What is Film & Television Studies?
Unsurprisingly, I am a Film and Television Studies major. I wish I had a dollar for every time, after telling someone this, they asked me, “So, you wanna make movies?”
Studying film and TV is — generally speaking — pretty similar to studying literature. You’re not making the movies, you’re analysing them. Due to this common (and understandable) mistake, I thought I’d write a little guide for anyone confused, or for anyone who’s considering studying film!
Below, I’ve set out the kinds of courses and material I’ve covered during my degree. This is how it works at my university, which is probably quite different from yours, especially if you’re not in Australia. Film is a somewhat niche subject area, so your institution may not offer a major, but it may still offer some introductory-level courses or a pathway via other disciplines.
P.S.: when I talk about “film”, I’m also probably talking about television — TV is (in my opinion) understudied academically, and your focus in a major like this is probably going to lean more towards film.
Introduction to Film and Television Studies
This is “film and TV 101”. Some people (and institutions) refer to this discipline as “screen studies”, so that might be the term used. In this kind of course, you’ll likely be introduced to the basics of film analysis — you might talk about shot length, lighting, and mise en scène. You might get a brief overview of film and TV history, or discuss genres or styles of filmmaking. You’ll probably have to watch a bunch of movies and talk and write about them. Pretty good stuff!
Audience and the market
Most higher-level film courses will discuss audience in some way or another, but you’ll probably take something that focuses specifically on the power of media (or at least, you probably should). This leans a little sociological — mine was called “Media and Society”, and it was also part of my journalism degree.
Stories and storytelling
Most people focus on narrative when discussing film and TV, in academic contexts or otherwise. You might get to take a course on multimodal storytelling, or adaptation. You may get a practical storytelling assessment here, and get to make something — you might get to do some screenwriting! The course I took on “Adaptation” was one of the best courses in my degree, and really made me think deeply about the relationships between different texts, including video games, webcomics, and visual art.
History and industry
An awesome part of this discipline is learning about the history of film and TV. If you’re not much of a history person, don’t worry — film as a discipline is only 100 years old, so there’s not a huge amount to go through. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to look through some archives like the Media History Lantern. Aside from an industrial or technical history, you might also cover some film movements and genres, like French New Wave or film noir. This is where you’ll probably be reading some detailed analysis, doing your own research (on a small scale), and writing essays.
National Cinema
If you live outside the U.S., you might have a course on film and television produced in your country. I can only speak for myself, but this subject was a lot more rewarding than I expected. You might look at the history of film and TV in your specific context, how you fit into global markets, government policies, and what kinds of things people around you make movies about. Discussing “national identity” in terms of art can be quite interesting, especially in terms of whose voices are amplified, and whose are silenced.
Something a little more niche?
I took a course called “Realism, Fiction, and Factuality on Screen”, which doesn’t completely fit into any other categories I’ve established here. It’s a little bit of history, a bit of industrial discussion, and a bit of genre analysis. This was also a more in-depth analysis of audience reaction to stories. We looked at practical special effects, editing ‘tricks’, CGI, documentaries and docudramas, biopics, and anything “based on a true story”.
Criticism
This is the course I’m taking at the moment, which is essentially just about aesthetic criticism and effectively assessing and talking about film. It doesn’t focus on how a film is “good” or “bad” based on narrative, context, or values. It’s more about the experience of the critic, and the features within the film: performance, colour, feeling. To be honest, it’s pretty difficult, and so far involves reading a lot of writing about movie criticism, but I’m enjoying it.
Research
If you’re deep in the weeds of film and TV studies, you’ll probably reach a point where you get to work on your own project. If there’s something specific that’s captured your attention, and nobody else seems to have written about it the way you want to write about it, you might want to take a course like this and investigate. This is basically a stepping stone to further study, and it can help you figure out if you want to go into academia.
That’s everything I studied in my major! Hopefully this is helpful to somebody, somewhere — or at least mildly interesting.
If you do have any specific questions, you can find me on Tumblr!