Analysing Film

and
Television

Apocalypse Now (1979)

FAM1000S
2023
 CONTENTS

Course Overview 3
Course Structure 4
Staff and Administration 5
Course Website and Prescribed Texts 8
Lecture Schedule 9
Assessments 12
Lecture and Tutorial Topics 11
Assessments 17

I’m All Girls (2021)

2
 Analysing Film and Television

Course Overview
This course offers an introduction to critical engagement with film and television. It is one of
the few courses in which you can legitimately call going to the cinema and watching TV
research. The theoretical and analytical skills gained will provide an important grounding
for screen production, as well as opening up avenues of interpretation and insight into visual
media.
The course will cover the language of screen texts and the anatomy of visual
storytelling, as well as investigating the processes of spectatorial interpretation, issues of
realism and contextuality, and the socio-cultural implications of film and television narratives.
You will also have the opportunity to put your understanding of narrative structure, genre,
and the elements of visual storytelling into practice by demonstrating how you would write
a script or shoot a short film on a mobile device.

Course objectives
This course aims to develop:
o A basic understanding of visual language as it relates to film and television
o An introduction to the ways in which genres connect screen texts to audiences
o An introduction to the ways in which ideologies are communicated through screen
texts
o Some basic practical skills in screenwriting and/or shooting a short film on a mobile
phone

Course outcomes
By the end of this course students should:
o Have a good understanding of basic film language and genres
o Have a good understanding of writing film analysis and doing basic research into
screen theories and histories
o Have produced a short creative work in either screen writing or film production
using a mobile phone

Course structure
Now that we have returned to in-person teaching, the course will follow a hybrid model.
This will be comprised of recorded slide presentations, in class lecture presentations, and
tutorial backup.

Slides will be uploaded on the Friday before the week for that topic. Lecture times will be
spent on addressing the themes of the slides, answering questions and using additional
screening materials. These contact classes will be recorded.

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 Tutorials
There will be two tutorials a week. For the first part of the course, there will be some
online tutorials to facilitate the showing of video clips in class. Building relationships with
the teaching staff and your peers is really important and always improves the quality of
the course.

Staff
Course Convenor:

Dr Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk | ian.rijsdijk@uct.ac.za

AC Jordan, RM104

Administrative Assistant

Ms Vuyiseka Bhambatha
AC Jordan, RM 204 | vuyiseka.bhambatha@uct.ac.za

Tutors:
Please consult the course website for your tutor’s contact details.

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I have always been very proud of the standard of tutoring in this course. We have many
very experienced tutors, and new tutors have extensive training and contact with me, the
convener. Though I have been teaching for 25 years, I also started out as a first-year
tutor, so please see the tutors as support for your learning, not information robots. All
assignments are carefully moderated and we meet as a teaching team regularly to ensure
that you all get the most out of the course.

Course Administration

This is a large class and as Tyler says to the ‘space monkeys’ in Fight Club, “you are not a
beautiful and unique snowflake.” I will try as hard as possible to make sure that information
is available easily and timeously. Please make use of the Q&A function on Vula (which the
tutors and I will attempt to stay on top of).

Please keep in mind that the administrative staff do an enormous amount of work outside
of this course for the department, so treat them with respect and do not to ask silly questions
(especially those answered by the course outline). If they become upset then I will put on my
Bane face and everyone will be miserable.

5
 Lecturers
Dr Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk (IMR)

Additional lecture material and course design by

Mr Silas Miami
Dr Kristina Graour
Mr Zach Meltzer
Ms Tina-Louise Smith

Brooklyn 99 (2013)

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 Course Website
https://amathuba.uct.ac.za/d2l/home/10280

If you have trouble accessing the course website, first check that you are correctly registered
for the course and your registration has had time to be processed, then contact the course
convenor.

Prescribed Texts
There is no prescribed text for this course. Readings will be uploaded corresponding to
each week’s lectures. A very good reference work is David Bordwell and Kristin
Thompson’s Film Art: an introduction (10th edition), but we will draw on a range of
introductory texts for reading scaffolding in the course.

For the first time we will not be using prescribed films for this course. Instead, tutors will
use a selection of texts for the semester for each tutorial group.

