Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Basics of Audiovisual Arts
Teaching staff
For all matters relating to lessons 1 to 3, please contact Professor Paola Lagos: plagos@uic.es
For any other questions or queries, please write to Professor Rubén de la Prida: rdelaprida@uic.es.
Introduction
Over the last two hundred years, a series of formal, methodological, conceptual, and technical changes have taken place in artistic practices, leading to the emergence of audiovisual revolutions in the 20th century. Numerous thinkers have questioned the nature of these developments, from the dawn of silent cinema to the present day, in which there is a true image society highly influenced by social networks such as Instagram and TikTok. This artistic evolution also implies the emergence of a new language, which the discipline of audiovisual analysis attempts to describe precisely. Throughout this course, students will learn the fundamentals of correctly reading and interpreting images and how they are articulated with sound, how to unravel the fundamental parts around which a film text is structured, how to access its ideological core, and how to understand the various theoretical approaches that accompany the development of the various modalities of audiovisual art.
Pre-course requirements
There are no prerequisites
Objectives
The course has two main objectives. On the one hand, it aims to provide students with the analytical tools they need to dissect, understand, and explain any audiovisual product, both in terms of content and form, as well as to decipher the interrelationship between these two dimensions. On the other hand, students must learn and understand the main theories surrounding audiovisual art in order to be able to critically and reflectively examine the various phenomena, developments, and cultural mutations inherent in this artistic field, which currently permeates the social fabric everywhere.
Competences/Learning outcomes of the degree programme
- 06 - The ability to develop academic rigour, responsibility, ethics and professionalism
- 07 - The ability to apply the deontology and respect for the audiovisual sector
- 08 - The ability of critical analysis, synthesis, concretion and abstraction
- 10 - The ability to confront difficulties and resolve problems
- 11 - The ability to generate debate and reflection
- 12 - The ability to meet deadlines, develop the ability to be punctual and respect for human, technical and material resources
- 13 - The ability to create spoken and written communication
- 14 - Knowledge and mastery of rhetoric and oratory to communicate own ideas
- 16 - The ability to manage, analysis and reflect on content
- 17 - The ability to contextualize and critically analyze the events of social reality and to represent Contemporary History
- 18 - The capacity and development of general culture and interest in social events
- 19 - The ability of informative documentation
- 20 - Knowledge and mastery of bibliographic media
- 21 - Knowledge and mastery of the digital culture
- 22 - Knowledge and mastery of the distinction between opinion and information / colloquial and cultured register
- 25 - The ability to maximize creative development
- 26 - The ability to develop a sense of taste and perfection in the aesthetics and finalization of projects
- 37 - The ability to contextualize and critically analyze the organizational structure of global communication
- 38 - The ability to understand and apply the structure of the audiovisual system
- 41 - The ability to know how the distinct elemental agencies of the audio visual sector function
- 50 - The ability to adapt, understand and apply the expressive possibilities of new technologies and future changes
- 54 - The ability to skillfully manage the literature, terminology and linguistic structures of the English language related to the field of communication.
Learning outcomes of the subject
Within the standard fourteen-week course pattern and by the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Segment a film text and identify its fundamental sytagmas.
- Describe the modalities and elements of framing, editing, and staging in any audiovisual product.
- Understand the role played by the three components of the soundtrack in the perception of the work.
- Contextualize any text and grasp its ideological background.
- Be familiar with the main theories of cinema and digital imaging, as well as the various types of signs that structure audiovisual discourse.
Syllabus
- Lesson 1: Fundamentals of film analysis.
- Lesson 2: Analysis of film text I. Analysis of audiovisual style I: framing and staging.
- Lesson 3: Analysis of film text II. Analysis of audiovisual style II: editing and soundtrack.
- Lesson 4: Analysis of film text III. The affective-conceptual background.
- Lesson 5: Analysis of filmic text IV. Intertextuality and socio-historical context.
- Lesson 6: Film theories I. From auteur theory to cultural studies.
- Lesson 7: Film theories II. Film as language.
- Lesson 8: Film theories III. Neoformalism as an integrative approach.
Teaching and learning activities
In person
| TRAINING ACTIVITY | ECTS CREDITS |
| Lectures. In lectures, lecturers/professors not only transmit content or knowledge, but also, and above all else, attitudes, motivation, skills and values, etc. They also ensure that participants can express their opinions and arguments to the other students. | 3,0 |
| Focused Praxis. Handing in occasional exercises to learn theory through practice. | 1,0 |
Evaluation systems and criteria
In person
The continuous assessment for this course will be divided into three distinct parts.
- First, students will be required to complete an analysis of a film text that integrates the content of at least lessons 1 to 5. This assignment will be due in week 11 of the course (November 17-23) and will account for 20% of the final grade.
- In addition, there will be a midterm exam for each part of the course: in week 7, lessons 1 to 3 will be assessed.
