The texts currently available for assessment are:

Amélie (France), Bend it Like Beckham (UK), Goodbye Lenin (Germany), Ratcatcher (UK), Spirited Away (Japan), The Devil’s Backbone (Spain), Whale Rider (New Zealand) and Yasmin (UK).

Why do we study Non-Hollywood Film?

Whilst Hollywood dominates across...

Audiences can be identified in many ways e.g. through demographic research by Govt. Departments – the Population Census.

Media institutions e.g. Web Designers, the Advertising and Magazine Industry use this information when targeting/segmenting audiences

1. Some Media organisations still use old fashioned socio-economic categorisation to estimate ‘notional spending power’.

A – Land Owners, Royal Family
B – Doctors, Lawyers
C1 – Teachers, Nurses, Supervisors
C2 – Skilled manual
D – Semi-skilled/unskilled manual
E –...

Associated Resources

Shaun of the Dead Screening and Research Questions.doc

1. Who directed, produced and distributed Shaun of the Dead?
2. How does the film reflect the pattern of many British Films of recent years?
3. Research and detail at least ten films made by the same production company and distributor. Identify their genre
4. Why do you think Shaun of the Dead was commercially successful? Research the UK and US box office gross and subsequent DVD/Video sales
5. How does the film culturally represent the image of a nation? How does this compare...

Amores Perros Research Questions.doc