Ella Wright

• BA (Hons.) English - University of Birmingham.
• MA Film and Television: Research and Production - University of Birmingham

I completed my Bachelors degree in English at the University of Birmingham in 2019, culminating in my dissertation thesis titled: ‘It’s just business, nothing personal...’: An Argument for Hard-Boiled Masculinity and Cultural Fantasy in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. I continued my love of studying film at Birmingham by achieving my Masters degree in 2021 in Film and Television: Research and Production, completing an audio-visual thesis. Having taken a very brief segue to explore the world of feature film and television production, working as a runner and production coordinator, I am pleased to continue my doctoral research here at Birmingham. I am also a freelance videographer, artist, and filmmaker alongside my studies.

I am the Assistant Film Technician for the Department of Film and Creative Writing and assist the lead Film Technician with teaching practical filmmaking at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

I have also assisted with teaching and lectured on the second year undergraduate module: Digital and Documentary Filmmaking: The Video Essay.

My research is an exploration of the video essay form, face to face with notions of embodiment, materiality, logocentrism and epistemology in regards to scholastic video making research-by-practice. My investigations hinge on ‘the video way of thinking’, a concept developed by Ben Spatz, using this to examine the processes that underpin audiovisual creation through its relationship to written scholarship, and tracing the pragmatic implications and possibilities this has on the form. My central research methodology takes the form of audiovisual experiments and video essays.

Organisation of conferences

• 2022: 5th Annual B-Film PGR Symposium: 'Cinema in the Margins: On the Edges and Borders', University of Birmingham, 20th April