Revising a film studies assessment to address and integrate GenAI

This case study details the revision of a film genre research essay into a creative/reflective assessment in an undergraduate Hollywood Cinema module. Generative AI large language models can reasonably produce research essays, so it was necessary to revise the previous assessment to deter students from substituting AI output for their own writing. The research essay was revised so that students created a fake genre film (with a title, synopsis, and poster) and wrote a reflection relating how the fake film adhered to a film genre theory and drew on two recent genre films. These interrelated tasks that build on specific sources are comparatively difficult for large language models to do well. Students were also trained to prompt AI image models to create images for their film posters. Thus, the assessment revision addressed the threat posed by generative AI and encouraged use of the technology to enable student creativity. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .