Dear prospective student

July 2017

Dear prospective student,

We are absolutely delighted that you have chosen Warwick as your preferred place of study and we look forward to welcoming you to the university in October. This letter suggests some ways in which you might prepare for your first year, and is accompanied by a list of preparatory reading suggested by the tutors who teach the year one modules.

If you do join the Department of Film and Television Studies this Autumn, you would be a member of a first year cohort who are following one of two degrees: Film and Literature and Film Studies. Each degree consists of four modules in each year. All of the first years follow core introductory modules in Film History and Film Criticism. In the case of the BA in Film Studies, your two additional modules will be Visual Cultures and Theories of the Moving Image. The enclosed reading list will give degree-specific preparation, but there are a couple of general points which I thought it might be useful to explain as well.

In recent years it has tended to be the case that a significant proportion – sometimes around 50% - of our new first years will have taken an A Level in Film or Media Studies. For the benefit of those who have not taken one of these courses at A level, I’d like to stress the fact that you will not be in any way disadvantaged. Our first year film modules do not presume any existing familiarity with the history of cinema or key approaches to the study of the subject. I should also add that because we study a dramatically broader range of films and topics and practise very different modes of study than is possible on any A Level syllabus, if you have studied film before you will not find that the first year at Warwick simply duplicates a lot of the teaching you’ve already experienced.

With regard to the attached reading lists, I’d also like to reinforce the fact that degree-level study involves a lot more independent reading than you will be accustomed to doing at A Level. Film modules typically involve the viewing of at least one new film per week and there will also be compulsory supplementary critical reading which you are expected to undertake each week. It would be to your real benefit to undertake as much preparatory reading as you can over the summer.

Information and advice about the induction process and the timetable for the first week of the Autumn term will be posted later in the summer on the front page of our departmental website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/. For those of you who have yet to complete your A levels and are holding conditional offers from us, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you the best of luck with your final examinations.

We do really look forward to meeting you in the department in October. It’s an exciting time to join us at Warwick, and I hope you’ll be part of the experience.

With warm wishes,

Dr. Alastair Phillips

Head of Department

Preparatory Reading for Film Studies Students

For both of the core 1^st year film modules, an important priority should be to extend the range of your film viewing, in the cinema, on television, online and on DVD. Try to see as much as you possibly can of all types of film. It would be especially useful for you to seek out films from countries and periods in film history that you are unfamiliar with. Get into the habit of checking daytime and late night screenings on television and make full use of any independent cinema you have access to. Joining an internet-based DVD rental library is also highly recommended.

Film Criticism

This module will give you intensive practice in looking and listening closely to film. It aims to teach you the basic technical and analytical vocabulary of textual analysis and film criticism so that you can describe accurately what you see and hear when you watch and listen to a film. By the end of your first term, you will begin to feel able to make reasoned and carefully argued interpretations of individual film texts. You will also be able to reflect upon the validity of other accounts and interpretations, both in group discussion and through your own reading of existing critical scholarship.

The module has been designed to offer you a wide range of films from different historical periods, film styles and national contexts. This is done in order that you might experience, and compare, different approaches to the expressive use of film form and mise-en-scène. Our interest is always to explore the ways in which choices made in relation to film form and mise-en-scène create meaning, and how this then impacts upon interpretation.
Recommended Reading: If you have access to libraries or bookshops well-stocked on film, extensive browsing is recommended. It is often possible to find second-hand copies of academic books relatively cheaply online - for instance, via Amazon marketplace. Any of the following will give helpful and, at some point, necessary background.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson Film Art: An introduction (11^th ed.) (Mc Graw-Hill Education, 2016) *

Pam Cook (ed.) The Cinema Book (3^rd ed.) (BFI, 2007)

Timothy Corrigan (2014) A Short Guide to Writing About Film (9^th ed.) (Longman, 2011)

Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White The Film Experience (4th ed) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

John Gibbs Mise-en-scène: Film Style and Interpretation (Wallflower Press, 2002)

John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds.) Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell A Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford University Press, 2012)

James Monaco How To Read a Film (4^th ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2009)

V.F. Perkins: Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Da Capo Press, 1993)

Robert Stam Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000)

* While the latest edition of this work is very good, earlier editions, which you may be able to buy second hand, will be equally useful and will be essential for the critical strand of this module.

