Undergraduate - UnitATS3540 - Documentary and realism in film and television

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

print version

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Film and Screen Studies
Offered	Not offered in 2015
Coordinator(s)	Associate Professor Deane Williams

Synopsis

Documentary and Realism in Film and Television examines approaches to documentary film and television through addressing questions of realism, reality, truth, indexicality and the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. The theoretical and practical issues discussed in relation to film and television will provide a framework for the examination of a number of important phases in the historical development of documentary and realist codes. The unit will address different styles of documentary, such as direct cinema, autobiography, reality formats and digital documentary and their historical evolution, in addition to the contemporary landscape of documentary production.

Outcomes

On the successful completion of this unit students will be able to

Identify and classify a range historical and contemporary documentary or realist codes in relation to different media such as cinema, television and digital media.
Evaluate film and television studies methodologies as they pertain to examples of non-fiction.
Apply film and television studies methodologies in order to compare and analyze different documentary or realist forms
Apply library resources and communicate an understanding of research methods in written and oral form.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Associate Professor Deane Williams

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Film and screen studies

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of second-year Arts units. As this is a third-year level unit, it is recommended that students only take this unit after they have completed at least one second-year level unit in Film and screen studies.

Prohibitions

FTV2710, FTV3710