Film and Creative Writing (Placement Year)

Critical Reflections explores a number of key interdisciplinary philosophical and cultural concepts which will enable you to analyse, engage with, and reflect upon artworks in your own discipline. It also allows you to establish a common set of concepts which can be shared by students from all LICA subjects. The structure of the module consists of six three-week blocks: (1) Aesthetics, Formalism and Beyond, (2) Phenomenology, (3) Semiotics, Structuralism and Deconstruction, (4) Class and Society, (5) Feminism, Queer Theory and Gender, and (6) On Difference.Weekly plenary lectures make connections across the arts, and are supplemented by weekly, two hour seminars/workshops which allow students to work in their subject groups (art, film, theatre, design) on ideas and examples specifically tailored towards these disciplines.

This core module has two main objectives. Firstly, it is designed to develop further your analytical skills in order to examine individual films in greater detail. Secondly, it is intended to encourage you to understand world cinema in relation to a variety of social, cultural, political and industrial contexts. The module will explore such issues as the relationship between film form and modes of production (from industrial film-making through to low-budget art film), theories of film style and aesthetics, and the political function of cinema. In the first term, we focus wholly on various modes of American film production, and in the second term we explore some broader theoretical questions through an analysis of films from a number of different national traditions. Across the whole module, you will gain a thorough grasp not only of the historical factors shaping various national and international cinemas, but also of some key critical and theoretical concepts within the field of film studies.

CREW 203 is the entry point into Part II of your undergraduate degree and forms the core offering in Creative Writing. For Joint Honours students, specialist half-units are also available with their selective focus on specific literary forms. CREW 203 allows you to write in any adult literary genre, drawing on the accompanying half-units or exploring new areas of creative work. You will be a member of a workshop group of approximately 12 students. For students taking the course as a minor component in their degree, or as part of a joint honours degree, CREW 203 offers continuity from Part I study in the compilation of a portfolio of original writing. The course is supported by a virtual learning environment (Moodle) that enables the exchange of creative work and critiques, whilst also providing virtual meeting spaces and offering a range of dedicated bibliographic resources to support your creative and critical development.

This ten-week module will give you the opportunity to explore topics, techniques and methods involved in memoir and life writing. We will also pay particular attention to the risks and opportunities – technical, ethical and personal – inherent in this form.

Through a series of seminars and workshops tutor presentations we will explore set texts, do generative writing prompts, and give and receive feedback on works in progress. There you will work towards the creation of some memoir pieces of your own – either a short stand-alone work or works, or a chapter / section from a proposed longer work. You will also be supported in developing some independent research to set your own work in its context in your reflective essay.

At the end of term, each student will have a one-to-one personal tutorial to discuss the reflective essay and decide on the best approach to the portfolio submission.

This module explores different approaches to both the analysis and the production of documentary film. As well as considering a range of styles of documentary film, typically including expository, poetic, observational, reflexive, political, and personal modes of documentary film, you will also examine key debates concerning the ethics of documentary filmmaking. An indicative list of film screenings includes Nanook of the North, Grey Gardens, Dont Look Back [sic], The Arbor, Sans Soleil, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Gleaners and I, and The Act of Killing.

The module aims to develop an understanding of historically important European films from the 1950s to the 1980s and the stylistic and historical significance of these films. It will explore the thematic importance of these films and consider the critical debates relating to this period of filmmaking enabling students to develop a critical understanding of the conditions of production, reception and distribution of these films.

This module examines a historical genre that now occupies the economic centre of Hollywood film production. The module focuses centrally on film and comic book aesthetics; on questions of narration and visual depiction in these two related media; on the shifting norms of this film genre in relation to technological change across history; and on the significance and uses of the comic-book film in society. The module develops ideas and skills introduced in the core Film Studies modules taken as part of the film studies and combined degrees.

Course Aims and Objectives: The emphasis in this module is on reading as well as writing poetry; it will also explore how our lived experience translates into poetry through language; and poetry crystallizes or transforms experience through language and form. We will look at the base structures of poetry – from the line-ending to more complex forms like sonnets and sestinas. Students will be encouraged to seek out new reading as a result of seminar discussion. The writing of poetry is largely dependent on your abilities as a reader and interpreter of poems – and of experience. You are expected to keep a journal of your poems and thoughts throughout the course, the contents of which will be used to create the reflective essay for your portfolio.

