FIL-10023 - Module Specification School of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
For academic year: 2025/26 Last Updated: 04 December 2025
FIL-10023 - Sights and Sounds: Analyzing Film
Coordinator: Neil Archer Tel: +44 1782 7 33202
School Office:
Programme/Approved Electives for 2025/26
Available as a Free Standing Elective
Co-requisites
None
Prerequisites
None
Barred Combinations
None
Description for 2025/26
This springboard module provides you with essential tools for understanding and discussing film as a vital art form. Looking at films from diverse contexts, you will develop the vocabulary and methods needed for your studies, both from a critical and creative perspective. By producing a visual- or video essay you’ll display your acquired knowledge and skills in film analysis, focusing potentially on film style and history, film genre, or critical ideas around the representation of race, class, gender or sexuality.
This module aims to provide students with the foundational language and methodologies for analyzing film and television texts at a higher educational level. The module looks at film technologies, techniques and aesthetics, and the impacts of these across a range of contexts, building in assessments that emphasise close reading and description of audio-visual texts. The module also introduces a range of key theoretical approaches for the study of film, which will provide a platform for applied study in semester 2 and in subsequent years; focusing, for example, on ideas of genre and authorship; questions of representation and ideology in film; and also how we might understand and practice film history as a discipline.
Intended Learning Outcomes
Apply theory and methods in detailed film analysis using appropriate terminology accurately: 1,2Discuss the role of different aspects of film aesthetics in the production of narrative meaning in the cinema: 1,2 Identify and compare different film styles and genres across specific contexts of film production: 1,2 Produce detailed and informed works of film analysis and comparison, utilising screen images in conjunction with textual discussion: 1,2Apply knowledge of film aesthetics and theory both to wider practical work, and other theoretical and historical discussions of film at all levels of study: 1,2
Study hours
22 x 1-hour lectures = 22 hours 20 x 1-hour seminars = 20 hours4 x 1-hour assessment workshops = 4 hours 4 x 1 hour individual discussion of assessment = 4 hours Reading and film-viewing for seminars = 80 hours Preparation for first assessment = 30 hours reading and selection of materials / 40 hours completion of output Preparation for second assessment = 40 hours reading and selection of materials / 60 hours completion of output
School Rules
None
Description of Module Assessment