This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This interdisciplinary module brings Film and Drama Single Honours students together to explore improvisational techniques that increasingly animate both independent filmmaking and contemporary drama practice. Practical workshops provide technical instruction and creative focus on actors' improvisation as a rehearsal technique, a screenplay development technique, and a performance technique during filming. Exploration of improvisation as screen craft will be complemented by the theorisation of improvisation in lectures that also provide a historical context and introduce case studies of filmmakers’ use of improvisation techniques in devising and producing films. Connections between theatrical and cinematic trends that utilise forms of improvisation will be emphasised while student’s practical projects will respond to and expand upon these growing synergies between cinema and theatre in the digital age.
Contact hours: 11 hours of lectures, 22 hours of workshops (creative and technical), 20 hours of screenings = 53
Total private study = 247 hours
Total study hours = 300
FI590 is available to Stage 2 students studying Single Honours Film or the Joint Honours Drama and Film programme only.
100% coursework: Creative Portfolio (65%) and a 2500 word Essay (35%).
Dean, R. and Smith, H. (1997), Improvisation, Hypermedia and the Arts Since 1945, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Frost, A. (2007), Improvisation in Drama, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Johnstone, K. (1979), Impro, London: Methuen.
Raphael, A. (2008) ed., Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, London: Faber and Faber.
Weston, J. (1996), Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television, CA: M. Wiese Productions.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
During the course of this module, students will:
Draw upon and bring together ideas from different sources of knowledge and from different academic disciplines.
Produce work showing competence in the operational skills of moving images and sound production.
Initiate, develop and realise distinctive and creative work within various forms of writing and in moving images and sounds through individual and group work.
Manage time, personnel and resources effectively, by drawing on planning and organisational skills.
Produce work which is informed by, and contextualised within, relevant theoretical debates students have studied within the programme as a whole.
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