SCRN3400
10 units
3000 level
Course handbook
Description
This course examines the concept of authorship in film and/or television from a range of different theoretical, cultural, industrial, and historical perspectives, and how such figuration has been 'written' both on-screen and off via dedicated critical, theoretical, and audience debates. Taking in how authorship manifests on screen according to scholarly writing and relevant biographical details of a given director and/or primary writer of a film or television programme, the role of authors will be considered, analysed, and interrogated. Select weekly 'case studies' will examine, trace, and debate divergent understandings of authorship and critiques thereof.
Availability
Not currently offered.
This Course was last offered in Semester 1 - 2023.
Replacing course(s)
This course replaces the following course(s): FMCS3800. Students who have successfully completed FMCS3800 are not eligible to enrol in SCRN3400.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the course students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate a level-appropriate detailed understanding of critical and theoretical debates about authorship in one or more modes of screen media across different historical and cultural contexts.
2. Evaluate critical and theoretical humanities discourses of authorship studies and theory as applied to film and/or television.
3. Apply dedicated scholarly approaches to the work of particular film and/or television authors.
4. Interpret films and/or television programmes by analysing their authorial signature.
5. Demonstrate high-level undergraduate skills in textual, historical, industrial, and cultural analysis of films and/or television programmes.
Content
This course will examine select topics from the following:
- Debates around singular authorship as applied to the collective artforms of film and/or television.
- The differences between how authorship has historically functioned in film, television, and other modes of screen media.
- Discourses of 'auterism' arguing that a good film's author is its director.
- Individualist discourses and television creators, showrunners and/or executive producers.
- Studies of key authors in the history of cinema and/or television.
- Theoretical critiques of authorship as a concept, within film and/or television studies and related humanities discourses.
- The role of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and cultural background in understandings of authorship.
- How authorship has been conceived within different national and cultural contexts.
- Authorship and 'world cinema'.
- Screen authorship's industrial and commercial functions.
- Classical, modernist, and postmodernist constructions, performances, and understandings of screen authorship.
- Authorship and 'autocritique'.
- Collective models for understanding screen authorship.
- Reading authorship through thematic, formal, aesthetic, character, and narrative elements of a screen text.
Requisite
This course replaces FMCS3800. If you have successfully completed FMCS3800 you cannot enrol in this course.
Assumed knowledge
20 units of 1000 level SCRN courses.
Assessment items
Journal: Weekly Journal
Written Assignment: Research Exercise
Essay: Major Research Essay
Course outline
Course outline not yet available.
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