Courses

  • MA210 Intro to Film Studies:

    This course introduces students to the fundamentals in film history, criticism, and theory. In addition to viewing a variety of narrative, documentary, and experimental films, students will advance their understanding of key issues in filmic representation and aesthetics by way of film analysis. Furthermore, students will be asked to identify formal elements, such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing, to address the role style plays in the film’s thematic concerns. In class discussion, the instructor and students will synthesize their knowledge of form and function to take on historical and contemporary problems in film studies. Feminism, post-colonialism, critical race theory, and modernism will be explored in conversation with in-class film screenings.  

  • MA216 Intro to Moving Image Arts

    In this hybrid studio/seminar course, students will examine a variety of moving image arts practices and produce creative work of their own. Critiques, technical instruction, and lectures on both art history and theory will constitute the majority of class time. Moreover, three major concepts in moving image art will organize the course of the semester – appropriation, performance, and poetics. Through rigorous study of these areas of research, students will challenge their personal arts practices by provoking and invoking the history of the motion picture medium.

  • MA391 16mm Production

    This course is designed to teach students both technical skills in shooting analog film and the aesthetics of DIY filmmaking. We will cover every stage of production, including planning, lighting, metering, shooting, processing, printing on film, printing to video, editing, and synchronizing sound. In the tradition of experimental filmmakers, we will also consider a variety of processes that are unique to this tactile mode of production. Drawing, tinting, painting, scratching, gluing, baking, microwaving, stitching, bleaching, sun bleaching, and anything else you can imagine to produce results that interest you. Aside from those radical measures, you will learn the classics in 16mm production. 

  • MA 327 History of Film: The Silent Era

    This course examines the early history of cinema beginning roughly around 1893 and ending around 1932; the era of film without synchronized sound. We will watch films from North America, Europe, and Japan to inform our class discussion and research. We will discuss topics regarding modernity, trauma, gender, class, race and more as they both shaped and were shaped by the moving image.

  • IFDM 105 Inter/New Media: See Course Website  - https://internewmedia2015.wordpress.com/

    This course is designed to provide students with a survey of the histories, innovative concepts, and creative possibilities of digital media. Within both the lecture hall and the studio lab, students will consider a wide variety of media and processes that are offered through the IFDM program. Additionally, students will learn fundamental skills in teamwork, storytelling, and design. 

  • IFDM 210 Digital Animation Process: Modeling and Post-production

    This studio course is designed to develop the student’s skills in storytelling, conceptualization, teamwork, and process-art. The class will experiment with traditional, as well as radical approaches to animation. From brainstorming to storyboarding, image rendering to video editing, the direction of this course aims at an advancing the student’s understanding of every facet of the digital animation process.

  • IFDM 491 Digital Documentary Production

    This course is designed to expose students to documentary fieldwork. Students will become familiar with the vast array of styles, approaches, and ethics to treating “real” social subjects using digital audio, photography, video, and writing. Students can expect a balance of technical and theoretical discussion within the classroom to enhance the critique of our work. 

  • IFDM 491 Direct to Edit

    "The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics – the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room."                – Orson Welles