BA (Hons) in Creative Writing for Film, Television and New Media

 

CRWG 3005        Creative Writing for New Media I      (3 units)

This course is aimed to train students with the practical skills for writing scripts, especially for E-books, E-magazine, mobile phone films/video and digital radio broadcasting creatively. The general principle in creative writing for new media will be introduced from week 1 to 5. The second part will focus on writing scripts for mobile phone film/video, and digital radio broadcasting. A new way of interactive storytelling, creative mindset and grammar are highly emphasized.

 

 

CRWG 3006        Introduction to Film and New Media      (3 units)

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of film and new media as the modern media forms and meaning-making entities in the era of media convergence. The course consists of two modules. The first module considers film as an art and cinematic practices by which viewers make sense of images and stories on screen. It provides a critical introduction to the basic film elements and critical approaches of film. The second module will engage students with an understanding of new media with a range of phenomena that underpin the critical discussions in the new media age. It will examine an array of key themes that preoccupied new media scholars, for example, identity, intelligence, ownership, surveillance, digital narrative by stressing on the Web-based entities such as blogs, online social networks, video-sharing sites, etc. Students will learn how new media serve as a tool for creative expression and cultural production that mediate the everyday interactions.

 

 

CRWG 3015        Television Writing Workshop I      (3 units)

This course will train students in professional scriptwriting for different TV programmes like Talk Show, Late Night Show, Reality TV, Children’s Programme and TV News Magazine Show with Sit-com as the main focus. At the end of the course students will be able to write Sit-com scripts.

 

 

CRWG 3016        Television Writing Workshop II      (3 units)

This course will train students in professional scriptwriting for TV drama series and Made-for-TV movies. At the end of the course students will be able to write scripts for TV dramas.

 

 

CRWG 3025        Screenwriting Workshop I      (3 units)

This course introduces students to the craft of screenwriting, establishing a foundation for all future writing. Screenplay formatting will be a major focus, and students will learn how to write scene description, to describe characters and locations, and to develop dramatic conflict, climax, romance and humor. The course will also include script-to-screen action sequences, script-to-screen analysis, comparing well-known films to their original screenplays.

 

 

CRWG 3026        Screenwriting Workshop II      (3 units)

This course introduces students to the craft of screenwriting, establishing a foundation for all future writing. Screenplay formatting will be a major focus, and students will learn how to write characters’ dialogue, monologue, voice-over, dramatic structure and the ways of storytelling narrative. The course will also include script-to-screen action sequences as well as script-to-screen analysis, comparing well-known films to their original screenplays. This course is a continuation of Screenwriting Workshop I.

 

 

CRWG 3035        Cinematic Storytelling      (3 units)

This course is aimed to train students with the cinematic storytelling techniques aside from dialogues and voice over, etc. which includes how the shots language, frame, shape, colour, lighting, editing, music and sound effects tell the story. As film is a unique medium that does not solely depend on the verbal delivery of messages, film scriptwriters need to understand the fundamentals of film art as a narrative tool.

 

 

CRWG 3045        Creative Thinking      (3 units)

Creative Thinking is the essential course of training students how to think creatively by knowing the mechanism of our mind. Students will explore to think from various angles and perspectives applying the creative tools into actual artistic and creative work.

 

 

CRWG 3065        Selected Readings in World Literature      (3 units)

This course introduces literature written by world authors in the 19th and 20th century. Its focus is on short stories, poems, and plays. Students will learn to analyse the artistic and imaginative use of language, and develop the ability to think creatively and critically. The course aims to deepen students’ understanding of people from other cultures which helps establish knowledge for their creative works in the future.

 

 

CRWG 3075        Adaptation Seminar: Literature, Drama and Cinema      (3 units)

This course introduces the students to the creative process of various adaptations from literature into film, drama into film, and literature into drama. This seminar addresses many of the considerations associated with translating texts to film, and offers an in-depth analysis of the ways in which how adaptation works successfully use imagery and film-editing techniques to capture aspects of the original script that would have been impossible to show on stage. Literature provides filmmakers with a rich source of material for films. The students compare concrete examples of adapted films to the original works, and discuss adaptation strategies of selected works.

 

 

CRWG 3085        Mobile Communication      (3 units)

This course will train students to have a better understanding of Mobile Communication in contemporary information society. Students will have the opportunities to gain knowledge on mobile communication history, the relation between mobile communication and youth culture as well as mobile communication and its transformation of the democratic process. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand how the rapid emergence of online interactions with mobile communication technology has reshaped their lifestyle.

