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• Senior Comps

Senior Comps

Three years into a film and media studies emphasis, you have found media production and critical analysis to be your route. Comps projects will only work if your passion and intellectual curiosity is there. Professors are here to be your mentors, to listen to, support, examine, critique, and encourage the ideas of those who seek us out for advice and counsel. We cannot make you an artist or a scholar, we cannot supply you with passion. Look upon the comps experience not as the last critical work or media project you will ever make, but perhaps the last time you will have such a free and secure space to take risks and explore new territory.

FORM

In the past, comprehensives projects have either taken the shape of a 30 page critical paper or a 10 minute video. These routes are certainly solid ones to take. But we ask that those writing papers think creatively about approach, archival research strategies, and methodology. And for those making media projects, we similarly mandate that you be critically and thoughtfully engaged about the social, cultural, and historical location of your project and its content.

Furthermore, in this digital age, where forms of media and routes of exhibition and distribution are becoming increasingly diverse, and multimodal routes to critical writing and analysis are rife with possibility, we ask that you deeply explore the question of what the best form is for the project you are seeking to investigate.

10 minute linear videos screened in Thorne Hall in April are certainly supported, but don’t let this traditional venue conscribe you. There is no reason a gallery exhibit of installation work or computers showing interactive or Web-based writing, etc. could not be set up in Weingart or in public space on campus concurrently with the April Thorne screening.

Similarly, there is no reason why critical projects cannot have a media component or utilize new media as a form of audiovisual writing. In recent years, students have also become increasingly interested in combining critical writing and research with the production of a feature-length screenplay. Throw out givens, explore all possibilities, and arrive at the best form for your particular critical and creative work.

The 10 minute time limit on media will be vigilantly enforced regardless of form (even if a project loops, or is broken up into several separate media segments or vignettes). This is to ensure that all media contained therein is thought through, pre-produced and planned, shot, and post-produced with a satisfactory depth and rigor. Similarly, writing and critical work tantamount to 30 pages of polished, researched, and developed writing must be evident in critical projects, regardless of multimodal presentation.

With this openness to form and content, remember there are some practical realities to consider. If you’ve forgotten the filming and safety restrictions we are required to uphold, check out the safety checklist on the division website before, for example, writing a production script that takes place on a freeway median, with actors driving cars with guns in hand.

COURSEWORK

PRODUCTION COMPS

Any student seeking to make a production-based senior comprehensives project must have completed at least two production course experiences by the end of Junior year—ArtF 140 Intro. Production and ArtF 355 Advanced Projects are considered bare minimums. Any student planning on making fictional work must have completed ArtF 220 Narrative Practices by the end of junior year. It is strongly recommended that production students take at least one additional course from the following before the end of Junior year: ArtF 240 Sound Theory and Practice, ArtF 242 Documentary Production, ArtF 290 Intermediate Production, or ArtF 245 New Media and the Liberal Arts.

Having completed the required course ArtF 287 History of Photography, a second ArtH class, and the ArtS Studio Art course requirement before senior year will also only help production students in designing and executing rigorous projects.

Production students will enroll in ArtF 490 Production Senior Seminar in the fall of senior year. It is recommended that they enroll in ArtF 340 in the spring to support the editing of their projects by the late March submission date.

CRITICAL COMPS

Any student seeking to write a critical senior comprehensives project will enroll in ArtF 490 Critical Senior Seminar in the fall of senior year. They will produce a draft of their critical paper in the fall and set specific deadlines to complete rewrites or any multimodal components in the spring by the late March submission date.

Critical comprehensives students are required to have taken either ArtF 245 New Media and the Liberal Arts or ArtF 348 Topics in Digital Culture before the end of Junior Year. It is also recommended that students take as many additional critical courses as possible before senior year—ArtF 246 Topics in American Cinema, ArtF 248 Topics in International Cinema, or ArtF 295 Topics in Media Studies.

Having completed the required course ArtF 287 History of Photography, a second ArtH class, and the ArtS Studio Art course requirement before senior year will also only help critical students in designing and executing projects informed fully by visual studies debates and scholarship.

SCREENPLAY COMPS

Any student planning to write a feature-length screenplay in satisfaction of their senior comprehensives requirement must have completed ArtF 220 Narrative Practices and ArtF 320 Advanced Narrative Practices by the end of Junior Year. Screenwriting students will enroll in ArtF 490 Critical Senior Seminar in the fall of senior year, laying the groundwork in genre and narrative, social and historical context, and other comparative analyses as they develop story and improve upon the treatment and first act written in ArtF 320.