Course Aims and Objectives:

The aims of this course are to provide an opportunity for second year students to develop a knowledge of the short story form, and to develop their experience of writing the form., as well as a knowledge of how the form has developed in the past 100 years. They will gain experience in reading, writing, workshopping and reflecting on short fiction, and will develop a knowledge of the history and development of the form, current theoretical approaches to reading and practice in this form, and an awareness of their own literary context. The course will offer students the opportunity to develop their oral and written communication skills, enhance awareness of their approach to the creative process, and enhance their skills in the critical analysis of texts. This course is then developed by the third year specialization in short fiction.

This module will explore the writing of short stories in a workshop environment through the development of the student’s own work, combined with the directed reading of selected texts. Over the course of ten weeks, you are expected to read and discuss each key text, respond to writing and generative prompts in relation to the workshop themes, and submit your own work for workshopping in two workshops. Students are also expected to explore some of the books and essays listed as ‘supplementary’ reading: the books are selected to offer different perspectives on the key issues raised. The course should be considered as having a cumulative effect, in that books discussed early on may be drawn upon in later weeks to illustrate different aspects of writing. During the course, you are also expected to keep a journal, in which you reflect upon your writing and reading. The journal will form the basis of the reflective element of your final portfolio.

This module aims to give students a grounding in “the contemporary” as a key critical concept used in artistic discourses, and provide a number of ways that students can explore and articulate their own contemporaneity. In conversation with cutting edge ideas from art, science, technology and popular culture, the module will enable participants to discuss and identify what they are contemporaries of, how they relate to their own time as artists, citizens and critical writers and what this necessitates in their own practices.

Students will engage in critical discussion of key terms used to define the current moment, such as Anthropocene, Singularity, Post-Truth, and Globalisation, as well as understanding how particular technologies and phenomena, such as distributed and decentralised networks, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering are reshaping the contexts in which the arts are made. These topics are explored through lectures and seminar discussions in which students are encouraged to produce and define their own position and modes for articulating what makes them contemporary.

The module is designed for creative students who wish to use writing and material practice to explore their own relationship to the ecologies, politics, trends, technologies, and aesthetics that typify our experience of the world today.

This module will explore the work of some of the most historically important female film-makers from the 1890s through to the present, considering films from around the globe. The module will examine the significant but often marginalized and obscured roles that women have played in industrial, experimental and avant-garde film production across a spectrum of roles from costume and production designers through to screen-writers, editors and directors. You will be invited to reflect upon the fact that, despite playing key roles in the development of the medium, women continue to be excluded at all levels of film production. The decision by Hollywood star and activist Geena Davis to establish a campaigning ‘Institute on Gender in Media’ is a measure of the urgency of this subject.

The module will engage with revisionist film histories concerned with interrogating the dominant bias of academic and popular histories of the medium; it will also draw on feminist film theory concerned both with a critical understanding of mainstream cinema and the development of politicized women’s cinemas. The module will examine a series of female directors and their work, and each week will be oriented around the screening of a case study film that will be the focus for the seminar. An example of directors included is Alice Guy-Blaché, Dorothy Arzner, Leni Riefenstahl, Ida Lupino, Laura Mulvey, Mira Nair, Kathryn Bigelow, Marziyeh Meshkini, Lynne Ramsay.

Assessment is by a combination of coursework essay and exam.

The module aims to enable you to write for the theatre and develop your awareness of the processes by which a written script makes its way to performance. You will be taught through weekly seminars/creative writing workshops in which you will explore the effects that different staging approaches and performance strategies have on your scripts. Subject to timetabling and logistics, there will be a performance showcase in which you will be actively involved; the showcase will allow you to reflect upon your work in the light of audience feedback. Over the module of the module, you will develop your own writing styles and gain an awareness of the professional requirements of playwriting.

This module is designed for those students interested in writing imaginatively about places and/or landscapes, providing a grounding for writers of poetry, prose fiction and non-fiction in the broad field of nature, environmental and place writing (which has been undergoing something of a renaissance in recent years). You will study key texts that engage with different kinds of place and landscape – from fields and forests to rivers and urban edgelands – and explore your own emergent interests in place writing. You will be encouraged to consider your own work as part of a larger, ongoing literary conversation about place, and to explore those places and landscapes that interest and excite you. The module also contains an element of fieldwork, linking the act of physically walking through a landscape to the practice of reading and writing about it.

