DISSERTATION UNIT: Briefing

Introduction: (10% of word count = 800 words)

Sets up and prepares the reader:
- introduce and explain main focus and aim
- clarify areas of research e.g. the focus and aim of each chapter
- brief overview of the discussion order of your dissertation chapter by chapter

Beginning, middle and end: (80% of word count)
Each chapter = 2,150 words, 12 paragraphs, 180 words, each paragraph acts as a progressive point that needs to be researched and listed in logical order and identify info for analysis

Chapter One:
- definitions of terms used in the question
- basic theory
- background information and/or historical ideas or contexts

(mapping out theories to do with gender)

Chapter Two:
- utilises and builds on the information from Chapter One
- application of theories, current discussions/context
- any information and ideas that need to be discussed before the question can be fully answered in the final chapter

Chapter Three:
- where the question is fully answered or aim fully realised

Conclusion: (10% of word count = 800 words)

Ends on very last, final response on the discussion
- reiterate the aim of your dissertation, reminding the reader of questions you were intending to answer
- highlight key findings chapter by chapter and how they relate to each other in light of your aims
- discuss your response to your findings and any answers / conclusions drawn to your aims / questions

To prepare for 1st tutorial:
- plan for topic - its intellectual context and how your question approaches it
- create and review list of research material
- key authors and a sentence of the way you wish yo use their ideas
- moving image sequences you wish to relate to research
- methods of analysis
- structure and organisation of discussion
- initial plan for draft chapter one

To prepare for 2nd tutorial:
- read research material
- write up a draft for chapter one

To prepare for 3rd tutorial:
- research and write notes for chapter two
- write chapter two and introduction
- make amendments to chapter one

To prepare for draft hand in: (at least 6000 words)
- make amendments to chapter two
- research and write draft for chapter three and conclusion

Title page:
Title of dissertation
Your name
Course
Month and year of submission
First language
Number of words

DISSERTATION: What is a Dissertation Question?

What is a dissertation question?

Introduction, outlining question, structure and content for literature / proposal and bibliography

Exploring the relationship between societal view and industry related practices / industry related output. 

Regardless of your type of enquiry, you are likely to be exploring how industry practices or industry output shape societal views and practices OR reflect / reinforce / break with societal views and practices. 

Four most common aims:

- to measure / gauge the extent of a phenomena

- to challenge a view / practice

- to update or re contextualise a view / practice

- to evaluate a view / practice

- could also predict the direction of something (but needs to be joined with another aim)

Task - unpicking a question:

Can television provoke social change?

What is the problem with this as a dissertation question?

- too broad

- wide subject area

- closed question

What details do you think it lacks?

- so many types of social change - what type? More specific? positive or negative? 

- broad subject - can go anywhere - what television? what genre? 

What do you think the answer is that the person will arrive at?

- A yes or no answer

Do you think the person knows the answer?

- Yes

What is the danger or pitfalls of basing a dissertation on this enquiry?
- no direction with argument
- hasn't established what social change they'll be looking at

What research do you think the person has done to arrive at this enquiry?
...

What research would you advise this person to do, to develop their enquiry?
- research which kind of social change - and whether this is positive or negative
- research which genre of television - drama, crime, comedy etc..

Dissertation question meeting:

What impact do stereotypical gender representations in contemporary teen dramas have on their young female target audience and is the frequency of these restrictive stereotypes damaging to the development of their identity?  

To what extent do stereotypical gender representations in contemporary teen dramas help to understand life or damage the developing identity of their young target audience? 

- looking at specific teen dramas - gossip girl, pretty little liars, scream queens, river dale

- how are characters introduced in the programme - do they use gender stereotypes so that they are easily identifiable or do they stay away from the stereotypes

- rosalind gill post feminism 

DISSERTATION: How To Write the Proposal

Introduction:
- needs to be clear to follow
- clearly establish themes and issues that will be discusses
- points clearly linked together, developed and structured well
- introduce themes and ideas clearly & neatly

Conclusion:
- enough depth summarising key findings and return to address the question
- clearly draw together main arguments made and address the question title
- summarise key findings

Structure:
- new argument point = new paragraph
- signposting and transitions need to ensure the reader is logically guided through
- logically divide up the arguments made

Formatting:
- Harvard
- Pages numbered, indented and line and a half spacing using with 12pt font throughout, expect longer quotes which should be single spaced
- Bibliography alphabetical by surname of author / source

Analysis, evidence and argument:
- rely on many relevant theoretical texts
- depth and breath of sources and ideas to inform and develop your argument points and clearly address / makes connection to the question
- avoid being too descriptive for too long
- avoid referring to yourself and own viewpoints
- avoid describing differences between films & concepts without the use of theory to explore why this might happen / is significant to your thinking / approach
- avoid utilising arguments to make your own points - use referenced materials as a way of providing evidence
- avoid arguments being too difficult to follow
- make sure evidence clearly links with the points being made
- avoid generalised assumptions
- avoid subjectivity and vagueness

DISSERTATION: Briefing

Draft: 23rd March

Deadline: 11th May

Writing
Production

Formalism - the elements that make up and structure the films 'form'

