INTRO TO FILM & MEDIA STUDIES

This course serves as an introduction to the study of film and related visual media, examining fundamental issues of aesthetics (mise-en-scene, editing, sound), history (interaction of industrial, economic, and technological factors), theory (spectatorship, realism, and indexicality), and criticism (auteurist, feminist, and genre-based approaches). The course also investigates how digital media change has been productive of new frameworks for moving image culture in the present.  Discussion section FILM UN1001 is a required corequisite.

• W 2:10 p.m.-3:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Jane Gaines
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

INTRO-FILM & MEDIA STUDIES-DIS

Co-requisite discussion section for FILM UN 1000 INTRO TO FILM & MEDIA STUDIES.

• F 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• F 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• 0 points

CINEMA HIST II: 1930-1960

This course examines major developments and debates in the history of cinema between 1930 and 1960, from the consolidation of the classic Hollywood studio system in the early sound era to the articulation of emergent ;new waves; and new critical discourses in the late 1950s. Our approach will be interdisciplinary in scope, albeit with an emphasis on social and cultural history - concerned not only with how movies have developed as a form of art and medium of entertainment, but also with cinemas changing function as a social institution. Discussion section FILM UN 2021 is a required co-requisite.

• R 2:10 p.m.-3:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Ronald Gregg
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

CINEMA HIST II-1930-1960-DIS

Co-requisite for FILM UN 2020 Cinema History II.

• F 9:10 a.m.-10 a.m.
• F 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 0 points

CINEMA HIST II-1930-1960-DIS

Co-requisite for FILM UN 2020 Cinema History II.

• F 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 0 points

CINEMA HIST III:1960-1990

By closely watching representative classics from countries including Italy, Poland, Russia and Argentina, we will study the distinctive trends and masters of this vibrant era. Special attention will be paid to the French New Wave (60s); the New German Cinema (70s); the reformulation of Hollywood studio filmmaking in the 70s (Altman, Cassavetes, Coppola), and the rise of the independent American cinema (80s). Discussion section FILM UN 2031 is a required co-requisite.

• M 2:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Annette Insdorf
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

CINEMA HIST III:1960-1990-DISC

Co-requisite discussion section for FILM UN 2030 Cinema History III: 1960-90.

• T 11:10 a.m.-noon
• T 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• T 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• 0 points

American Film: Cult & Exploitation

Amer Film: Cult & Exploit

Once associated with images of fishnet-costumed fans of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
, the concept of the “cult film” has gone increasingly mainstream in recent years. This course seeks to assess the popularization of the phenomenon, asking: what exactly
is
a cult film? And what does the mainstreaming of the concept suggest about our changing relation to today’s media environment?

Whereas most types of film can be defined through widely recognized elements of story and setting (tumbleweed, deserts, gunfights: it’s a western), this is far from being the case with cult. Some have defined the cult film as “created” by audiences (again,
Rocky Horror
); others in terms of nonclassical or aberrant modes of textuality (e.g., various forms of “bad taste” cinema). This course, however, seeks to go beyond audience- and text-based definitions, instead placing cult within a series of historical contexts:


as an outgrowth of film industry practices that sustained the
low cultural status
of certain movie types during the classical Hollywood cinema (e.g., B movies, exploitation, etc.);

as the product of
audience reception
practices, shaped by the politics of cultural taste and “camp” viewing practices that first coalesced during the “midnight movie” phenomenon of the late 1960s/1970s;

as sustained by the
transnational flow
of media content, offering new frameworks for understanding “national” cinemas.


In offering such an approach, this course seeks to isolate the different uses to which “cult” has been put, in order to indicate how pervasive and adaptable the idea has recently become. As we will see, the cult phenomenon implies both a perspective on the past, hence inseparable from the experience of nostalgia, as well as an engagement with our media-driven present.

• R 10:10 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Robert King
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

American Film: Cult & Exploitation DISC

Per syllabus- required discussion section for Film UN2132 American Film: Cult & Exploitation

• F 9:10 a.m.-10 a.m.
• F 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• 0 points

American Film: Film Noir

This course surveys the American film genre known as 
film noir
, focusing primarily on the genre’s heyday in the 1940s and early 1950s, taking into account some of its antecedents in the hard-boiled detective novel, German Expressionism, and the gangster film, among other sources. We will consider a wide variety of critical and theoretical approaches to the genre, and will also study a number of film noir adaptations and their literary sources.