 

 

CRWG 3095        The Languages of New Media      (3 units)

The course will start creative and critical uses of media, and students will discover new tools and new forms of communication useful throughout their studies. Students will have the opportunity to begin working with still images, video, and interactive media like Facebook, You tube, Blogs, Web2.0, Interactive Television, Games and mobile phone film/video to create a range of creative and interactive projects. The expressive range of screen languages in cultural, historical, and technological contexts will also be introduced. Discussions will focus on specific topics in digital culture with attention to visual communication, hyper-textuality, interactivity and visual identity.

 

 

CRWG 4005        Creative Writing for New Media II      (3 units)

This course is aimed to train students with the practical skills for writing scripts, especially for interactive web TV, videogames, and 3-D animated feature film creatively. The general principle in creative writing for new media will be introduced from week 1 to 6. The second part will focus on writing scripts for web TV, 3-D animation and videogames. A new way of interactive storytelling, creative mindset and grammar are highly emphasized.

 

 

CRWG 4015        Graduation Project I      (3 units)

This course is the first section of the graduation project. It mainly helps students from generating, researching, developing, and planning ideas to writing up several high concepts, story outlines, character bios and scene breakdown for their script project in preparation for Graduation Project II. In the final year, regular consultation with graduation project supervisor will be arranged. The course provides an opportunity for students to prove they are capable of completing the project and graduating from the programme.

 

 

CRWG 4016        Graduation Project II      (3 units)

This course is the second section of the graduation project. From the high concepts and story outline proposals produced in Graduation Project I, students will write scripts for full length feature film or animation or for certain episodes TV/Web drama or a script(s) of appropriate length for new media as the final fulfillment for the course depending on project supervisor’s, programme director’s and external advisors’ advice on it. Course contents are in a more advanced stage and more focused progress. Regular consultations with the project supervisor will be arranged. The course provides an opportunity for students to prove that they are capable of completing the project and graduating from the programme.

 

 

CRWG 4045        New Media Studies in Greater China (Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China)      (3 units)

This course is designed to enhance students’ understanding towards the influence of new media studies in Greater China (Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China). Several aspects will be covered: the relationship of New Media and election, marketing, integration with TV stations, advertising, and the media ecology.

 

 

CRWG 4055        Studies in Film and Television Classics      (3 units)

Classics involve innovations and canons. They not only demonstrate the creative intensity but also the force of shaping the development of subsequent works. This module will survey a number of film and television classics from America, Europe, and Asia created by various auteurs and of various genres. By exploring the definitive and enduring qualities of these “classics,” the course will analyze the cultural and industrial significance of these texts.

 

 

CRWG 4065        Studies in Screenplays      (3 units)

Referring to what screenwriter William Goldman says, “screenplays are structure,” the course will adopt a structural approach as the key frameworks to analyze a number of screenplays of the notable Hollywood and Chinese-language movies from 1970s to 2010s. The analysis will pivot on the screenwriting theories and ideas such as the three-act structure, Syd Field’s Paradigm, Frank Daniel’s the sequence approach, and non-linear narrative. Considering screenplay is a unique literary form, this course will investigate how a screenplay stresses on the literal and visual dimensions of a story whereas thoughts and emotions of characters are evoked through subtext, action, and symbolism. In addition, it will explore how components like technical jargon, tight prose are used in describing stage directions. By examining the screenplay texts from various cinemas, the course will also provide a brief scrutiny on how the screenwriters may systematize the goals, structure, and techniques of writing a script in different cinematic systems.

 

 

CRWG 4115        Film, Television and Culture Studies      (3 units)

Cinema and TV is one of the most important and popular forms of visual representations in contemporary culture, and in this course we study film and video from the perspective of cultural studies. The course reads cinema and TV culturally, socially and politically. We want to examine how the cultural forms of moving images produce meanings, and how it is interpreted by people. Providing students a general theoretical landscape to understand and criticize film and TV, this course ultimately aims to apply cross-disciplinary boundaries in cinema/TV studies.