Editing - continuity (axis of action, shot reverse shot, classical hollywood - Alfred Hitchcock) Discontinuity (soviet montage), art house cinema (Jean Luc Goddard), Avant Garde / Experimental (Stan Brakhage)
Set design
Cinematography

Realism and Social Realism
- documentary modes
- poetic realism
- neo-realism
- british realist
- social realism
- sociology of urban spaces, class systems etc

Auteurship
- Francois Truffaut (auteur policy, 400 blows)
- Andrew Sarris (three concentric circles of: technique, personal style and interior meaning versus metteur-en-scene)
- Roland Barthes (death of the auteur)
- Auteur structuralism (Wollen - author as unconsciously channelling social conventions)
- Post-auteur

Genre Theory

Formal elements:
- iconography
- tone
- narrative elements
- plot
- themes
- archetypes

- Rick Altman: Semantics
- Thomas Schatz: Social Order
- Steve Neal: Difference and repetition of formulas, familiarly and innovation

- Categories
- Sub genres and hybridity
- Canon formation, revisionism and cycles
- allegory and metaphor
- industry and audience

National Cinemas, Art Movements, Transitional Cinema
- British New Wave
- French Impressionism and Surrealism
- Soviet montage
- Italian Neorealism
- German Expressionism
- French new wave
- new german cinema
- new mexican cinema
- new hollywood and independent american cinema
- hong kong cinema
- iranian new wave

Spectatorship

Psychoanalysis
- Male Gaze in Vertigo (Laura Mulvey theory)
- Phallic symbolism in Slasher films (Carol Clover theory)

Feminism
- Male Gaze in Vertigo
- Postfeminist and Consumer choice of branding, beautification and neoliberal exploration in New Femininities: Post feminism, neoliberalism and subjectivity
- Androcentrism - Simon de Beaviour, Mary Ann Doane, Film and the masquerade 

Representation
- Class
- Sexuality
- Gender
- Masculinity

Post colonialism, multiculturalism, race and ethnicity
- orientalism - Edward Said
- Third cinema versus Eurocentrism
- Racial Gaze
- Positive and negative stereotypes

Digital cinema
- manipulation of spaces and early effects
- perceptual realism and photorealism
- persuasion tactics and paratexts
- remediation
- motion capture and performance
- humanness and technology
- codes and contestable mapping
- transmediality
- participatory culture and citizen journalism
- convergence and spreadable media

Animation
- early animation
...

Industry, production, distribution:
- commercialism, globalisation, marketing, ratings, franchises, money and spectacle

Hollywood Studio System: 1920s-1960

Art and Fashion in Film and TV
- art history
- surrealism
- dadaism
- situationism
- mannerism
- cubism
- abstract modernism
- deconstructionist
- precisionist
- renaissance linear perspective
- rococo
- punk, mods, grunge, indie

Stars and Stardom
- star system
- studio system
- celebrity studies
- star personae

Audience reception
- codes of behaviour
- sources
- hypodermic needle model
- Stuart Hall - encoding / decoding 1980

Politics and political economics
- globalisation, neoliberalism, free markets
- Marxism and the Frankfurt School - ideology, base and superstructures, the hypodermic needle model, hegemony (gramsci), carnivalesque (bakhtin)

Structuralism and post structuralism
- semiotics - signifier and signified
- mythology (levi strauss)
- deconsturtcuon
- post modernism

Phenomenology and embodied spectatorship
- haptic visuality
- carnal senses

Film and TV history, cultures, criticism, festivals...

The proposal is an outline of the approach and the shape that you long dissertation will take - get to grips with the subject

Introduction - set up and prepare the reader, introduce and explain the main focus and aim/ question
Clarify areas of research in your dissertation

The main body (chapter 1,2,3) - explores

Chapter One - the beginning
Definition of terms used in the intro

Chapter two - the middle
Utilises and builds on information from chapter one
Application of theories, current discussions / context
Any information and ideas that need to be discussed before the question cane fully answered or the aim fully achieved in the final chapter

Chapter Three - the end
- Where the question is fully answered or aim fully realised

Conclusion - End on very last, final response on the discussion
- Reiterate the aim of your dissertation, reminding the reader of any questions you were intending to answer

For the three chapters, think about how your proposal will outline the organi.....

Start from a clear, focused and research informed question or statement of intent
Needs to be theoretically informed
Offer several opportunities for analysing view points

Avoid question being something you thought up from thin air or where you already know the answer

Break down the Q
- appropriate questioning term e.g. what (define), and to what extent (gauge)

A dissertation question can then be broken down between chapters

Progress through the chapters

The evidence must be relevant to the specific discussion point of the paragraph

Critically evaluation / analysing the evidence involves thinking about the evidence and coming to your own conclusions regarding the significance of it, this is important when using to illustrate or support a discussion point

Prepare a synopsis and provisional bibliography for first tutorial 

Ideas:
- Friends - set design, acting, production

- Cinematography : The Great Gatsby, The Grand Budapest Hotel

- Diversity in films - white males

How cinematography is used in Baz Luhrman's films to create...

Suggestions: Formalism, auteurship