• M 10:10 a.m.-1:55 p.m.
• Instructor: James A Schamus
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

American Film: Film Noir DISC

Per syllabus- required discussion section for Film UN2136: American Film: Film Noir

• F 11:10 a.m.-noon
• F 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 0 points

LAB IN WRITING FILM CRITICISM

Lab in Writing Film Criticism 

This course will focus on writing fresh, original criticism, on developing an individual voice, and on creating strong arguments supporting your ideas (qualities that translate to many areas, from reviewing to pitching a film project). Screenings in and outside class will be followed by discussion and in-class writing exercises, as well as regular writing assignments. How do you choose an effective critical approach? How do you make your opinions vivid and convincing on the page? We will also analyze recent criticism and consider the changing landscape of film criticism today.

Prerequisite:
Instructor’s permission. Submit a short, film-related sample to cj2374@columbia.edu
Note: Because permission is required, on-line registration may say the course is full when it is not. Priority given to film majors.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Caryn James
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

LABORATORY IN SCREENWRITING

This lab is limited to declared Film and Media Studies majors.  Exercises in the writing of film scripts.

• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• F 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• 3 points

Film Adaptation

This course will explore the transformation of literary texts onto the big screen of motion pictures.  Adaptation is an act of re-visioning, a way of expanding the reach of a given story while still upholding its unique, immutable grace and power.

That’s easier said than done. The screenwriter who is tasked with an adaptation reads that source text with an eagle eye for all that is embedded therein. They don’t need to be utterly faithful to the source. In fact, they can’t be. But the source is a holistic entity, a product of another literary mind (and soul). It’s a gestalt that demands respect and thoughtful creative interpretation. And like all strong works of art, it contains beautiful secrets, some of which good screenwriters will find and preserve.

And they must. Half of the feature films made in America are adaptations. Many of their sources are already beloved. Those that aren’t, deserve the wider audience that film can bring. All story forms have adapted each other since
Pyramus and Thisbe
sprung from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, later to inspire
Romeo and Julie
and
West Side Story.
Adaptation is how stories continue to inspire humans across time. It is therefore a core skill of the screenwriter’s art and livelihood.

Adaptation is a reflex of mind.  We “see” what we read, and we “read” what we see.

I have a dream.  I tell you about it.  Already, I’m adapting my own inner life into a spoken version of a dream I have salvaged from the chaos of dreaming.  And yet I’m compelled to relate that dream to you because it had some gravitational pull that made the story of that story well worth the telling.

To adapt any story for film is to make its original content visible and audible, through dialogue, behavior, theme and visual metaphor. It is to take the reflective and make it active, show more and talk less, imbed theme in plot, turn ideas and symbols into images, expand or condense it as needed, shape its new timeframe, and emphasize story at least as much as character.

Every source must be approached using different rules of engagement.  Literature, plays, and true-life stories all resist the morphology of adaptation in unique ways. But the great equalizer is film’s deliberately kinesthetic structure. Character and structure are one in the same. And movies must
move.
This is a process of translating the
char

• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Stephen Molton
  Info
• 3 points

SENIOR SEMINAR IN FILM STUDIES

A seminar for senior film majors planning to write a research paper in film history/theory/culture. Course content changes yearly.

• R 10:10 a.m.-12:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Racquel Gates
  Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED FILM PRODUCTION PRACTICE

Advanced Film Production Practice is an advanced production and lecture course for students who wish to obtain a deeper understanding of the skills involved in screenwriting, directing and producing.  Building on the fundamentals established in the Labs for Fiction and Non-Fiction Filmmaking, this seminar further develops each student’s grasp of the concepts involved in filmmaking through advanced analytical and practical work to prepare Thesis film materials.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Hector Prats I Castro
  Info
• 3 points

SENIOR SEM IN SCREENWRITING

A seminar for senior film majors. Students will complete a step outline and minimum of 30 pages of their project, including revisions. Through reading/viewing and analyzing selected scripts/films, as well as lectures, exercises and weekly critiques, students will expand their understanding of dramatic writing and narrative-making for film and TV, including adaptations. They will learn appropriate structure for each specific screen-writing form, and endeavor to apply their understanding of drama, character, theme, and structure to their chosen narrative project.

