Screen Media Research Centre (SMRC)

The Screen Media Research Centre has established a substantial body of research in a range of screen media, principally film and television and areas of digital media including videogames.

Five themes provide major strands within and across which much of the work is organized:

• Cult Media and Transgression
• Spectacle, Documentary and the Real
• National and Transnational Film and Television
• The Politics of Representation
• Games Design
  

The centre is also home to the Cult Film Archive, an internationally recognized resource dedicated to the study of a range of cult films. The holdings of the archive, currently some 4,000 titles, are used in connection with the research of members of staff, links with the film industry and in support of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, including a unique MA in Cult Film and Television.

The centre is also host to the refereed journal Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media and the Cine-Excess series of cult film conferences (see below). Cine-Excess has also developed its own DVD label in a unique educational/commercial collaboration with Nouveaux Pictures. Titles released in the series feature extras designed to benefit teachers and researchers in the field. An initial batch of 15 titles was planned from 2009-10, including the first Blu-Ray release of the Dario Argento classic Suspiria, which received widespread and positive media coverage in 2010. www.cine-excess.co.uk

Areas in which members of the centre have published books recognized in the field include British, European, Hollywood, American Independent, Hong Kong and Third cinema; cult film, science fiction, comedy, horror and the cinema of the occult, the integration of video practice and theory, Marxism and the media, sex and the cinema, environmentalism and cinema, videogames, contemporary British and American television, the media ‘effects’ debate and various aspects of journalism theory and practice. Members have also produced many edited collections and large numbers of books chapters, journal articles and conference papers in these and other areas of research interest. For more details, see individual staff entries below.

The centre has organized a number of conferences (details below) and runs a series of research seminars that has attracted leading figures in the field, in addition to separate seminars for postgraduate research students. PGR students in the subject area in the School of Arts automatically become members of the centre.

Among other ongoing research projects, the centre was recently host to Television News, Current Affairs and Young People: The Problem of ‘Disconnection’, a three-year £108,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project included the organization of a conference in 2007 (see below) and publications including the book Television News, Politics and Young People: Generation Disconnected?

Recent investment in the Screen Media Research Centre has included a number of staff appointments, including a professors and a reader and two internal promotions to professor. Expanded facilities have included new spaces and equipment for the Cult Film Archive and the provision of a Games Lab equipped with a range of hardware and software, for expanding research activities in digital games. Research in this area can also draw upon motion capture resources in the Brunel Information Technology Laboratory (BITLab), a £1.25 million University research facility designed to facilitate collaboration between science, engineering and the arts. Practice-related research also benefits from a £1.5 million investment by the University in the conversion of additional new spaces for Screen Media, including the provision of new edit suites and practical spaces.

The SMRC is based in the School of Arts at Brunel, but also includes members from the School of Social Sciences and Media Studies

We offer supervision for PhD and MPhil research degrees in a wide range of areas of staff expertise, primarily in film, TV and videogames. These include but are not limited to:

• Recent and contemporary British, European, Hong Kong, Turkish, Middle Eastern, Hollywood and American independent cinema
  
• Cult film, television and other media
  
• British and American television
  
• Science fiction, horror, comedy, the western, crime films
  
• Documentary, video practice, practice as research
  
• Political cinema, activist media
  
• Gender, sexuality and the body in film
  
• Celebrity culture
  
• Videogame design and theory
  
• Marxist and psychoanalytical approaches to screen media
  
• Cinematic spectacle, narrative
  
• Avant-garde and experimental cinema
  
• Ecocriticism and screen media
  
• Trade unionism in film and TV industries

Some funding is available, please check to see if you are eligible.

Full list in relation to individual members of staff.

Formal Procedures for PhD/MPhil Applications

How to apply online

For any preliminary discussion of areas of research contact Prof Geoff King, Director, Screen Media Research Centre, geoff.king@brunel.ac.uk

Current and recently completed research students.

