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FAO CAA Yr 1: Invisible Cities 2017 / Academic Do's & Don'ts & Exemplar Film Reviews

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In preparation for the kick-off your Space Oddities film programme, I'm featuring here the 'Do's & Don'ts' of academic writing for your reference.  Ideally, you will have already taken the opportunity to take a look at the advice on offer here.  If not, be sure to familiarise yourself with this style guide before attempting your first film review of the year.




Your brief asks you to use the Harvard Method in terms of referencing your published sources. Please note - this is a mandatory aspect of the presentation of your film reviews, so I suggest you take some time to investigate the 'How To' resources available on myUCA.   We don't want to waste valuable time (yours/ours) correcting these more technical elements of your writing.  Using the Harvard Method and proper bibliographies and illustration lists are something you just need to adopt from the outset as part of the new terrain of your undergraduate life.   To begin with, you'll feel as if all this academic housekeeping is just slowing you down... but like every other new skillset on the course, it will soon feel like second nature.

For your reference, I've collected a number of film reviews posted by previous students as a means to further clarify what we're looking for from these weekly exercises in analysis, research, critique and evaluation.  Don't get hung up on the word count; focus on the content (i.e. what's being said and how it's being said), and reflect on the way the published sources (quotes) and illustrations are being used to enrich and further justify the students' observations.  You'll soon note that the reviews are not concerned with re-telling the story (unnecessary) or communicating personal 'likes or dislikes' about the film (i.e. I loved it! / I hated it!), but concern themselves instead with the various ways in which the films' themes are communicated by their production design.  

Happy browsing!

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