You will also find it useful to consult film guides, dictionaries and encyclopaedias to see which works are considered (and in what terms) as landmarks in film history. Survey the range including such publications as David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (5^th ed.) (Little, Brown, 2010) and Ephraim Katz and Ronald Dean Nolan The Film Encyclopedia (7^th ed.) (Collins, 2013).

Film History

This module is designed to introduce you to the study of the history of film and the study of the relationships between history and film. It will thus be concerned with the specifics of film history and wider questions of historiography. Two particularly useful books you might read in advance for this module are David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film History: An Introduction, (3rd edn) (McGraw Hill, 2009) and Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, Film History: Theory and Practice (McGraw Hill, 1985). You will also find it helpful to look at Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, (Starword, 2009) and Pierre Sorlin, European Cinemas, European Societies 1939-1990, (Routledge, 1991). In preparation, it would be advisable to familiarise yourself with the following:

E H Carr What is History? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961)

Robert A Rosenstone History on Film/Film on History (Harlow: Longman/Pearson Education Ltd, 2006)

Theories of the Moving Image

The aims of this module are to familiarise students with canonical theories concerning the interpretation and reception of moving image media and to give practice in using the conceptual language of film and television criticism.  Books that you will find useful include:

Robert Stam’s Film Theory:  An Introduction, (Blackwell, 2000)

James Monaco’s How to Read a Film, (Oxford University Press, 2009)

The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, (Oxford University Press, 1998) - some of the entries on film theory and criticism.

You will find them difficult but rewarding and they are the types of book that you can dip in and out of or choose to read just a section or an article.  It is unreasonable to expect you to peruse more than one so take your pick but do make the effort as it is very good preparation for your first year. 

Three additional texts are valuable for understanding the specific vocabulary of contemporary film theory:

Susan Hayward's Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, (Routledge, 2000)

Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (Routledge, 2009)

Raymond Williams's Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, (Fontana, revised ed, 1983).

Visual Cultures
This module aims to give first year students in Film Studies an introduction to visual cultures and, in particular, to proximate media forms and questions of medium specificity. In the first half of the first term we will look at photography as a form of image-making that is technically, historically and aesthetically related to cinema, yet is also profoundly different in many ways. We will encounter a number of debates – regarding the role of technology, the figure of the artist, the truth of images, the making of meaning – that begin with photography but carry over to the study of film. In the second half of the first term we will consider the ways in which narrative structure functions across film, television and video games. This will allow for an understanding of the construction of narrative through a medium-specific lens.
In the second term the module will introduce students to the scholarly study of television, complementing and enriching students' year one work on film; it will also equip students to follow a television focus strand of study through the honours years of their degree, should they so choose. The second half of the second term will also consider animation, building on the module’s aims to consider various media forms and question medium specificity.
Suggested reading:
Marie Warner Marien (2010) Photography: A Cultural History, London: Laurence King Publishing (an excellent, richly illustrated and wide ranging history of photography)
Graham Clarke (1997) The Photograph: A Visual and Cultural History, Oxford: Oxford University Press (a more concise history, offering a good introduction to the central issues)
Susan Sontag (1979) On Photography, London: Penguin Books (a key text in the study of photography, provocative and insightful)
Edward Branigan (1992), Narrative Comprehension and Film, London: Routledge (a useful guide for considering the construction of film narrative and how we understand it)
Susana Onega and José Angel García Landa (eds.) (1996), Narratology: An Introduction London; New York: Longman (a comprehensive collection of essays on narrative structure and its theory)

Jonathan Bignell (2004) An Introduction to Television Studies, London and New York: Routledge (a very useful introductory text on television studies)

John Corner (1999) Critical Ideas in Television Studies, Oxford: Clarendon Press (a very useful introduction to key theoretical frameworks in television studies)
Karen Lury (2005) Interpreting Television, London: Hodder Arnold, (an excellent introduction to the textual study of television)
Paul Wells (1998) Understanding Animation, London: Routledge (an excellent book on the theoretical study of animation)

Film & Television Studies

University of Warwick

Coventry CV4 7HS UK

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