The centre created and organizes two ongoing conferences series, Cine-Excess and Documentary Now!

Details of individual events:

Cine-Excess IV, Odeon Covent Garden, April/May 2010. Conference theme ‘Corporeal Excess: Cult Bodies’. Guest of Honour Joe Dante, director of cult features including Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins, and Matinee, who received the Cine-Excess Lifetime Achievement Award, previous recipients of which include Roger Corman and Dario Argento. Keynote given by Professor Richard Dyer, speaking on series killers in European cinema and society. The event including a screening of Dante’s rare early film The Movie Orgy.

Cine-Excess III, Curzon Soho Cinema & Odeon Covent Garden, April/May 2009. This year's Guests of Honour included Dario Argento (Suspiria, Tenebrae) and his long term composer Claudio Simonetti, while keynote addresses were delivered from Professor Chris Jenks and Professor Jeffrey Sconce. Alongside exclusive UK theatrical premieres of films such as Last House on the Left (Dennis Illiadis, 2009), Cine-Excess III also featured the official launch of the Nouveaux-Pictures-Cine-Excess film label (see above).

Cine-Excess II, The ICA, London, May 2008. Featured world-renowned exploitation filmmaker Roger Corman as Guest of Honour as well as a keynote by Sir Christopher Frayling. More than 100 speakers took part, from Europe, North America and the Far East. The event, which also included a number of premiere film screenings, gained extensive national media coverage and secured commercial support and funding-in-kind from a number of sources including Sky Television, Air New Zealand, Tartan Films, I.B. Tauris publisher, Scan Box Entertainment, Optimum Releasing and Wallflower Press.

Cine-Excess: An International Conference on Global Cult Film, Apollo West End Cinema, Regent Street, London, May 2007. A high-profile three-day event in central London, organized by Brunel in conjunction with the Sci-Fi London film festival. Conference opened by special guest speaker, film director John Landis (The Blues Brothers, Animal House, An American Werewolf in London), and including a special recorded video message from Roger Corman, the acknowledge godfather of cult and exploitation film. Now planned to be an annual event.

Documentary Now! A Conference on the Contemporary Context and Possibilities for the Documentary Genre, Birkbeck College, London, January 2010. By now a regular fixture on the documentary scene, the third Documentary Now! event brought together scholars, filmmakers, students and interested members of the public to discuss current trends in documentary film, from the return of documentary as a box-office phenomenon to broadcast television, the web and beyond.

Documentary Now! Birkbeck College, London, October 2008. Second event, jointly organized with Roehampton University, attracted 125 delegates with events including the screening of a few film from the leading Argentinian filmmaker Andres di Tella.

Documentary Now! A Conference on the Contemporary Context and Possibilities for the Documentary Genre, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London, April 2007. A sell-out event bringing together academics, documentary filmmakers and interested members of the public to discuss current trends in documentary practice, from the return of documentary as a theatrical box office phenomenon, to broadcast television and beyond. Also planned to become an annual event.

Television News, Young People and Politics: Generation Disconnected, British Film Institute, London, December 2007. Part of three-year AHRC funded project. Contributors included academics, broadcasters, media activists, young people and NGOs working with young people to discuss how young people and politics are represented on television news. [needs link to conference web pages]

The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond, Brunel University, January 2003. A two-day event focused on a wide variety of conjunctions of spectacle and constructions of ‘reality’, in film, television and wider cultural phenomena. Full versions of selected papers published in Geoff King (ed.), The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond, Bristol: Intellect Press, 2005.

Science Fictions: 9 September 1999, Brunel University. A one day conference exploring various aspects of science fiction in the media.