• F 2:10 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Loren-Paul Caplin
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

FILM AND MEDIA THEORY

This course offers a historical and critical overview of film and media theory from its origins up to the present.

• R 1:10 p.m.-4:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Nico Baumbach
  Info
• 3 points

FILM & MEDIA THEORY-DISC

Co-requisite undergraduate discussion section for FILM GU 4000 Film & Media Theory.

• F 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• F 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• 0 points

Auteur Study: Lubitsch and Wilder

Auteur Stu: Lubitsch & Wi

This seminar analyzes the tension in Hollywood between industry self-censorship of film (roughly 1929-1965) and the European émigrés who brought a more cosmopolitan, sexually modern perspective to the genre of comedy.  Students will be introduced to the history of Hollywood’s Production Code (popularly known as the Hays Code), which institutionalized self-administered censorship.  In addition, students will study the genre of comedy, where we often discover implicit subversion of the censorship code. 

The course will teach students about the change in the industry brought about by new talent from Europe during the classical Hollywood period.  In particular, students will study the biographies and work of two directors, the Austrian/German émigrés Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, whose separate careers bracket the beginning and end of the censorship code.  In the 1920s, as Hollywood moved towards a codified censorship code, Ernst Lubitsch developed his infamous “Lubitsch touch,” which subverted the Hays Code by hinting at possible sexual indiscretions through verbal and visual double entendres and other aesthetic strategies. Many producers and directors learned how to subvert the code from Lubitsch’s films; like Lubitsch, while emphatically publicizing their belief in and rigid practice of self-censorship, these producers and directors used Lubitsch-like techniques to hint at salacious attitudes and behaviors, which they had claimed to have censored.

Billy Wilder was one of these directors.  Wilder learned from Lubitsch directly, working as screenwriter on Lubitsch’s films
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
(1938) and
Ninotchka
(1939).  With a handful of other Hollywood personnel, Billy Wilder is credited with directly challenging and bringing the Hays Code to an end, particularly with his film
Some Like It Hot
(1959).  Wilder moved sexual indiscretions and illicit desire into the open in this film and others such as
The Apartment
(1960).

• M 9:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Ronald Gregg
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

Black Film and Media

This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.

• T 9:10 a.m.-1:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Racquel Gates
  Info
• 3 points

Black Film and Media Discussion

Black Film and Media DISC

This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.

• F 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• 0 points

Seeing Narrative

An advanced film theory "workshop" in which we shall avoid reading film theory in favor of a selection of other texts, taken mainly from the domains of art history, philosophy, and literature. Our central question will be: What can we, who have grown up in the age of cinema and digital media, learn from discourses about vision and its relation to narrative that pre-date the cinema, or that consider the cinema only marginally? In this course, we shall begin to approach some of the major topics of contemporary film theory -- narrativity, subject-construction, the relation of words to images -- through the lens of texts that have remained largely outside the network of citations and references we normally associate with the work of professional media theory. We might begin the groundwork for an "opening up" or critique of some of the blind spots of current theory; at the very least, we shall be reading works that challenge our usual ways of theorizing.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: James A Schamus
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NEW MEDIA ART

The rapid democratization of technology has led to a new wave of immersive storytelling that spills off screens into the real world and back again. These works defy traditional constraints as they shift away from a one-to-many to a many-to-many paradigm, transforming those formerly known as the audience from passive viewers into storytellers in their own right. New opportunities and limitations offered by emergent technologies are augmenting the grammar of storytelling, as creators wrestle with an ever-shifting digital landscape. New Media Art pulls back the curtain on transmedial works of fiction, non-fiction, and emergent forms that defy definition. Throughout the semester well explore projects that utilize Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and the Internet of Things, alongside a heavy-hitting selection of new media thinkers, theorists, and critics. The course will be co-taught as a dialogue between artistic practice and new media theory. Lance Weiler, a new media artist and founder of Columbia’s Digital Storytelling Lab, selected the media artworks; Rob King, a film and media historian, selected the scholarly readings. It is in the interaction between these two perspectives that the course will explore the parameters of emerging frontiers in media art and the challenges these pose for existing critical vocabularies.