The Harder They Fall (2021)

7
 Lecture Schedule

Week Wednesday Thursday Additional Task Manager

1 Orientation Why do we watch Screening:
July Film as Social films La Haine
24 – 28 Practice The Curtain (1995)
Screen Ecologies Rises…
2 Film Narrative Alternative Screen Your first tutorial
July 31 –
August 5 Convergence Begin Assignment 1
Narratives
3 NO LECTURE Mise-en-scène Guest Lecture Assignment 1 DUE
August Women’s Day Prof. David Martin
7 – 11 Jones
(University of
Glasgow)
4 Frame and Visual Storytelling Cinematography
August Composition
14 – 18
5 An Integrated An Integrated Screening:
August World World Thelma and Louise
21 – 25 Sound Sound (1991)
6 Constructing story Constructing story FAM1010S Submission 1
August 28 – Editing Editing
September 1 Which film will you write
your stylistic analysis on?
Write a 400-word
synopsis of the film. This
should be in your own
words, not copied from
the internet.
VAC VAC VAC VAC
7 Analysing the Writing the Assignment 2 DUE
September 11 Scene Stylistic Analysis
– 15 FAM1010S Submission 2

Choose one scene you will

analyse in your essay and
describe what happens in
the scene. 200 words
max.
8 Film and Television and Screening: FAM1010S Submission 3
September 18 Audiences: Audiences: Material
– 22 Understanding Understanding (2012) You have described what
Genre Genre happens in one of your
chosen scenes, now
analyse what elements of
cinematic style are being
used and what effect they
have on the narrative.
9 NO LECTURE Screen Genres: Assignment 3 DUE
Heritage Day

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September 25 Television and FAM1010S Submission 4
– 29 Beyond
Grammar and
Referencing; editing and
proofreading your work.
10 The Creative Visual Storytelling: Screening:
October Project A World, a Short films and
3–6 character and a student films from
problem previous years
11 Visual Storytelling: Making a short FAM1010S Submission 5
October cellphone film on your
9 – 13 scenarios phone What is your story for
your creative stake? Who
are your characters and
what is at stake?
12 Making a short Mobile phone
October film on your Filmmaking:
16 – 20 phone: ethics and Troubleshooting
representation
13 Space for makeup tutorials. Assignment 4 DUE
October
23 – 27

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 Assessment

Assignment 1: Personal thoughts on movies Friday, August 11th

Assignment 2: Essay Outline Friday, September 15th
Assignment 3: Stylistic Analysis Friday, September 29th
Assignment 4: Creative Project Wednesday, October 25th

Personal thoughts on movies 20%

Essay Outline 5%
Stylistic Analysis 35%
Creative Project 40%

Please contact your tutor if you are ill or unable to hand in work on time for any reason.
Work submitted late on medical or psychological grounds must be accompanied by
relevant notification from a health professional.

Lecture and Tutorial Topics

Week One

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Screening: La Haine (1995, d/ Matthieu Kassovitz)
Tutorial: No tutorials this week
Reading:
• Read this study guide carefully, noting assessment requirements and due dates.

Week Two

Tutorial 1: Narrative
Tutorial 2: Narrative
Reading:
• Stadler, Jane and Kelly McWilliam (2009) ‘Screen Narratives: Traditions and
Trends.’ In Screen Media: Analysing Film and Television. Allen & Unwin, 155-183.

Additional Reading:
• Vincendeau, Ginette (2005) La Haine: French Film Guide. I.B. Tauris, 40-79.

Week Three

Tutorial 1: Mise en Scène

Tutorial 2: NO TUTORIAL. Wednesday is a public holiday, so the whole class will have
only one tutorial this week. Your tutor will indicate your meeting time.
Reading:
• Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. (2013) ‘Chapter 4. The Shot: Mise-en-
Scène’ in Film Art: An Introduction (10th edition). New York: McGraw Hill, 112-159.

Week Four

Screening: NO SCREENING
Tutorial 1: Mise-en-Scène
Tutorial 2: Frame and Composition
Reading:
• Giannetti, Louis. (2005) ‘Mise en Scène’ in Understanding Movies (10th Edition). New
Jersey: Pearson, 48-97.

Week Five

Screening: Thelma & Louise (1992, d/ Ridley Scott)

Tutorial 1: Cinematography
Tutorial 2: Cinematography

Reading:
• Barsam, Richard (2007) ‘Cinematography’. In Looking at Movies (2nd ed). New
York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 140-194.

