Film with Practice - MA

Teaching

Teaching and assessment

Assessment at MA level is 100% course work: that means you will be assessed through essays, treatments, project proposals, seminar participation and a dissertation by film practice.

Programme aims

The programme aims to:

• Develop the understanding and skills possessed by students entering the programme to a notably higher level of sophistication and achievement (appropriate to an M-level award) than would be expected at degree level, such that all leave the programme with a substantial analytic, critical and practice-based understanding of Film.
• Develop the ability of students to think independently, argue with clarity and force, initiate and complete creative work and to discern areas of research and practice-led research within the field.
• Provoke reflection on practical, critical and theoretical approaches to Film and its context.
• Nurture intellectual and creative skills through written work (essays, dissertations, treatments, scripts), creative practice (DV films) as well as in the context of interpersonal interaction (seminars, research papers, supervision, filmmaking processes).
• Develop existing and new areas of teaching informed by and in response to developments in film practice, research and scholarship.
• Provide an excellent quality of higher education
• Attract outstanding students irrespective of race, background, gender, and physical disability, from both within the UK and from overseas.
• Support national and regional economic success by producing graduates in possession of key knowledge and skills, with the capacity to learn.
• Provide opportunities for the development of personal, communication and research skills and other key skills appropriate for both graduate employment in industry or further study.
• Provide learning opportunities that are enjoyable experiences and involve realistic workloads, based within a combined research and practice-led framework
• Offer appropriate support for students from a diverse range of backgrounds
• Provide high quality teaching in a supportive environment with appropriately qualified and trained staff

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

You gain knowledge and understanding of:

• Key production processes and professional practices relevant to film
• The technical and formal choices that realise, develop or challenge existing practices and traditions; advanced knowledge of the possibilities and constraints involved in production processes
• The role of technology in terms of media production, content manipulation, distribution, access and use
• The processes linking production, distribution, circulation and consumption
• The student's own creative processes and practice through engagement in one or more production practices
• The narrative processes, generic forms and modes of representation at work in film
• Film and the way in which it organises understandings, meanings and affects
• The development of film in a local, community, regional, national, international or global context
• Critical approaches to film, including an advanced understanding of the historical and contemporary debates within film theory
• The historical evolution of particular genres, aesthetic traditions and forms, and of their current characteristics and possible future developments
• New and emergent film forms and their relation both to their social context and to earlier form
• The ways in which films and their attendant technologies make possible different kinds of aesthetic effects and forms

Intellectual skills

Graduates will demonstrate the ability to:

• Engage critically with major thinkers, debates and intellectual paradigms within the field of Film Studies and put them to productive use
• Understand to an advanced level film forms as they have emerged historically and appreciate the processes through which they have come into being, with reference to social, cultural and technological change
• Analyse closely, interpret and show the exercise of advanced critical judgment in the understanding and, as appropriate, evaluation of these forms
• Carry out various forms of research for essays, presentations, and creative productions involving sustained independent enquiry
• Evaluate and draw upon the range of sources and the conceptual frameworks appropriate to research in the chosen area
• Consider and evaluate their own work in a reflexive manner, with reference to academic and/or professional issues, debates and conventions

Subject-specific skills

Graduates will demonstrate the ability to:

• Initiate, develop and realise distinctive creative work in digital film that demonstrates sophisticated manipulation of sound and image and that, where appropriate, experiments with forms, conventions, languages, techniques and practices
• Produce work showing capability in operational aspects of digital film production technologies, techniques and, where appropriate, professional practices
• Manage time, personnel and resources effectively by drawing on planning, organisational, project-management and leadership skills
• Develop creative ideas and concepts based upon secure research strategies
• Produce work that demonstrates an understanding of media forms and structures, audiences and specific communication registers
• Produce work that is informed by, and contextualised within, relevant theoretical issues and debates

Transferable skills

Graduates will be able to:

• Work in flexible, creative and independent ways, showing self-discipline, self-direction and reflexivity
• Gather, organise and deploy ideas and information in order to a) formulate arguments cogently and b) develop creative ideas effectively and express a and b at an advanced level in written, oral and creative forms
• Organise and manage supervised, self-directed projects
• Communicate effectively and work productively in a group or team, showing abilities at different times to listen, contribute and lead effectively
• Deliver work to a given length, format, brief and deadline, properly referencing sources and ideas and making use, as appropriate, of a problem-solving approach
• Put to use a range of information communication technology (ICT) skills and develop proficiencies in audio-visual production technologies that can be applied beyond filmmaking

Careers

Arts graduates have gone on to work in a range of professions, from museum positions and teaching roles to film journalists and theatre technicians. Our graduates have found work at Universal Pictures, the London Film Festival and other arts, culture and heritage-related organisations, as well as in film production, as editorial assistants and as web designers.

Study support

Postgraduate resources

Film at Kent has excellent viewing and library facilities, with a large number of films screened weekly during term-time in the custom-designed Lupino Cinema. The Templeman Library has extensive book and specialist journal holdings in film and related areas; there is also a large and growing reference collection of film on DVD and Blu Ray, with individual and group viewing facilities. The Department also benefits from the presence of the Gulbenkian Cinema on campus, which runs a varied programme of new releases and classics.

In 2010, we moved into the purpose-built, and RIBA award-winning, Jarman Building. The new building is home to a range of professional standard editing and studio facilities, plus a dedicated postgraduate centre and teaching and social spaces.

Internationally recognised research

Our staff produce internationally recognised research at the intersection of film theory, history, practice, and the conceptual and stylistic analysis of moving image media. Based on this expertise, we are able to support research across a wide range of topics, including: moving image theory, history and criticism; American, European and Latin American cinemas; British Cinema; the avantgarde; and digital media and animation. There are also close connections between Film and the Aesthetics Research Group.

The Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film and the Moving Image promotes our excellence in research and hosts a range of research events including symposia, visiting speakers and workshops.

Film-making

The Department embraces filmmaking and practice-based research in film and media. Richard Misek is a leading video essayist. His feature-length documentary Rohmer in Paris (2013) has been screened at over twenty film festivals on five continents, and exhibited at venues including the British Film Institute, The Barbican Centre, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Museum of Moving Image (New York), Forum des Images (Paris), and the Louisiana Museum (Denmark). He has been Primary Investigator on two Arts and Humanities Research Council projects exploring audiovisual film and media studies (2016-18), and has recently produced a series of virtual reality video essays in collaboration with world-leading Melbourne-based VR studio Vrtov and the British Film Institute. Lawrence Jackson worked in various crew capacities in the UK film industry for three years before working in-house, then freelance as a Bi-Media Producer for BBC Northern Ireland Drama. As writer-director, he has five short films and as producer-director, around 50 hours of radio drama to his name. The shorts, shot in locations from Margate to Northern Ireland and Prague to Newcastle, have been shown at the Munich Film Festival, London’s ICA Cinema and on BBC2.

Dynamic publishing culture

Staff publish regularly and widely in journals, conference proceedings and books. Among others, they have recently contributed to: Screen; Cinema Journal; October; The Moving Image; Animation; Games and Culture; Journal of Film and Video; Film History, Film Criticism and Early Popular Visual Culture. They have recently published books with Oxford University Press, University of Amsterdam Press, Rutgers University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Columbia University Press, University of Minnesota Press, I.B. Tauris, Wiley-Blackwell and Cineteca di Bologna. The peer-reviewed journal Film Studies is edited by staff at the department.

Global Skills Award

All students registered for a taught Master's programme are eligible to apply for a place on our Global Skills Award Programme. The programme is designed to broaden your understanding of global issues and current affairs as well as to develop personal skills which will enhance your employability.