• M 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• 3 points

History of American Television

From its relative appearance in American homes (ca. 1950 - 1955) through the first decade of the 21st century television has remained (arguably) the most culturally, socially and politically determinative technology in American life.  The exchanges that occur between the content of American television and its ever-broadening audience really shaped perspective on the American character and American values across fifty years.  Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine that the cultures of consensus and conformity that shaped the 1950s were in fact attainable in the absence of television.  But, and at the same time, we must admire the creativity of shows like
Donna Reed
or
Wagon Train
that made certain that subtilty insured the advocacy for a more democratic America.  

We begin with brief attention to the most immediate creative influences on early television: vaudeville, and radio.  Across the semester we will then consider the evolution of the various technologies that shaped and reshaped the American experience of television.  While our focus remains on creative content, we must also note the moments where television afforded new experiences of collective sympathy (JFK and MLK assassinations, the Vietnam War etc.) as well as collective failure (The Pentagon Papers, Iran Contra, Rodney King) and triumph (Civil Rights Movement across the American South, the moon landing etc.). We will also, of course, consider the full implications of television “events” that afforded news kinds national debate concerning the very soul of America: Roots, the final episode of  M*A*S*H*,  and The Day After)

Finally, we will conclude with discussion of HBO and the formative impress of unprecedented creative achievement: The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men; and, we must consider that during the early years of the 21st century these serial dramas represent a particular (and unprecedented) manifestation of American art and artistry.

• R 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Ben Alexander
  Info
• 3 points

CINEMA HIST II: 1930-1960

• R 2:10 p.m.-3:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Ronald Gregg
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

CINEMA HIST III:1960-1990

• M 2:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Annette Insdorf
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

ELEMENTS OF DRAMATIC NARRATIVE

A lecture and discussion course on the basics of feature-length screenwriting. Using written texts and films screened for class, the course explores the nature of storytelling in the feature-length film and the ways in which it is an extension and an evolution of other dramatic and narrative forms. A basic part of Film’s first year program, the course guides students in developing the plot, characters, conflict and theme of a feature-length story that they will write, as a treatment, by the end of the semester.

• M 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Andrew S Bienen
  Info
• 3 points

American Film: Cult & Exploitation

Amer Film: Cult & Exploit

Once associated with images of fishnet-costumed fans of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
, the concept of the “cult film” has gone increasingly mainstream in recent years. This course seeks to assess the popularization of the phenomenon, asking: what exactly
is
a cult film? And what does the mainstreaming of the concept suggest about our changing relation to today’s media environment?

Whereas most types of film can be defined through widely recognized elements of story and setting (tumbleweed, deserts, gunfights: it’s a western), this is far from being the case with cult. Some have defined the cult film as “created” by audiences (again,
Rocky Horror
); others in terms of nonclassical or aberrant modes of textuality (e.g., various forms of “bad taste” cinema). This course, however, seeks to go beyond audience- and text-based definitions, instead placing cult within a series of historical contexts:


as an outgrowth of film industry practices that sustained the
low cultural status
of certain movie types during the classical Hollywood cinema (e.g., B movies, exploitation, etc.);

as the product of
audience reception
practices, shaped by the politics of cultural taste and “camp” viewing practices that first coalesced during the “midnight movie” phenomenon of the late 1960s/1970s;

as sustained by the
transnational flow
of media content, offering new frameworks for understanding “national” cinemas.


In offering such an approach, this course seeks to isolate the different uses to which “cult” has been put, in order to indicate how pervasive and adaptable the idea has recently become. As we will see, the cult phenomenon implies both a perspective on the past, hence inseparable from the experience of nostalgia, as well as an engagement with our media-driven present.