Week Six

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Tutorial 1: Sound
Tutorial 2: Sound and Editing
Reading:
• Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. ‘Chapter 7: Sound in the Cinema’ in Film
Art: An Introduction (10th edition). New York: McGraw Hill (2013), 266-307.
• Chandler, Gael (2009) ‘Chapter 1’. In Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and
Movie Lover Must Know. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2-8, 15-20.

VACATION

Week Seven

Tutorial 1: Editing
Tutorial 2: Stylistic Analysis
Reading:
• Dancyger, Ken (2014) ‘The Picture Edit and Continuity’. In The Technique of Film and
Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice (5th ed). Burlington: Focal Press, 371-
412.
• Murch, Walter (2001) ‘Why Do Cuts Work?’ In In The Blink of an Eye: A Perspective
on Film Editing. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 5-9, 23-28, 57-63.

Week Eight
Screening: Material (2012, d/ Craig Freimond)
Tutorial 1: Stylistic Analysis
Tutorial 2: Genre
Reading:
• Grant, Barry Keith (2007) Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. London:
Wallflower, 4-28.

Additional Reading:
• Sandell, Jillian (1998) ‘I'll Be There For You: Friends and the Fantasy of Alternative
Families,’ American Studies 39:2, 141-155

Week Nine

Tutorial 1: NO TUTORIAL. Monday is a public holiday, so the whole class will have only
one tutorial this week. Your tutor will indicate your meeting time.
Tutorial 2: Genre
Readings:
• Sconce, Jeffrey (2004) ‘What If?: Charting Television’s New Textual Boundaries’. In
Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Edited by Lynn Spigel & Jan
Olsson. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 93-112.

Week Ten

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Screening: Short films and student films from previous years
Tutorial 1: Scriptwriting
Tutorial 2: Visual Storytelling
Readings:
• McKee, Robert. Story. Methuen (1999), pp.243-248, 252-259.

Week Eleven

Tutorial 1: Creative Project

Tutorial 2: Creative Project
Readings:
• Montgomery, Robb (2018) Smartphone Video Storytelling. New York: Routledge.
• Berkeley, Leo (2014) ‘Tram Travels: Smartphone Video Production and the Essay
Film.’ In Berry, Marsha and Max Schleser Mobile media making in an age of
smartphones. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.25-34 [available as an ebook
through UCT Libraries]

Week Twelve

Tutorial 1: Creative Project

Tutorial 2: Creative Project
Readings:

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Assignment 1

DUE DATE: August 12th

This is a personal writing exercise. The aim is to explore your own relationship to the
moving image, whether going to a cinema, watching at home with friends and family, or
streaming to a personal device.
Choose ONE of the following quotes and write a short journalistic essay about how
the writer’s words relate to your own experience of film viewing. Your answer must include
reference to a film or series that you have seen.
Each entry should be between 600 and 800 words. You do not need to use
references, but if you do, please use correct referencing formats.
The point of this assignment is personal expression and creativity. Please do not
use AI tools to develop and write your answer.

“With film we can make progress in history, in civilisation. So that nobody can lie.”
SAM FULLER

“The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering
it capable of turning to good.”
ANDREI TARKOVSKY

“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more
beautiful than we expected them to be.”
ALAIN DE BOTTON

“Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of
scholars, but of illiterates.”
WERNER HERZOG

“The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the
adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you’ve seen. You do
meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good
movies than about what you love in bad movies.”
PAULINE KAEL

Assignment 2

DUE DATE: September 15th

This short assignment will be completed online and will be covered in lectures.

You will be required to produce a document including the following in preparation for
your Stylistic Analysis.
• Your choice of film (from the list provided by your tutor) for your Stylistic analysis
• An argument statement of 200 words

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 • A preliminary reference list that musty included – correctly formatted – at least
one reading from the course, and one additional reading relating to your choice of
film.

Assignment 3

DUE DATE: September 29th

Length: 2000 words

Task
Analyse a film or television episode’s stylistic system (sound, editing, cinematography,
mise-en-scène). Address the following question: “how do the four elements of cinematic
style communicate the theme of the film or television episode and influence the spectator’s
responses to the characters and the story?”

Your tutor will provide a short list of films and series from which to choose your case study.

The following structure is advised:

• Select one or, at the most, two scenes and closely analyse them.
• Discuss the importance of your chosen scene within the context of the film or
television episode (i.e., how does the scene inform us about character, genre, plot,
and narrative style).

You are encouraged to research fully the film or television episode you are analysing. This
may include quoting from the technical chapters in the course resources or searching for
relevant online sources.

