University of Bradford Postgrad Group

This week, my City of Film journey has led me to a sign on a door:

A few months ago, I meet Michelle Sutton, the principal of Bradford College at a City of Film board meeting and, as a result, have been working for the college since February. We are currently in the throws of founding a new Film School and I am helping to coordinate marketing campaigns and to write the BA (Hons) Film degree course. At the same time I am also preparing the first chapter for me PhD and the structure of the methodology, so things are busy!

I have been feeling a bit isolated at the university and founded a postgrad club a few weeks ago. At the first meeting we had 26 people and people were really enthusiastic about meeting other PhD students. Two weeks ago at our second session, we were discussion lots of postgrad issues from vivas to publishing and I really enjoyed meeting other people from the uni!

On Saturday I visited the RATMA Student Film Festival at the Keighley campus of Leeds City College. I was really impressed by the effort that the students had put in. Films were screened almost every hour so people could catch what they liked almost all the time. Plus there was lots of fundraising for charities, free refreshments and a band. Pretty good for the first year! Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the award ceremony on Sunday but it the festival runs again next year, I would love to go.

On a related festival note: Last year around this time I was preparing for the FilmFest Munich with the other people of the team. I just found a picture of my desk:

At the festival centre we needed lots and lots of phone numbers really quickly and that was the one way to do it! Although I am kind of glad not to be involved in the stressful time this year, I also miss the excitement that festivals offer! I guess my PhD will have to take that role this year! :-)

Events and ways forward

As part of the Bradford Film Festival, the brilliant Dodge Brothers played at the Bradford Film Festival last Sunday. One of the members of the band is an old lecturer of mine (Mike Hammond from Southampton Uni) who taught us all about the origins of cinema seven (!) years ago. It was amazing to see him again and I just love the band. Have a look here if you wanted to listen to some ace Americana and Skiffle music!

On Friday I also attended the last training session of the UNESCO film literacy training scheme which sparked my PhD. Philip Webb was, as always, really inspirational and it's great to see how he uses film in such creative ways. This time the focus was on how to combine books, technology and film music to get the students to write.

I was especially taken by his idea to break up stories in boxes (or rather bags) and show them to the students in an much more 3D way than just on a piece of paper. This way they can write a paragraph each about characters, settings, conflicts and resolutions.

Last but not least, Bradford City of Film also put on a day entitled Opportunities for Women in Film and Television. Unfortunately it clashed with the Film Literacy day and as such I was only able to go for the first half an hour, but it really inspiring to see all these amazing women who came together to exchange experiences and help each other. Women are seriously underrepresented in the film industry and events like these are really important I think.

After all these events (and my consultancy work for the Bradford Film School) it has been hard to get back into the swing of the PhD. I have now been reading and researching for almost seven months and my original document includes 31,000 words of notes! After speaking to my supervisor, we have now agreed that I am going to start writing up most of it in order to prepare for my transfer at the beginning of July. Wish me luck!

Focus of the PhD and Bradford Film Festival

I had always heard that the topic of a PhD bounces around a bit before being set in stone but boy did I not expect to go through so many changes of topics in my first six months. In the time since January alone, my research focus has moved from the sociological context of children's culture and their media consumption to the cognitive impact of emotions on motivation for learning and more specific writing. By now, my bibliography includes more than 300 items, half of which I have read whole.

The outline of the thesis has grown to 30,000 words and includes
- definitions of film and media literacy
- an introduction to writing and the teaching of writing
- the connection of emotions and motivation and
- the connection between emotion, motivation and film

I'm pretty sure I'll have to cut down things pretty soon!!

On a separate note, I had the honour of being part of the Bradford Film Festival jury to choose the winner of the Shine short film competition. The experience was really interesting and very different from the student short film festivals I have attended so far. On the jury was also Carol Mei Barker, the other City of Film PhD student at the University of Bradford. You can find a link to her work here.

Staying part of the film community

As you might have read on my profile, I was involved in a couple of student film festivals before I started my PhD. During my time at Cambridge Uni I founded a festival called Watersprite and this year has been its fourth installment. This weekend, I am in Cambridge to meet the new team and watch short films from all over the world.

Even though my primary work and research area is now education, I find it really important to remain connected to the film community and rekindle my love for the media every now and then. Seeing these amazing films has really reminded me how powerful the visual media really is and I am hoping that by promoting film in my research, more students will be able to have access to film making resources in schools in the future.

On the picture you can see my friend Sarah Winfield, who started Sprite together with me four years ago. We were very lucky to find a patron in the ex-BAFTA chairlady Hilary Bevan Jones and the festival has gone from strength to strength since. Sarah and I have only been involved as spectators since the festival's second year ad it's great to see such a dedicated team making a great success of the festival this year!

London and Bournemouth

After more than a week of travelling I am finally back at my desk and can report back on all of the amazing things which I have experienced in the last days!

Friday and Saturday I spent at the MEA conference at the BFI. It was absolutely brilliant to meet so many likely minded people and walk away with lots of new ideas and contacts. It was especially interesting to finally see David Buckingham speak, about whom I had heard many great things in the last weeks! He started off the conference on Saturday with a key note talk on the state of media education today, which looks pretty gloomy! Although it was very entertaining to hear him speak, I wish he would have offered some solutions, too!

In my fist chosen session of the day, I listened to Julian McDougall speak about a research project in which he observed A-Level and undergraduate classes as they used a computer game instead of a book as part of English literature lessons. The approach was fascinating and showed how excited the students were about the change of medium. In my project,we are trying to move being 'using films instead of books' but I am pleased that computer games are now getting into this first stage, too!

The second chosen session of the morning was my favourite! I discovered that there is somebody else out there who is focusing on reading levels and use of films in primary schools- Carrie Virginvie. Carrie is the English subject leader in her school and created a project in which teachers used films in different ways to improve writing levels. She then compared this work with another unit in which the teachers had used books and found that motivation and levels increased! 

After the MEA conference, I also went down to Bournemouth University to give a lecture on student film distribution and attend their new student film festival BUtiful. The festival was inspired by the Watersprite Festival which I founded in Cambridge more than three years ago and it was great to see that more than 280 young people submitted work! 

On Wednesday afternoon I was finally back in Bradford and met my supervisors to discuss our plan for the next months. In the past weeks I have felt a little bit stressed by researching, writing, meeting the team members and planning the methodology so hopefully a little 'break' will do me some good!

The Soundtrack Film Festival

In a previous life I was the founder and coordinator of many student film festivals and this experience led me to start the International Student Film Organization (ISFO). On Thursday I am going to travel to Wales to hold a talk on student film distribution. Have a look at the festival here and if you are around, come to see me :-)