• R 10:10 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Robert King
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

American Film: Film Noir

This course surveys the American film genre known as 
film noir
, focusing primarily on the genre’s heyday in the 1940s and early 1950s, taking into account some of its antecedents in the hard-boiled detective novel, German Expressionism, and the gangster film, among other sources. We will consider a wide variety of critical and theoretical approaches to the genre, and will also study a number of film noir adaptations and their literary sources.

• M 10:10 a.m.-1:55 p.m.
• Instructor: James A Schamus
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FUNDAMENTALS OF DIRECTING

Weekly lectures will introduce film grammar, textual analysis, staging, the camera as narrator, pre-visualization, shot progression, directorial style, working with actors and editing. Lectures by all members of the full time directing faculty anchor the class, highlighting a range of directorial approaches with additional lectures on the techniques and aesthetics of editing. Each lecture will be supported by visual material from master film directors as well as the examples of the short films students will be required to produce in their first two semesters. For the final 7 weeks of the term, a student fellow will be available to mentor students through the planning of their 3-5 films.

• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Bette Gordon
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FUNDAMENTALS OF EDITING

This online class explores the creative and narrative principals of editing through the editing of students' 8-12 minute films and / or other footage. Instructors are professional editors who will provide lecture and individual based instruction.

• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• T 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• M 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• 1.5 points

PRACTICAL PRODUCTION I

Practical Production 1 teaches students best practices regarding film production and technology in the integrated first year of the MFA Film Program through lectures, discussions, pre-production meetings, multi-hour shoots on set and an end-of-the-semester screening. This class is required for all first-year students. Throughout the Fall, students will work in small production groups to prep and shoot a short script in the Prentis studio.  Each week one group will organize a pre-production meeting and then produce a four-hour shoot. The professor will be in attendance and two de-briefing sessions will occur throughout the production to reiterate best film production practices.  Additional assignments will include the creation of various pre-production, production and wrap paperwork and tech deliverables. Additional mandatory production and risk management workshops will be given. The last class will be a screening of all group films and prep/discussion for the 3-5 exercise shot over Winter Break. Required for all first-year students.

• F 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Joshua R Troxler
  Info
• 1.5 points

CINEMA/MEDIA HISTORIOGRAPHY

An introduction to issues and cases in the study of cinema century technologies. This class takes up the definition of the historiographic problem and the differences between theoretical empirical solutions. Specific units on the history of film style, genre as opposed to authorship, silent and sound cinemas, the American avant-garde, national cinemas (Russia and China), the political economy of world cinema, and archival poetics. The question of artificial intelligence approached as a question of the “intelligence of the machine.” A unit on research methods is taught in conjunction with Butler and C.V. Starr East Asian Libraries. Writing exercises on a weekly basis culminate in a digital historiography research map which becomes the basis of final written “paper” posted in Courseworks in video essay format. Students present this work at a final conference. Topics in the past include:

Cultural Transactions: Across Media and Continents, Genre: Repetition and Difference, and Bang, Bang, Crash, Crash: Canon-Busting and Paradigm-Smashing

• W 10:10 a.m.-12:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Jane Gaines
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

Adaptation

This is a fast-paced writing, survey and workshop course that will empower writers to define the formal ideals of screenwriting by investigating film adaptations of novels and short stories. The course will culminate in the writing of a short pitch document. This course is at once a survey of the twentieth century American Film, a survey of the Twentieth Century American novel, and a course for writers. We will distill the craft of screenwriting by looking through the prism of adaption in order to understand which elements of the novel translate into film, and why. We will consider novels with the mercenary detachment of a screenwriter, scouring for scraps with value for a screenplay. As we compare the original text with the finished film, we will distill the essence of the screenplay form. What is plot, action, dialog, metaphor? How do we converge these goals? We will decipher, with the clinical eye of a detective, what the screenwriter took from the novel and what they left behind. And in doing this, we will reach an understanding of the formal tenets of an American film.

• F 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Galt V Niederhoffer
  Info
• 3 points

SCREENWRITING THREE

A two-semester intensive screenwriting workshop with one instructor.  The Screenwriting 3 and Screenwriting 4 class sequence allows for the careful and more sustained development of a feature-length script.  In the fall semester, students further develop an idea for a screenplay and write the first act (approximately 30 pages).  In the spring semester, students finish writing the script and, time permitting, begin a first revision.

• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• T 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• 3 points

DIRECTING III

Students explore more deeply the range of skills and techniques necessary to direct both short and feature films including script breakdown of sequences, scenes, turning points and beats as well as advanced study of actor and camera staging. Students will hone their directing skills by preparing, shooting, and editing, in video, a minimum of three significant scenes from published or original work, depending on priority of the instructor. When taken concurrently, at least one of these scenes will be presented in Directing the Actor workshops. Students should also be working on a first draft of a short screenplay for their second-year project if they intend to take Directing 4.

• M 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• F 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• M 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Tom Kalin
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Eric Mendelsohn
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

DIRECTING ACTORS III

More sophisticated principles are applied and more challenging scenes are presented. Collaboration with a writer is a requirement.  Required for Screenwriting and Directing concentrates.

• R 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• M 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• T 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Jon Shear
  Info
• Instructor: Lisa Milinazzo
  Info
• Instructor: Shira-Lee Shalit
  Info
• 3 points

THE BUSINESS OF FILM

An overview of the business side of theatrical motion pictures, from the Hollywood major studios to small independents and self-distribution. Covers all the ancillary markets (cable, home video) and their relationship both to the theatrical success of the film and to its bottom line.  Required for all second-year Creative Producing students. Available as an elective for Directing/Screenwriting students.

• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Ira Deutchman
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FEATURE FILM DEVELOPMENT

An overview of film financing, sales, and distribution, including private equity, tax incentives, international co-productions, soft money, pre-sales, studio financing, and grants. Students will learn how to set up a legal production entity, create a financing plan and recoupment waterfall, navigate the distribution landscape, and approach prospective financiers, sales agents, and distributors. Students will workshop the same feature project from Feature Film Development and complete the pitch deck they had started. Weekly assignments will be entered into a collective class database of industry players.

• F 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Mynette Louie
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Diane Houslin
  Info
• 3 points

WRIT/SCRIPT ANALYSIS-PRODUCERS

This is a specialized course designed to provide prospective producers with a nuanced framework for understanding the screenwriting process.  The course will explore all the ways a producer might interact with screenwriters and screenplays, including coverage, script analysis, notes, treatments, and rewrites.  Each student will complete a series of writing and rewriting assignments over the course of the semester. Required for all second-year Creative Producing students and only open to students in that concentration.

• T 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Jack Lechner
  Info
• 3 points

PRE-PROD OF A MOTION PICTURE

Pre-Production of the Motion Picture teaches Creative Producing students how to breakdown, schedule and prep all aspects of a low budget independent feature film.  Using one shooting script as a case study, the class will learn to think critically and master each step of the pre-production process. Students will prepare script breakdowns, production strip boards, call sheets and a full production binder.  Topics will include state tax incentives, payroll services, union contracts, deal memos/hiring paperwork, casting, labor laws, hiring BTL crew, legal, insurance and deliverables. Additionally, students will become proficient in Movie Magic Scheduling. Required for all second-year Creative Producing students and only open to students in that concentration.

• R 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Dana Kuznetzkoff
  Info
• 3 points

Coding for Media Studies

The term “digital humanities” (DH) has long been used to describe scholarship at the intersection of digital technologies and humanities disciplines. Although initially characterized by quantitative analysis and number-crunching, DH today enjoys a far broader mandate encompassing new fields like software studies, data visualization, critical code studies, and more. This course proposes to ride the wave of these developments.

Specifically, it explores how coding can be harnessed to the disciplines of film and media studies. Over the past few years, developments in generative AI have placed basic coding expertise within the reach of all. But what possibilities open up from these changes? Over the course of over a dozen weeks, students in this class will learn ways in which coding can help refine and reimagine traditional scholarly agendas (e.g., film analysis, media industry studies, archival restoration, etc.). But the class also shows how coding opens up entirely new ways of working with media as objects of study.

• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• 3 points

Hitchcock

Unique among Hollywood directors, Hitchcock played on two boards.  As a master of entertainment who had nothing to say, he produced work as thoroughly trivial as it was utterly compelling.  But thanks to the French reception of his work in 1950s, Hitchcock also came to be considered a master of art, the Auteur par excellence.  If his films had nothing to say, they hardly needed to; in their unparalleled formal originality, they distilled the pure essence of cinema itself.  The course will focus on this dialectic between entertainment and art, between saying nothing and being everything. We shall pay particular attention to a Style that is, on the one hand, commodified as a “touch” that all can recognize, and, on the other, recessed in strange, inconsequential, gibberish-making
touches
that, far from courting recognition, seem to defy it.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• 3 points

The Deaths of Cinema

Looked at one way, the history of cinema is a series of death knells. While the rhetoric of crisis is especially acute today, with the very existence of movie theaters imperiled by the dominance of streaming services, predictions of cinema’s demise are as old as the medium itself — one of its inventors is said to have called it “an invention without a future” and its evolution is marked by moments of technological and cultural change that were perceived or experienced as existential threats.

This course traces the arc of cinema through its many supposed deaths: the industrialization of movies, the arrival of sound, the threat of television and the home theater, the compensatory innovations of color and widescreen and CGI, the rise of media conglomeration, the invention of digital technology, the migration of the moving image into ever more settings and contexts (galleries, portable devices, the virtual realm), and so on. We will explore the circumstances that led to these inflection points and the ways in which each threshold period of change reshaped the landscape and language of cinema. We will also consider the periodic death throes (and various afterlives) of film criticism, film theory, and cinephilia.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Dennis Lim
  Info
• 3 points

TV PILOT: COMEDY & DRAMA

With the pilot as a focal point, this course explores the opportunities and challenges of telling and sustaining a serialized story over a protracted period of time with an emphasis on the creation, borne out of character, of the quintessential premise and the ongoing conflict, be it thematic or literal, behind a successful series.

Early in the semester, students may be required to present/pitch their series idea. During the subsequent weeks, students will learn the process of pitching, outlining, and writing a television pilot, that may include story breaking, beat-sheets or story outline, full outlines, and the execution of either a thirty-minute or hour-long teleplay. This seminar may include reading pages and giving notes based on the instructor but may also solely focus on the individual process of the writer.  


Students may only enroll in one TV Writing workshop per semester.

• M 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• R 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• M 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: David Klass
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• Instructor: Blair Singer
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• Instructor: Carter Bays
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• 3 points

DIGITAL STORY TELLING I: History and The

HISTORY&THEORY OF INTERACTIVIT

What does interaction have to do to storytelling? How do we tell stories within media that are non-linear, including games, virtual reality, and immersive theater? How can we craft narratives that emerge from the dynamics of interaction, narratives experienced through exploration and choice? What design strategies exist regarding an understanding of character, plot, drama, time, space, and event within interactive fictions? This course will take a close look at the mechanics of storytelling within dynamic media, exploring connections between interactivity and narrative experience. The course will examine examples ranging from the design of Live Action Role Playing games to massively multi-player experiences, from hypertext to tarot cards, from Oculus to Punchdrunk. Content will be delivered through lectures, reading, discussion, case studies, and small studio-based exercises. Elective open to all SOA students.

• R 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Akmyrat Tuyliyev
  Info
• 3 points

DOCUMENTARY PRODUCING

Through the process of developing, pitching, researching, and writing a treatment for a documentary short, students will develop an overview of the documentary process from development through distribution. The course will touch on research, story, production and post production logistics, legal, financing, budgeting, distribution, and ethical issues in the creation of documentary films.

• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Chloe Gbai
  Info
• 3 points

Writing For the Screen

• M 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Ramin C Serry
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• 3 points

Tech Arts: Advanced Post Production

Tech Arts: Adv Post Produ

Tech Arts: Advanced Post Production covers advanced techniques for picture and sound editing and the post production workflow process. The goal of the course is to give you the capabilities to excel in the field of post production. We will focus extra attention to concepts and workflows related to long-form projects that can contain a team of technical artists across the post production pipeline. We will cover preparing for a long-form edit, digital script integration, color management and continuity, advanced trimming, and advanced finishing. The hands-on lessons and exercises will be conducted using the industry-standard Non-Linear Editing Systems, Avid Media Composer, and Davinci Resolve.