Your essay must make use of at least two references

Guidelines
• Give evidence of reading / research by discussing key quotes, concepts and terms
and explaining how they relate to your chosen film.
• Use the theoretical vocabulary (remember you may choose to provide definitions
of key terms)
• Proof read with care: read your work out loud or ask a friend to read it to catch
typos and grammatical errors.
• Italicise or underline the titles of television programmes, films, journals and books.

In your introduction, state what your topic is and which film you are analysing, for
example:

In the following analysis of the stylistic system of The Shining (1980) I will address the
following question: ‘How does filmic style produce a sense of hesitation and uncertainty,
and provide cues for the audience to respond to The Shining?’ Focusing on how lighting is
used in conjunction with framing and sound, I will argue that the use of excessive shadow
and the tendency to avoid close-ups except in moments of high drama literally keeps the

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audience 'in the dark' about the motivations of the characters, while the non-diegetic sound
track effectively generates suspense.

Define your central interests and objectives. It is not possible to analyse every instance of
mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing and sound in every shot or frame of the entire
film. It is a good idea to select a representative or outstanding scene, then analyse it in
detail. You should, however, be able to discuss how the scene fits within the pattern and
narrative of the overall film. You must discuss all four elements of style, but you may focus
most on those that are particularly important in the film you have chosen.

It is essential to analyse the film or television episode you have chosen, not just describe it
or explain the story. Restrict yourself to a three-sentence synopsis (plot summary) of the
narrative, and brief descriptions of the main action in particular scenes that you discuss in
depth. Describe the stylistic techniques in more detail (e.g. elaborate on the lighting in a
certain shot) in order to suggest why the filmmakers might have chosen those techniques
and not others, and analyse what sort of responses those particular techniques may elicit in
the audience. Link your ideas to the readings and resources.

Essay Submission and Format

• VERY IMPORTANT: Please use the following format for the computer file name of
you submission. (Film name)_(your surname)_(your tutor’s initials). This will make it
much easier for us to sort out who will be marking which paper.
• Include a correctly formatted and alphabetized bibliography (see below).

Referencing and Style Guide

Style Guide
• For titles of films, television series, books or journals – italicize.
• For journal articles, newspaper articles, television episodes – ‘single inverted
commas.’

References

• For the purposes of first year essays, you should be able to use a basic
referencing system, like Harvard. In this system, your in-text reference will look like
this: (Smith 2008:56).
• Remember that if you are referring to a chapter in a book with many authors, you
reference the author of the chapter in the text, not the editor.
o Buscombe, Edward. ‘Inventing Monument Valley: Nineteenth-Century
Landscape Photography and the Western Film.’ In Fugitive Images: From
Photography to Video, 87-108. Edited by Patrice Petro. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995.
o In the above example, your in-text reference to a quote on page 90 would
be (Buscombe 1995:90).

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 • Similarly, when quoting from a journal article, you use the author’s name, the year
and the page number.
• Cohen, Hubert. ‘The Genesis of Days of Heaven,’ Cinema Journal 42:4
(2003), 46-62.
• In the above example, the in-text reference would be (Cohen 2003:51)

• When using the internet, you use the author’s name in the body of your essay (or
the homepage if there is no author), and the full url in the bibliography.
o Thill, Scott. ‘Disney’s Hidalgo and the Commodification of Myth,’ Bright
Lights Film Journal 45, August 2004. Accessed online at
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/45/hidalgo.htm
o In this example, your in-text reference would be (Thill, 2004).

Bibliography examples

Book
Basinger, Jeanine (1986) The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre.
New York: Columbia University Press.

Book with more than one author

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson (2008) Film Art: an Introduction (8th ed.)
Boston: McGraw Hill

Chapter in Book

Buscombe, Edward (1995) ‘Inventing Monument Valley: Nineteenth-Century

Landscape Photography and the Western Film.’ In Fugitive Images: From Photography to
Video, Patrice Petro (ed.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp.87-108.

Journal Article
Cohen, Hubert (2003) ‘The Genesis of Days of Heaven,’ Cinema Journal 42:4, pp.46-62.

Film
The Shining (1980, d/ Stanley Kubrick)

Television
Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008 – 2013)
Breaking Bad (‘Green Light’, s03e04, 11/04/2010)

Assignment 4

The Creative Project will be posted later in the semester

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