Every subtopic of DP Film, ready to teach.

Across 24 lessons and 8 topics, this unit examines the principal production roles in filmmaking — cinematography, directing, editing, producing, production design, screenwriting, and sound design — alongside a topic dedicated to experimentation across multiple roles. Each topic addresses the specific tools, techniques, and decision-making frameworks associated with its role, from lens choice and depth of field to screenplay formatting, pre-production scheduling, and the use of transitions in editing software.

Skills & assessment. Students develop both practical literacy and critical vocabulary, exploring how each role contributes to a film's overall meaning and effect. Reflective tasks encourage students to identify personal strengths across roles and to understand how production responsibilities interrelate — preparation that directly supports portfolio development and IA work at both SL and HL.

This focused unit introduces students to film textual analysis as a discipline, establishing the core idea that cinematic language — framing, editing, sound, mise-en-scène — is a system of meaning-making shaped by authorial intention and cultural context. The lesson provides the conceptual grounding students need before approaching more complex critical frameworks and analytical tasks.

Skills & assessment. Students are introduced to the analytical habits and precise vocabulary required for close reading of film texts, laying the foundation for the evaluative and analytical work demanded across both examination papers and internal assessment components.

Across 12 lessons and 4 topics, this unit develops students' capacity to read film texts with precision and critical depth. Topics address close sequence analysis and the identification of intentional filmmaker choices; key film concepts including intertextuality, representation, and spectatorship; the formal elements of cinematography, editing, sound, and mise-en-scène as systems of meaning; and the principal critical frameworks — auteur theory, genre theory, and broader film theory — and their application to textual analysis.

Skills & assessment. Each lesson reinforces the use of accurate cinematic vocabulary and structured analytical method, equipping students to respond to the demands of examination-style textual analysis questions and to develop the critical literacy required for both SL and HL assessment tasks.

Across 12 lessons and 4 topics, this unit examines the contexts — cultural, historical, political, economic, and institutional — that shape how films are made, circulated, and understood. Topics address geographical and historical influences on film style, national cinema traditions, the evolution of film technology across different eras, the contributions of influential filmmakers, and the international dimensions of film, including cross-cultural exchange and the global circulation of films.

Skills & assessment. Students develop the research and contextualising skills required for their areas of film focus, learning to connect formal and artistic choices to the specific conditions of production and reception. This unit directly supports the contextual study components of both SL and HL assessment, including the selection and sustained investigation of specific filmmakers and their bodies of work.

Across 9 lessons and 3 topics, this HL unit addresses the full arc of the collaborative film project: forming and sustaining a production team, defining roles and creative responsibilities, moving through pre-production planning (scripting, storyboarding, scheduling) into production and post-production workflows, and reflecting critically on individual contributions and team dynamics. The unit also addresses how a shared creative vision can be informed by sustained study of international filmmakers.

Skills & assessment. All three topics are directly mapped to the HL collaborative film project and its reflection requirements. Lessons develop the communication, decision-making, and evaluative skills that students must demonstrate — including the ability to articulate personal intentions as a developing filmmaker and to reflect on both the successes and challenges encountered across the production process.