Each week’s class will consist of hands-on demonstrations and self-paced practice using content created by the students and provided by the program.

• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael J Cacioppo Belantara
  Info
• 1.5 points

SCREENWRITING THESIS WORKSHOP

SCREENWRITING THESIS ADVSMNT

Screenwriting concentrates who are focusing on Screenwriting MUST take Screenwriting Thesis Workshop with their advisor at least once during Research Arts matriculation in order to graduate. Students may take this class with their advisor whenever it is offered.  They should consult with their advisor if they are considering taking Thesis Workshop at the same time as Script Revision or TV Revision.

• T 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Christina Lazaridi
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• Instructor: Jamal Joseph
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• Instructor: Trey Ellis
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

TV WRITING THESIS WORKSHOP

• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Blair Singer
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• 0 points

DIRECTING THESIS ADVISEMENT

This course will serve to provide an opportunity for Students who are Directing Concentrates to develop their thesis projects within a structured environment.  The course may be taught in every week or alternating week formats. Students will be encouraged to submit ideas, treatments, scripts, rough cuts and fine cuts of their thesis films.  The class is collaborative and serves as a base from which Directors can try out concepts and ideas, and receive input from fellow students as well as their thesis advisor.

• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• T 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Ramin Bahrani
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Hilary Brougher
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Bette Gordon
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Tom Kalin
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Eric Mendelsohn
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Bogdan G Apetri
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• Instructor: Anocha Suwichakornpong
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

PRODUCING THESIS ADVISEMENT

Overview:

The class will meet once monthly and will focus on the following:
1)   Students’ thesis work - class will analyze, advise, give notes on, support, and discuss each person’s work over the year during the development, prep, production, post-production, and marketing periods of work for each thesis project.

2)   Exploration of skills necessary to transition to working in the film industry after graduation.  Topics include resume workshops, web site creation, film festival strategy, financing strategies, rights clearance, and press kit creation.

3)   CU alums and other guest speakers will discuss their transitions from film school to working in the film industry, and will discuss their areas of expertise:  TV producing, feature film producing, development, representation, networks and studios, teaching as a career, etc.

• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Jack Lechner
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• Instructor: Maureen A Ryan
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• Instructor: Mynette Louie
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

DIGITAL STORY TELLING III: Immersive Pro

IMMERSIVE PRODUCTION

Students work in teams to design, build and deploy a digital storytelling experience which is staged for the public at the end of the semester. The course
combines project work, mentors, and collaborative methods to create a dynamic hands-on learning environment that mixes story and code.

Interested students should contact the instructor for details on applying to the course.

• M 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Lance Weiler
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

Writing for the Screen

The Pilot

A great TV series starts with a great pilot episode. You have one chance to intrigue an audience and stand out from hundreds of other series—599 were released in 2022, and that only includes the English language releases! This course will share the building blocks needed to write the next compelling series, starting with the pilot. Not all buyers want to read a finished pilot, but as the creator, you’ll need to know your pilot inside out and become an expert in your series’ genre if you want to sell it. This course will be a combination of pilot outlining and scene writing with an exploration of character and theme. All this through the lens of the marketplace and your authentic, lived experience—the magic combination for a winning series. We will workshop your outlines and scenes in class. Any assigned readings, screenings, and exercises will be focused as much as possible on inspiring material that relates to your pilot/series idea.
 
This course will support you if you want to write a full pilot script. However, the main objective is to finish the course having written a pilot outline and key scenes, as well as other material that's vital to a successful pilot and series such as character and season one breakdowns. You should come to the first class with at least two original logline/elevator pitches for series ideas to which you have a strong personal connection. 
Existing ideas that you feel would benefit from this coursework are also welcome.

• R 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• 0 points

GRADUATE RESEARCH THESIS

MA Film & Media Studies students register for this class to receive academic credit for their thesis work.

• 3 points

FILM RESEARCH ARTS INTERNSHIP

INTERNSHIP-FILM RES ARTS

Internship for Film Research Arts Students Only

• Instructor: Hanna Seifu
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• Instructor: Jack Lechner
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• Instructor: Maureen A Ryan
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• Instructor: Mynette Louie
  Wikipedia Info
• 1-6 points