 

 

CRWG 4125        Selected Readings in Chinese Literature      (3 units)

本科目會於古典及當代文學範圍內選取特別專題 (如流派、名作家、文類、文學分期),作較深入研究,旨在使學生對中國文學有更深切和廣泛的認識,培植文學養份。

 

 

CRWG 4135        Seminar on Script Sales and Creativity Transfer      (3 units)

In this course, student will be equipped with the marketing points, artistic pursuit, distributing experience shared by veteran film producers and distributers about the marketing and pitching of film script, TV drama series and idea proposal from new media. Moreover, the case study and concept of creativity transfer shared by different creative people from diversified scopes and professions will be conducted in seminar or guest lecture mode mainly.

 

 

CRWG 4145        Special Topics in Film, Television and New Media      (3 units)

This course allows new topics to be taught, enabling a degree of flexibility within the curriculum, for emergent ideas to appear and be realized within the teaching and learning environment, and to reflect the changing interests and expertise of the academic staff. Therefore, there are no subject-specific aims and objectives here, but rather general aims and objectives, within which subject-content will be articulated. The course aims to study a particular subject in a comprehensive manner. Students will attend lectures on the subject, read on the subject, view relevant films, and carry out required modes of assessment. At the end of the course students will have a good understanding of the subject, and will be able to demonstrate that understanding in specified forms of assessment.

 

 

CRWG 4155        Special Topics in Hollywood Cinema      (3 units)

The course aims to give a comprehensive introduction to Hollywood cinema and examines its cultural and aesthetic significance. By spotlighting some movies within the economic and historical context of their production, circulation, and consumption, it explores and interprets Hollywood cinema in history and in the present, in theory and in practice.

 

 

CRWG 4165        Special Topics in Hong Kong Cinema      (3 units)

This course aims to address different topics of the Hong Kong Cinema, mainly focusing on the 1970s to the post 97 period. Genres, gender issues, transnational movies will be analysed.

 

 

CRWG 4175        Studies in Non-Fiction Films      (3 units)

This course will introduce the basic concept and comprehensive historical development of non-fiction films (in this course, we focus on documentary only although non-fiction films include avant-garde film, educational film and industrial films, etc.). It introduces students to the fascinating world of documentaries and the intriguing but inspiring relationship between reality and its representation. The aesthetics of realism and documentary as political propaganda will also be discussed and explored.

 

 

CRWG 4185        Toy, Game and Children Culture      (3 units)

This course introduces the concept and theory on the relationship between toys, games and children culture. The philosophical and emotional rationale and drive of toys and games for the construction of childhood will be deeply explored and studied. Students will be equipped with the learning theory through the tools of toys and games.

 

 

CRWG 4195        Film Genres      (3 units)

This module will survey the history and theory of major American film genres including the Western, the gangster film, the hardboiled detective film, the musical, the family melodrama. The iconography, archetypes and themes will be discussed and evaluated. By examining the generic evolution throughout the decades, this module will provide hints on how genre functions as a commercial system and as an apparatus to circulate and perpetuate the American ideologies.

 

 

CRWG 4905        Supervision of Internship      (0 units)

Students are encouraged to undertake a non-graded and zero-credit professional optional internship during their study. The aim is to help them discover their strengths and weaknesses, learn and apply working experience in a real-world industry setting, realize their responsibility as a team member and communicate with other people in a real working situation. The internship may last one to four months in the form of full-time or part-time employment or professional practice or placement during holidays of academic years (normally the summer break of year one study).

 

 

ICMT 3027        Marketing Principles      (3 units)

This course introduces students to the principles of marketing in the global economy. There is a strong emphasis on how organizations create customer value through marketing strategy planning. Students will be able to learn buyer behaviour, market segmentation, product planning, service quality, promotion, pricing, and managing channel relationships.

 

 

ICMT 3145        Digital Communication      (3 units)

This course aims at giving students an overview of the process of digital communication, and how digital media are used in various media industries. It will first introduce the nature and characteristics of digital media, and their relations to the changing nature and media activity of audience. The course will then focus on how digital media are used in various media industries including journalism, public relations and advertising. At the end, students will gain hands-on skills in producing works in digital communication.

 

 

ICMT 3195        Understanding Theatre Arts      (3 units)

In this course, students will learn to understand and appreciate different performing arts genres including dance, drama, stand-up comedy, music and musical. Emphasis will be placed on the aesthetic principles of the modern society. Students will learn how to appreciate a performance and will have to attend live shows/concerts for cultural experience and journal-keeping.