Film

For over 100 years audiences have been taking themselves to a crowded room to sit in the dark and watch other people's lives. Sometimes these people are twenty feet high heroes who can achieve the impossible, sometimes they are beautiful sirens that make us instantly fall in love. Sometimes these people are just like us, who laugh like us and hurt like us and sometimes these people jump out of the screen in three dimensions!

Whatever our reasons for going to the cinema it can be reasonably argued that there are few other media that evoke so much emotion from an audience.

This small scheme of work traces in part the history of cinema, but mostly the history of the study of cinema by looking in detail at the key concepts; Genre, Narrative & Representation.

• Genre 1: Conventions & Westerns case study
• Genre 2: Hybrids, Binary Oppositions and writing analysis
• Homework 1: Analysis of a genre

• Narrative 1: Todorov's Stages of Narrative
• Narrative 2: Propp's Character Types
• Narrative 3: Narrative devices - the director as storyteller, decision maker, artist
• Narrative 4: Narrative and Hitchcock's Psycho

• Representation and Women in Film
• Representation and Men in Film

• Note taking practice
• Homework 2: Note taking practice
• Film Practice Exam

Not only does cinema have the power to make grown men cry like a baby or laugh until it hurts, but film is also one of the few types of media that audiences will talk of being truly passionate about. For some the films are an escape from the everyday or an excuse to socialise with friends, which is great but we mustn't forget that for others (and I include myself here), film is more than a pastime, and more than a hobby. I dedicated three years of my life to film and I continue to be its faithful student.

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out" - Alfred Hitchcock