This core module is directed towards completion of an independent research project on a topic of your choice, presented in the form of a dissertation. The course is taught through lectures focused on research skills and one-to-one supervision. Students of Film can choose to make a short film as part of their project, and students of Design are encouraged to do a practical design project.

In your final year you’ll return to Lancaster to complete your degree. Feedback from previous students is that their final year studies were enhanced by the real-world experience they were able to draw on.

Whatever your career path, having the skills to critically evaluate your own learning and development will considerably enhance your effectiveness in the workplace. During your final year, you will be asked to reflect on your experience of work based learning. Did you take part in any formal training during your placement? How did this benefit your work? What kinds of informal learning opportunities arose? What did you learn about your own preferences for professional development? How do your experiences compare to those of other placement students?

You will be asked to consider your future career aims and identify areas for further development.

This is an assessed module that provides 10 credits towards the 30 credits which successful completion of your placement year provides. These 30 credits are on top of the 360 credits of a standard degree, meaning that you will graduate with 390 credits; 30 more than if you took the same degree without a placement year. The additional credits recognise and reward the additional skills and experience that you have developed during your placement year.

CREW 303 is the continuation of Part II of your undergraduate degree and forms the core offering in Creative Writing. For Joint Honours students, specialist half-units are also available with their selective focus on specific literary forms. CREW 303 allows you to write in any adult literary genre, drawing on the accompanying half-units or exploring new areas of creative work. You will be a member of a workshop group of approximately 12 students. For students taking the course as a minor component in their degree, or as part of a joint honours degree, CREW 303 offers continuity from CREW 203 in the compilation of a portfolio of original writing. The course is supported by a virtual learning environment (Moodle) that enables the exchange of creative work and critiques, whilst also providing virtual meeting spaces and offering a range of dedicated bibliographic resources to support your creative and critical development.

This third-year course will add to the theoretical, historical and cultural aspects of film investigated in Years 1 and 2, while focusing more closely on the challenging aesthetic and critical debates surrounding the concept of modernity. It will look at films made in the silent era, in post-war Europe and in Britain and the US. Writings on film will be considered in conjunction with viewings of particular films, close analysis of specific filmic techniques and methods, and historical and theoretical approaches to film. The course will also pay attention to the debates of classical and contemporary film theory, feminist approaches and other critical traditions (semiotics, structuralism, formalism, cognitivism). Students will be introduced to key debates in classical and contemporary film theory, with topics exploring the relations between film and art, cinema and politics, cinema and psychoanalysis, and, above all, the question of how films produce meaning(s).

Course Aims and Objectives

This unit will provide an opportunity for students to develop their knowledge and skills of the short story form, history and practice with a more advanced course, which develops from the second year course, Crew 204. Each week you will have the opportunity to discuss, in detail, one or two specimen short stories and workshop your own creative work. Students are also expected to explore some of the books and essays listed as ‘supplementary’ reading: the books are selected to offer different perspectives on the key issues raised. The course should be considered as having a cumulative effect, in that books discussed early on may be drawn upon in later weeks to illustrate different aspects of writing. During the course, you are also expected to keep a journal, in which you reflect upon your writing and reading. The journal will form the basis of the reflective element of your final portfolio. Topics covered will include:

• plot, misdirection, and the reveal
• flash and sudden fiction;
• genre (the ghost story);
• rewriting fairytales

This module centres on the artistically and politically adventurous phase of American filmmaking circa 1967-1979. Typically topics studied include:

• Introduction – Hollywood breakdown (Easy Rider, Medium Cool)
• The future of allusion: New Hollywood’s nostalgic mode (The Godfather)
• Popular feminism (Klute, Woman Under the Influence)
• Politics and conspiracy (The Parallax View, All The President’s Men)
• Disaster movies (The Poseidon Adventure)
• Comedy (Annie Hall)
• Exploitation cinema I: blaxploitation (Coffy, Foxy Brown)
• Exploitation cinema II: horror/body genres (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
• Blockbuster cinema and the franchise film (Star Wars)
• The end of the New (Apocalypse Now)