- In the last week of class, the rest of the lessons will be evaluated. Each exam will be weighted at 40% of the final grade for the course, and a grade of at least 5.0 is required to pass.
The final exam will be held in January; students who have passed each of the midterm exams will be exempt from taking it. If a student has failed one of the two exams but passed the other, they will only have to take the final exam for the part of the subject they did not pass. The submission of the assignment is a necessary condition for being able to take the second midterm exam and/or the final exam. If a student has not submitted the assignment, they will not be admitted to the corresponding exam under any circumstances. If a student submits the assignment and it is graded as a fail, they may take the exam, but they will not be able to change the grade for the assignment, which will be averaged with the midterm exam grades. In the rare case that a student passes both midterms but fails due to the grade for the practical work, they must retake the entire final exam.
In the event that a student fails or misses the first exam, the grade for their assignment will be retained for the special exam session that year. If the student fails or does not take the special exam, they will lose the grade for the assignment and must repeat the course.
Summary:
- First midterm exam (lessons1-3): week 7 (40% of final grade).
- Analysis assignment (lessons1-5): week 11 (20% of final grade).
- Second midterm exam (lessons 4-8): week 14 (40% of final grade).
- Regular exam grade:
- Continuous assessment: CA = 0.4*PE1 + 0.4*PE2 + 0.2*As.
- Final exam: only the failed part must be taken. If PE1 > 5 and PE2 > 5 but CA < 5 (due to a poor grade on the assignment), the entire exam must be taken.
- Resit grade: the same criteria apply as for the final exam.
ADVICE ON PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is the use of material appropriated from another source or from other sources with the intention of passing it off as one’s own work. Plagiarism may take the form of unacknowledged quotation or substantial paraphrase. Sources of material include all printed and electronically available publications in English or other languages, or unpublished materials, including theses, written by others.
To avoid plagiarism, you must cite the source whenever ideas written by another person are used and although the quotation is not literal and paraphrase or summarise someone else's ideas. In the literal or direct quotations one must use quotation marks and cite the source. In an academic work, it is not sufficient to state generally the literature used, but to explicitly mention the source where there ideas written by someone else come from
Plagiarism in written work of this subject is unacceptable and, therefore, any work in which plagiarism is committed will be graded with a zero.
SPELLING / WRITTEN EXPRESSION
In this subject, it is very important to use Spanish correctly in written tests, assignments, and oral presentations, both in terms of grammar and spelling, as well as punctuation and writing style. Likewise, the proper use of specific terminology related to the discipline is particularly important.
The criterion that will be followed for any of these errors is to deduct 0.5 points for each mistake in exams and 1 point in written assignments. For clarification purposes, it should be noted that incorrect accentuation of a word constitutes a spelling mistake and will be penalized as indicated.
Bibliography and resources
Andrew, Dudley J. Las principales teorías cinematográficas. Gustavo Gili, 1978.
Aumont, Jacques. El cine y la puesta en escena. Ediciones Colihue, 2013.
Aumont, Jacques, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie y Marc Venet. Estética del cine. Espacio fílmico, montaje, narración, lenguaje. Paidós, 2008.
Aumont, Jacques y Michel Marie. Análisis del film. Paidós, 1990.
Balló, Jordi. Imágenes del silencio. Los motivos visuales en el cine. Anagrama, 2000.
Bazin, André. ¿Qué es el cine? Rialp, 2004.
Bordwell, David y Thompson, Kristin. El arte cinematográfico. Paidós, 1995.
Bordwell, David. On the history of Film Style. Harvard University Press, 1998.
Burch, Nöel. El tragaluz del infinito. Cátedra, 1987.
Burch, Nöel. Praxis del cine. Fundamentos, 2017.
Carmona, Ramón. Cómo se comenta un texto fílmico. Cátedra, 2010.
Casetti, Francesco. Teorías del cine. Cátedra, 2010.
Chaudhuri, Shohini. Feminismt Film Theorists. Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed. Routledge, 2006.
de la Prida, Rubén. Teorías analíticas y metodológicas del relato fílmico. UNIR, 2023.
Elsaesser, Thomas y Hagener, Malte. Film Theory - An Introduction Through the Senses. Routeledge, 2015.
Gerstner, David. A. y Janet Staiger. Authorship and film. AFI Film Readers, 2003.
Martin, Marcel. El lenguaje del cine. Gedisa, 2002.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”. Screen 16(3), 1975.
Perez, Gilberto. The Eloquent Screen. A Rhetoric of Film. University of Minnesota, 2019.
Sánchez Noriega, José Luis. Historia del Cine. Teorías, estéticas, géneros. Alianza Editorial, 2018.
Stam, Robert. Film Theory. An Introduction. Blackwell, 2000.
Stam, R., Burgoyne, R. y Flitterman-Lewis, S. Nuevos conceptos de la teoría del cine. Paidós, 1999.
Zunzunegui, Santos. Pensar la imagen. Cátedra, 2010.