COURSE SCHEDULE (subject to change)

Week 1 - Composition + POV
What kinds of media conventions have arisen over time to become the "vocabulary" of the moving
image? What is a shot, and why is it important?
Shot composition, continuity shooting, angles, editing, storyboarding, time-based-media
Week1 slides.

 

Week 2 - The Edit
How does the edit create narrative and subtextual meaning?
What other aspects of media-making does the edit affect? (time, place)
L-cutting, jump-cutting, montage, experimentation with linearity.
visualization of "Baptism" sequence from The Godfather.

 

Week 3 – Authenticity
Documentary filmmaking, cinema-verite, mockumentary, Reality TV, staged-reenactments.

 

Week 4 - Radical / Representation / Propaganda
How do filmmakers "frame" our view of "others?"
What cultural narratives are formed/perpetuated as expressed in media and cinema?
Films and media works functioning as activist/political/propaganda material, including campaign ads, musicvideos,
and minstrelsy.

 

Week 5 - Body / Movement
Exploring Dance on Film from Bruce Connor and Maya Deren to Trisha Brown and William Forsythe. We will
uncover the formal and aesthetic strategies employed to capture the body in the frame of time-based media.

Midterm Exam – handed out during lecture - Due at the beginning of lecture next week

Week 6 – Listen
Sound art, sound design, and the role of listening as media-maker.

Mid-Term Exam due at beginning of lecture.

Mid-Term VIDEO due in section.

 

Week 7 – Abstraction
Formal & conceptual abstraction in media. Technology as abstraction.Further, a discussion of "conceptual
abstraction" as way of complementing formal strategies.

Week 8 - Tactical
Works of public-intervention and performance for camera and documentation as media practice.Discussion
of meta-cinema, Narration, Direct Address, breaking the 4th wall.

 

Week 9 – Remix
Appropriation and Found Footage, copyright issues, conceptual issues/concerns

 

Week 10 - Rebel Cruisers, Used Futures, Drafting Galactic
Production design, conceptual design, and the VFX design in early Star Wars films. Final Exam will be handed out, due digitally via TritonEd no later than the Final Exam Period.

Mid-Term VIDEO due in LAB (with the exception of the Friday Lab which will meet Finals week during the Exam Period for final critique).

 

Finals week - Take-home final-exam due via TritonEd.