This module explores Hong Kong cinema from the mid-1980s up to the present – an era whose beginning witnesses the international breakthrough of a new wave of local filmmakers, and which goes on to encompass the early 1990s’ production surge, the 1997 handover to mainland China, the crippling economic crisis, and the outbreak of the SARS virus. The module will give you the opportunity to develop an understanding of a number of basic industrial, aesthetic, social and cultural trends marking Hong Kong films in the contemporary era. These include the emergence and impact of independent production; the rise of ‘high-concept’ filmmaking; the movement toward pan-Asian co-productions; the importance and cross-marketing of star performers and local musical traditions such as Cantopop; the popularity of genres like the swordplay film; and aesthetic tendencies such as episodic plotting and the narrative ‘thematisation’ of politics and identity. Emphasis will be placed not only on representative mainstream product, but also on the emergence of a distinct Hong Kong art cinema, whose presence and success on the international festival circuit has brought artistic credibility to a predominantly popular cinema, and which has heralded the arrival of a fresh wave of local ‘auteur’ filmmakers.

This module will explore the writing of Creative Non-Fiction through the development, in a workshop environment, of the student’s own work, combined with the directed reading of a selection of contemporary work and secondary texts. CREW 305 will concentrate on reviews, essays, and cultural reflection. Over the ten-week course you will be expected to read and discuss each key text, and to submit your own work for workshopping on a regular basis. Students are also expected to familiarise themselves with the texts listed as ‘supplementary’ reading below and ‘background’ reading (available on MOODLE): the texts are selected to offer different perspectives on the key issues raised. The course should be considered to have a cumulative effect, in that the texts discussed earlier in the term may be drawn upon in later weeks to illustrate different aspects of writing. During the course you are also expected to keep a journal, in which you reflect upon your writing and reading. This journal will form the basis of the reflective element of your final portfolio. This journal will be discussed in an end-of-term personal tutorial with your tutor.

Study of Creative Non-Fiction in year 3 will concentrate on the essay and review forms. “Essays and reviews” will be interpreted in the wider sense in this course. It will study the essay as a form that has evolved over the last four hundred years as a commentary on human existence, at both the deepest and most trivial level. It will treat the review as a form which, at its best, sets its subject in a cultural and personal context as well as dealing with issues of inherent quality and value, and is (often) only concerned in passing with what the writer likes or dislikes.

During this module you will examine, through set reading and writing prompts and tasks, the unique features of long fiction. Through tutor presentations and discussion of set texts, the workshopping of creative writing in progress and the writing of synopses and other planning documents, you will develop competence in approaching a long fiction project. This includes: strategies for planning and structuring, choosing point of view and tense, developing plot, working with setting, addressing theme and characterisation, experimenting with form and considering an ending. Tutor presentations may be provided as online lectures. You will receive regular feedback, according to a schedule that will be circulated in the first week. You will be expected to give written and oral feedback to your peers each week.

Note: this is a course for the development of long fiction projects for adults – work meant for children or young adults is not suitable for this course. You may work in any genre you wish, but we will focus on literary, historical, science fiction, speculative and crime genres during this course.

This module offers a broad overview of the history of the musical genre in cinema. It begins by examining the use of sound in silent cinema before focusing on the original success of musicals with the arrival of synchronised sound in 1927. The module then tracks the success of movie musicals from the 1930s-1950s, with particular focus on Hollywood successes of MGM, Busby Berkeley, the Astaire-Rogers cycle and the emergence of the self-reflexive musical. Elements of the Hollywood musical in the 1960s and beyond are then studied, with a focus on the importance of the musical soundtrack in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and other films. The module will also examine other traditions where the Musical has been significant, such as India and France. In addition to this, aspects of race, gender and sexuality in the movie musical will be discussed. Some recent Hollywood successes (such as La La Land [2016] or The Greatest Showman [2017]) are studied towards the end of the module in the light of the Musical tradition

This module will provide the space for you to work on a creative project that utilises opportunities afforded by new media. New media narratives (please see the list of set ‘texts’ for examples) are often interactive, participatory, immersive and cross-platform and you will be encouraged to design and provide writing samples from a project that engages with these features. During the module you will examine a variety of new media narratives, compare them to non-linear ‘old media’ narratives (books!) and you will work towards placing your own creative work in a literary and critical context.

The topics we will cover will respond to your own project ideas and interests, but may include:

• Interactivity and immersion,
• Space, place, mapping and journeying,
• The problem of character,
• Who is the author? Collaboration and crowd-sourced fictions.

Note: while we will talk about the ways these narratives can resemble games, this is not a module where you will be designing a computer game. You do not need to have any special computer skills – only an interest in the opportunities afforded to writers by new media forms.

Course Outline:

This course aims to challenge the received structures of language in the students' own poetry through a close reading of poets who opened up new frontiers of 20th/21st century literature through their approaches to language. Every seminar will be split in two halves; the first section will be devoted to a close reading of work by a published poet, from Alice Oswald to Ezra Pound, looking at how they stretch or break the lyric formula; the second hour will be a workshop based on critiquing the students' own poetic experiments. In week two, students will receive a basic introduction to Wittgenstein's theory of language games, with each subsequent poet examined in the light of how they try to break the rules of the game. The students' own experiments are encouraged as either continuations of the radical departures first implemented by the poets in question, or the students' own attempts to break from comfortable notions of confessional or lyric poetry.

This module offers an introduction to the broad area of silent cinema and to a range of critical approaches to this rich area of study. You will have the opportunity to view and analyse a number of important films. We will also explore a number of critical questions raised by this material with regard to the writing and study of histories of cinema (and popular culture in general). We will examine the relationships between technology and form, the economics of film production, distribution and reception, the relationship between cinema and national identity, the social and cultural impact of new (entertainment) media and the study of cinema audiences.

Course Outline: The module will be taught through a combination of seminars and workshops. Earlier weeks will be focussed on introducing students to the key elements of adapting for radio and theatre; there will be specific tasks relating to the weekly subject. As the term progresses, students will develop their own longer pieces for assessment. Specific adaptations will be analysed in script form, in broadcast form and (where possible) through viewing live recording archives. Topics covered will include:

• ‘Faithful’ versus ‘unfaithful’ adaptations
• Finding soundscapes and stage images in the source materials
• Beginnings and endings
• Locating characters and character voices
• Working within and changing existing story structures
• Script format (and software resources)
• Juggling forms: novels, short fiction, poems and non-fiction in to script; moving between film, theatre and radio.

The module aims to enable students to write script adaptations for the stage and radio. Students will explore the effects of choice when it comes to source text (prose fiction, poetry or non-fiction) and the medium for adaptation (radio or theatre). They will experience the editorial demands of the adaptation process, and will engage with both the overlapping and different strategies for realising work in theatre and radio.

The module will introduce students to the constraints and opportunities of writing for children and young adults (YA). By reading, analysing and responding creatively to the set texts, students will become more familiar with: contemporary practitioners of writing for young people; the expectations of the audience, and the opportunities for innovation.

The module develops chronologically, beginning with picture books and concluding with young adult novels. From the constraints of paper engineering to the opportunities of a multi-modal narrative in picture books; from the constraints of coming-of-age tropes to the opportunities for fresh, inventive language in YA fiction, students will come to appreciate the complexities of writing fiction for young people.

As each week passes, students will engage in a close reading of the set texts and will respond creatively to them. Students will be encouraged to revise their responses for their portfolio. This format will allow students to improve as writers themselves, while also gaining a better critical understanding of the field. They will also form part of a creative community with their peers, encouraging and supporting each other’s learning.

Students will have the opportunity to discuss contemporary children’s reading experiences and expectations. As these readers will grow to become the adult readers of tomorrow, students will consider how childhood reading contributes to the wider ecosystems of literature.

Course Outline:

‘No art without the resistance of the medium’, Raymond Chandler once said. This module will build on CREW 205 (Writing Poetry), deepening student engagement with both the writing and the reading process. Poetic form will be explored through a wide-ranging selection of poems (all of which can be found in the set text for the course: The Making of a Poem (ed. Boland and Strand) and Poetry By Heart’s online anthology. We will consider form as historical poetic model and a tradition that has been questioned, adapted, subverted, upcycled, reaffirmed—rather than the binaries of free/formal verse, open/closed form, etc—and there will be particular emphasis on those forms regularly employed or reimagined in a twentieth century and a more recent contemporary context.

A portion of each seminar will be spent discussing the set poems. Students will submit their own poems on a fortnightly basis. The dual assessment (a portfolio of students’ own poems plus a close reading of two of the syllabus poems) reflects the course emphasis on the inter-relationship between reading and writing.