Beginning film studies

Beginning film studies offers the ideal introduction to this vibrant subject. Written accessibly and with verve, it ranges across the key topics and manifold approaches to film studies, with readers enabled throughout to reflect critically upon the field.

Andrew Dix has thoroughly updated the successful first edition to include timely case studies, overviews of recent developments in the discipline, and up-to-the-minute suggestions for further reading. The book begins by considering some of film's formal features - mise-en-scene, editing and sound - before moving outwards to narrative genre, authorship, stardom and ideology. Later chapters on film industries and on film consumption - where and how we watch movies - assess the discipline's recent geographical 'turn'.

The book references many film cultures, including Hollywood, Bollywood and contemporary Hong Kong. Case studies cover such topics as sound in The Great Gatsby and narrative in Inception. The superhero movie is studied; so too is Jennifer Lawrence.