In addition to required courses, it is recommended that students explore options for taking creative writing and creative nonfiction classes taught in ECLS and playwriting classes taught in the Theater department before senior year, as experience writing in a range of creative, expressive forms will only enhance the experiential knowledge and conceptual capacities of screenwriters.

Having completed the required course ArtF 287 History of Photography and the ArtS Studio Art course requirement before senior year will also only help screenwriting students in developing and writing scripts with a strong sense of visual power and play. ArtH 240 Sound Theory and Practice will equip writers to actively think about the power of sound, beyond dialogue, to communicate meaning in their scripts.

A draft of the screenplay will be completed by the start of the spring term in January, leaving approximately 10 weeks to engage in the crucial process of rewriting and polishing before a late March due date.

EVALUATION

Students will be given a “pass” or “fail” designation on their work in late March of the senior year. Projects are evaluated on the following criteria:

For media projects:

Does the work display narrative complexity in its storytelling, structuring, and exhibition?
Does the work exhibit a distinct and evocative use/mastery of aesthetic components?
Does the work challenge and engage viewers not only viscerally, but on multiple levels—critically, socially, historically, politically?
Has the student fully engaged with mentoring and collaborative opportunities in the senior year while realizing the project?
For critical projects:

Does the work have an original central thesis, question, and stance?
Does the work exhibit a clear understanding of research methodologies and a fluency in a range of source materials (archival material, media, primary sources, critical texts and articles within film and media studies, interdisciplinary critical sources that push new links and associations)?
Does the work both historicize and offer new ideas on the subject?
Does the work seek to explore or push notions of “writing” in relation to audiovisual media in some fashion?
Has the student fully engaged with mentoring and collaborative opportunities in the senior year while realizing the project?
For screenplay projects:

Does the work display narrative complexity in its storytelling, structuring, engagement with genre, and character development?
Does the work compellingly engage in audiovisual writing, using the aesthetic possibilities of time-based audiovisual media to their fullest potential (point of view, manipulation time and space, voice, nonverbal sounds, suspense vs. surprise, externalizing internal states through action and mise en scène, etc.)?
Does the work challenge and engage viewers not only viscerally, but on multiple levels—critically, socially, historically, politically?
Has the student fully engaged with mentoring and collaborative opportunities in the senior year while realizing the project?

DISTINCTION

A designation of “With Distinction” may occasionally be granted to projects that a faculty committee of three AHVA professors (the advisor and at least two other professors in the department) agrees surpass the standard expectations for the evaluative criteria above. This is completely separate with the “honors” process described below. Faculty reserve the right to not designate any projects in a matriculating year the “distinction” accolade.

HONORS

A student with an overall GPA of at least 3.2 overall and 3.5 in the major who has demonstrated excellence in departmental courses may submit a proposal for an honors project for consideration before April 1 of the junior year. Honors is an optional route of greater critical rigor, in which a student works with a faculty committee of two members (one primary advisor from within the student’s emphasis and one secondary advisor from either another department on campus or within AHVA with whom the student has taken or will take at least one course before the spring of senior year) and conducts a deeper level of research, writing, and presentation in conjunction with the standard comps project. If the proposal is accepted, students should participate in the appropriate senior seminar in the fall semester and then enroll in ArtF 499 (Honors Research) in the spring.

A) Critical Studies: Honors projects will consist of an original research project culminating in a thesis of at least 50 pages and a public presentation of the completed work in the spring. Project presentations may engage multimodal forms of writing–engaging audiovisual components, Web sites, or other approved interactive approaches.

B) Production and Screenwriting: Candidates will produce a critical honors thesis of at least 30 pages to accompany their media comps project or screenplay and will also publicly present their findings in the spring. This supplemental critical work should pose a specific research problem related to the media project/screenplay, framing and advancing the associated critical, historical, practical, and representational implications in its exploration.

Note to all Film & Media Studies Honors Applicants: Researching and synopsizing existing scholarship is not sufficient for an honors project of either form. Candidates are expected to formulate a strong, innovative thesis question in their application and establish how this thesis will expand upon or challenge existing critical and practical approaches in the field. Students are encouraged to consider new modes of production, exhibition, distribution, and writing in the conception, execution, and presentation of their honors projects.