| CODE | ATS5305 | |||||||||
| TITLE | Aspects of Location-Based Filming: The Maltese Islands, a Location for All Seasons | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Faculty of Arts | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit will be subdivided in three closely-related parts. The first part will focus on the critical role of production design, illustrating how set designers locate or create, as the occasion requires, interiors as well as exteriors thus transforming the landscape and the space, and interpreting both the screenplay and the director’s ideas. Theory and practice of set design will be explored, together with the design philosophy of a number of distinguished scenic designers. The second part will then survey Maltese locations through a scholarly lens. From 1925 on, despite their limited extent and space, the Maltese Islands have increasingly provided the Film and TV industry with an intriguingly wide range of filming locations. Numerous prestigious and international production companies have been looking at Malta as an excellent place, offering versatile settings that are both evocative and multifaceted, where transport costs from one set to another are drastically reduced. As a matter of fact, the Maltese Islands can credibly stand in for Middle-Eastern or other Mediterranean countries, turning out to be an advantageously safer and smaller country to shoot in. On the screen, Maltese architectural and landscape heritage can moreover substitute ancient realms, that are not only historical and real but also imaginative and fantastic. The third part of this study-unit will allow students to appraise the application of scriptwriting and set design to Maltese locations, through lectures by one or more professional screenwriters who were asked to adapt specific scripts to the Maltese environment. Students will therefore have the unique opportunity to examine this working material, under the supervision of the relevant lecturers who actually created it. Study-unit Aims: - To allow students to embrace the strategic importance of set design and locations in the film industry; - To become acquainted with the unique potential of Maltese locations and the main outline of the related filmography; - To be able to creatively integrate the compulsory study-units on screenwriting with a concrete knowledge of product design. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - investigate and critique both the theoretical and the practical aspects of set design; - assimilate and convey the peculiarities of the Maltese locations within the specific framework of the technical prerequisites and the needs of the film industry; - analyse in detail scenarios and scripts of movies which have been shot in Malta. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - conduct appropriate and innovative research in film studies focusing on set design, with an eye to Maltese locations; - engage in a collective critical debate relevant to film production; - integrate a knowledge of the philosophy of product design to the art of screenwriting, set design, and the making of both short and feature films. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Required: - Ian Christie, The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design, Wallflower-Columbia University Press, 2009 - David Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging, University of California Press, 2005 Recommended: - Jean Pierre Borg and Charlie Cauchi (eds.), World Film Locations: Malta, Intellect, 2015 - Angela Peel, Malta on the Silver Screen: Feature Films Shot in Malta, Best Print A coursepack with a selection of theoretical and critical readings will be made available. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | |||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Jean Pierre Borg Sharleene Cauchi Gloria Lauri Lucente |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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