FSFM7020 Animation Major Project Written Report Essay Brief 2024-25 | UCA

FSFM7020 Essay Brief

A 3,000-word written evaluation, contextualising your work concerning your research, methods, professional aims and audience.

Assessment Requirements

An essay of 3,000 words (+/-10%) not including the bibliography. You should submit a digital copy (Word or PDF) to Turnitin.

Your essay should include a minimum of three properly referenced quotations (or citations) from academic sources, a Harvard style bibliography and in-text citations and relevant illustrations if appropriate.

Your bibliography does not count towards the word count.
This is an essay and should use conventional academic prose.

This is an academic paper which runs alongside the practical component for this unit and is an opportunity to research and consider its context, theory and methodology. At 3,000 words, it is like a short dissertation for which you will devise your topic, reading list and essay question.

Essay Brief

Considering the subject matter, technique and intended audience of your film, write an essay in which you investigate their theoretical and artistic context. Equipped with this, devise a question for which the essay is an answer.

Background

The idea is for you to research the context in which you are making your major film and the subject matter and technique you are using. Who are the other major filmmakers who use this technique or who make work on the same topic?

For example, if you were painting on film as your production method, you would need to examine the history of “camera-less” film and a timeline from the first experiments through to the present day. You would investigate founding figures such as Norman McLaren and Stan Brakhage right up to contemporary figures such as Mary Martins. Who influenced them and their thinking? You would need to consider what it means to be making this kind of work now. Are you using it simply for its aesthetic appeal, or for how it serves the kind of story you are telling?

You might choose to concentrate more on the subject matter of your film. So, if you are making an animated documentary on the subject of representation, you might want to research not only other filmmakers who have produced work on this subject but also the wider context of representation within art, media and society. You might then consider your choice of animation style and technique and how they relate to it.

For writing the essay, you need to devise an essay question, which will guide your research as well as your writing. It is important that the essay is a theoretical investigation or critical line of inquiry, rather than just long descriptions of factual and historical information.

So, for example, you might select two filmmakers who use the same animation technique you are employing and critically discuss, analyse and compare their work. You might consider an early practitioner of the technique with one from the present day as a means of examining differences in outlook and purpose for the technique and what these differences (and similarities) may tell you.