INTRODUCTION: What is Film Studies? What does it mean to study films?

This chapter will be directly relevant to the module FS1 – Film: Making Meaning 1 in that it starts to introduce possible ways of approaching films. In particular it is directly relevant to what the examiners describe as ‘spectator study’, which is about how each of us watches and makes sense of films. More importantly though, this section should act as a general introduction to the whole idea of Film Studies allowing you to gain an overview of the subject and the sorts of things that are going to be asked of you before you begin work on the more specific syllabus requirements.