Currently studying for a PhD with the working title of Femininity, Feminism and Masochism: The Female Masochist Body in Paracinema, Sarah Harman's research examines adaptations of sadomasochistic texts, through a prism of feminist, psychoanalytical and socio-political analysis. In addition she is currently co-editing a collection for publication titled Screening Twilight: Critical Approaches To A Cinematic Phenomenon (I. B. Tauris, forthcoming). She is also Peer Editor for Roehampton University's journal for performance and creative research, Activate, as well as for Goldsmiths' Cultural Studies department magazine, Nyx, a Noctournal. Sarah Harman is also a member of the Onscenity Research Network and was co-organiser of the 2012 Sexual Cultures Conference at Brunel.

Mark Adams PhD student whose research challenges the influential theoretical models that see authorship as a major source of social control and thus sees audiences that ‘poach’ meanings from texts as engaged in rebellion. His work examines fan-producers in contemporary television, and the complex links and interactions between producers and fans, contributing to the current reassessments of the way media audiences are theorised. This research will ultimately seek to construct a workable model for understanding fan practices. Mark previously completed a First Class Film Studies BA with Honours at Southampton Solent University and a Masters with Merit in Cult Film and TV at Brunel.
Julie Angel Completing a practice-based PhD that aims to document the practice of parkour through the visual anthropology of space, place and the body. Her work involves participant observation and a feedback loop of collaborative production. She explores the documentary form using a range of styles and techniques to create 'parkour led' films where the participants voice is heard. Julie is part of the parkour collective Parkour Generations and continues to work and travel with them, exploring new ways to communicate parkour (www.parkourgenerations.com/biography.php?p=julie). She is an independent filmmaker, directing, shooting and editing self-initiated projects as well as commercial commissions. Julie specialises in documentaries and participatory, shared cinema in a variety of contexts. With a keen interest in visual anthropology, her work has been screened internationally at festivals, in galleries, broadcast internationally and has a large following online (www.julieangel.com/screenings.html www.youtube.com/slamcamspam).
Douglas Brown PhD candidate investigating the way Suspension of Disbelief operates in videogames and game narratives. His research interests include videogame storytelling and MMOs’ development as narrative worlds. He is a graduate from Oxford University (English Literature), and the MA: Digital games – Theory and Design. He has industry experience at Square-Enix where he contributed to RPGs including Final Fantasy XII and Chrono Trigger, Doug teaches game theory on the MA and BA games courses at Brunel.
Stephen Curran PhD candidate whose research seeks to account for the existence of the screenwriting guru or teacher in the American film industry since the earliest days of Hollywood. Stephen’s interest in this subject matter was inspired by his desire to understand the screenwriting process as part of his own writing for the screen. He was the winner of the Euroscript (European) Screenwriting competition in 1998 and 1999, where his first original screenplay had agency representation and was pitched to all the major European film directors. He is still writing and looking for his first big break in the UK film business. Stephen is currently working on his fourth full-length feature film script. He is also a trained actor and former English and drama teacher with an MA in Educational Theatre (1992), a BA in music (2003) and BA in Theology (1982).
Sarah Harman Currently studying for a PhD with the working title of Femininity, Feminism and Masochism: The Female Masochist Body in Paracinema, Sarah Harman's research examines adaptations of sadomasochistic texts, through a prism of feminist, psychoanalytical and socio-political analysis. In addition she is currently co-editing a collection for publication titled Screening Twilight: Critical Approaches To A Cinematic Phenomenon (I. B. Tauris, forthcoming). She is also Peer Editor for Roehampton University's journal for performance and creative research, Activate, as well as for Goldsmiths' Cultural Studies department magazine, Nyx, a Noctournal. Sarah Harman is also a member of the Onscenity Research Network and was co-organiser of the 2012 Sexual Cultures Conference at Brunel.
Eirini Konstantinidou Currently working on her first feature script as part of a practice-based PhD. Her principal research interests lie in the field of science fiction film. She is investigating the filmic representation of artificial memories and their impact on personal identity. Her project is self-reflexive exploring these themes and their close relation to the medium of film. She intends to shoot a third of the film as part of her PhD. Erini has a BSc in Economics (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki/Greece) and did an MA in Media and Communication (Fordham University, New York) as well as an MA in Film Studies (UCL, London). She has also received a film directing certificate from New York University. She has directed 4 short films, and her film "I love you...?” won first prize in the 2007 Thessaloniki Short Film Festival (previously known as AZA Digital Film Festival). In addition, the film "Snapshots" that she co-directed with Lorenzo Fabrizi and Robin King won the first prize at the Dorset Cereals Film Competition.
