Dissertation Proposal - Sourcing My Idea

Understanding Our Dissertation


Dr Caleb Turner is an associate lecturer that will be taking us bi-weekly in order to prepare us for the research and intellectual context of our approach to our dissertation next year. Clarifying and organising my ideas is key to ensuring I can produce the best piece of work I possibly can.

We already have good experience with Film/TV/Media Studies courses on theory and/or art backgrounds... therefore the proposals can build on a solid foundation of academic substance in more depth.

Matching Interests with Academia

This is not meant to be a prescriptive list, but can be mixed and matched depending on your question and case studies, and also there is more not necessarily covered here that may be indirectly linked... 

Formalism - the elements that make up and structure the films 'form'

Style: 

- Mise-en-scene (performance, colour, lighting, set design and props, costumes/make-up)

Editing: 

- Continuity Editing (Axis of Action, Alfred Hitchcock etc)
- Discontinuity Editing (Soviet Montage)
- Art House Cinema (Jean Luc Goddard)
- Avant-Garde/Experimental (Stan Brakhage)

Cinematography: 

- Framing
- Composition
- Frame Rate (HFR content such as The Hobbit Trilogy, presented in 48 frames per second)

- Narration (and Narratology - Bordwell, David (1985): Narration in the Fiction Film):
- Story and Plot
- Characterisation

Realism and Social Realism

- Documentary Modes (Poetic, Expository, Observational, Participatory, Reflexive, Performative).
- Poetic realism (e.g. deep-focus photography long takes in Citizen Kane)
- Neo-Realism (e.g. non-professional actors, documentary affects handheld cameras, no editing, natural sets etc).
- British Realist
- Social Realism
- Sociology of Urban Spaces, Class Systems, etc.

Auteurship 

- Francois Truffaut (Auteur policy, 400 Blows)
- Andrew Sarris (Auteur Theory, three concentric circles of: technique, personal style and interior meaning versus metteur-en-scene).
- Roland Barthes (Death of the Auteur - viewer as author)
- Auteur structuralism (Wollen - author as unconsciously channelling social conventions)
- Post-Auteur - as a head of collaborations with actors, producers, screenwriter, branding, etc).

Genre Theory

Formal Elements: 

- Iconcography
- Tone
- Narrative Elements
- Plot
- Themes
- Archetypes

- Rock Altman: Semantics (vocabulary or 'ingredients' and Syntax (Structure or grammar)
- Thomas Schatz: Social Order (Westerns, Action) versus Social Integration (Musicals/Romance)
- Steve Neal: Differences and Repetition of Formulas, Familiarly and Innovation

- Categories (e.g. Hollywood: Westerns, Musicals, Gangster, Swashbucklers, Melodrama etc.

Spectatorship

Psychoanalysis:


Cognitivism:

- Recognition, Alignment and Allegiance of Characterization.

Feminism: 

- Postfeminist and Consumer 'Choice' of branding, beautification and neoliberal exploration in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity.
- Androcentrism - Simon de Beaviour, Mary Ann Doane, Film and the masquerade

Representation: 

- Class
- Sexuality
- Gender
- Psychoanalysis

Postcolonialism, Multiculturalism, Race and Ethnicity

- Orientalism - Edward Said
- Third Cinema versus Eurocentrism
- Racial Gaze
- Positive and Negative Stereotypes

Digital Cinema

- Manipulation of Spaces and Early Effects - Melies/Lumiere Bros.
- Perceptual Realism and Photorealism
- Persuasion Tactics and Paratexts
- Remediation
- Motion Capture and Performance
- Humanness and technology
- Codes and Contestable mapping
- Transmediality
- Participatory Culture and Citizen Journalism
- Convergence and Spreadable Media

Animation 

- Early Animation
- Disney
- Warner Bros and UPA
- Pixar
- Music and Abstraction
- Anime
- Stop-Motion

Industry, Production, Distribution

- Commercialism, Globalization, Marketing, Ratings, Franchises, Money and Spectacle
- Hollywood Studio System: 1920's - 1960's.

Art and Fashion in Film and TV

- Art History
- Surrealism
- Dadaism
- Situationism
- Mannerism
- Cubism
- Abstract Modernism
- Deconstructionist
- Precisionist
- Renaissance linear perspective
- Rococo
- Punk, Mods, Grunge, Indie.

Stars and Stardom

- Star System
- Studio System
- Celebrity Studies
- Star Presence

Audience Reception

- Gathering informations and codes of behaviour - who, why, where, how?
- Sources (newspapers, magazines, posters, industry records, interviews)
- The Hyperdermic Needle model (films not complex enough to stimulate the audience to question what is being shown).

Politics and Political Economics

- Globalisation, Neoliberalism and Free Markets
- Marxism and Frankfurt Schools

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

- Semiotics - Signifier and signified (Saussure)
- Mythology - Levi Strauss
- Deconstruction (Derrider)
- Postmodernism

Film and TV History, Cultures, Criticism, Festivals... 

... or any thing else that I've yet to have mentioned.

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