Vanessa Long PhD student analysing the structural interplay of the user to game with especial reference to the violent act and psychoanalytic theory. Other topics of interest include avatar composition and theory, and the effects of the imposition of rules. Her previous academic experience has been in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society (MA), and BA English and Psychology, both at Brunel University.
Paul Martin PhD candidate looking into the role of videogame maps in shaping players’ experience of space. Other topics of interest to him include play as performance and the character of moral decisions in videogames. His previous academic experience has been in psychology (University College Dublin), and English literature (University College London).
Clive James Nwonka A British writer-director from London whose work is within the British social realism genre. His research offers a retrospective analysis of the form and its declining use as an instrument of social change. Influenced by the films of the British and German New Wave and Ken Loach, his film work investigates different issues and themes that characterise 21st Century working class living through screenplays about realistic individuals engaged in personal struggles with narrative elements that fall into wider socio-political statements. The writer-director’s own social background creates an interesting context to his work, and explains parts of his sociological and aesthetic expression. He has completed a BA in Visual Art and an MA in Creative Writing (Screenwriting), completing the feature script Eskimo Kisses for his dissertation. The research project will initially attempt to define what is meant exactly by the term ‘social realism’ and the ways in which the British cinematic offshoot relate to this formulation. It will examine the current films being produced within the British Social Realism orbit, comparing them with the first generation of films in this genre and assessing the changes in tone of voice, the imperatives and objectives of the storyteller and the cinematic devices employed. It will consider whether the assimilation of the traditional working class into a new social structure, orchestrated by New Labour, has led to a diminution in the number of social realist films and the watering down of the fierce social messages for which this genre has traditionally been the medium. It will argue that a greater commitment to the sociological rather than the aesthetic elements of screenwriting/film making is required to change the existing tone of British Social Realism from simply documenting working class existence to that of a reformative imperative. The thesis will be accompanied by a feature length screenplay, in which the plot investigates the inequities of working class and minority existence with a commitment to creating a socio-political debate using narrative techniques associated with British social realism.
Justin Parsler A PhD candidate researching the nature of player agency within games. He took the MA Digital Games: Theory and Design and comes from a background of professional games design. He is interested and engaged in creating all sorts of games, not just digital ones. He is now a member of the games teaching team focusing on design on the BA and MA courses.
Vered Pneuli A PhD candidate researching aspects of gender construction in relation to video games culture. This study broadly includes issues concerning the gendered practice of gaming, play as a mediated communication form, and video games’ convergence with other media. Vered’s previous academic experience has been in Design Management (UCA, Farnham), and Film and TV Studies (Tel-Aviv University).
Neil Stott PhD is on the use of digital games as a source of anticipatory socialization for the military. examines what digital games contribute to imagining, rehearsing, and preparing for future roles, occupations or organizational memberships. It also examines what organizations perceive as the utility of digital games in the anticipatory socialization process. Given representations of military work are an enduring staple of digital games and military organizations increasing engagement, the research focuses on the anticipatory socialization potential of digital games in the context of military work and how militaries perceive their utility. Neil is Chief Executive of a charity and worked extensively on community and social enterprise projects in poorer UK neighbourhoods. He has BA Peace Studies (Bradford) Post Graduate Certificate in Sociology & Politics (Anglia Ruskin) and MSt in Community Enterprise (Cambridge).
Dan Williams A reconsideration of the work of Ingmar Bergman.