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.
• 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 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.

• W 2:10 p.m.-5:55 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.

• R 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• R 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• R 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 0 points

American Film: Comedy

This course will explore the history of American film comedy from the origins of cinema to the present. In its various forms, comedy has always been a staple of American film production; but it has also always been a site of heterogeneity and nonconformity in the development of American cinema, with neither its form nor its content fitting normative models of film practice. This course accounts for that nonconformity by exploring comedy’s close and essential links to “popular” cultural sources (in particular, vaudeville, variety, stand-up); it looks at how different comic filmmakers have responded to and reshaped those sources; and it examines the relation between comedy and social change. Rather than engage the entire spectrum of comic styles (animation, mockumentary, etc.), this course is primarily focused on a single tradition bridging the silent and sound eras: the performance-centered, “comedian comedy” format associated with performers as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, and, into the present Amy Schumer, Kevin Hart, Will Ferrell, and others. “Laughter and its forms,” writes theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, “represent the least scrutinized sphere of the people's creation.” This course will restore film comedy to the scrutiny it deserves, examining both its inward formal development and its external relation to other modes of cultural expression.

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

American Film: Comedy DISC

Per syllabus- required discussion section for Film UN2130 American Film: Comedy

• F 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• 0 points

World Cinema: Latin America-Women Filmma

Wld Cine: Lat Amer- Women

This course presents a survey of Latin American cinemas focusing on films directed by women filmmakers from the 1960s up to the present day. This broad historical perspective will help us understand how films made by women directors have developed in the region in close dialogue with the complex historical and political context in which these productions emerged. What are the main topics explored by these women filmmakers? How have these films been produced? What are the similarities and differences between these women’s works? Is it possible to talk about feminist film in Latin America? While we explore these issues, we will be learning about a wide range of national and transnational film histories, examining the work of major women filmmakers working both within and outside of their countries of origin.

• T 2:10 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth Ramirez Soto
  Info
• 3 points

World Cinema: Latin America- Women Filmm

Wld Cin:Lat Amer- Women D

This course presents a survey of Latin American cinemas focusing on films directed by women filmmakers from the 1960s up to the present day. This broad historical perspective will help us understand how films made by women directors have developed in the region in close dialogue with the complex historical and political context in which these productions emerged. What are the main topics explored by these women filmmakers? How have these films been produced? What are the similarities and differences between these women’s works? Is it possible to talk about feminist film in Latin America? While we explore these issues, we will be learning about a wide range of national and transnational film histories, examining the work of major women filmmakers working both within and outside of their countries of origin.

• R 6:10 p.m.-7 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.

• T 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.

• F 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• M 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• 3 points

LAB IN FICTION FILMMAKING

This lab course is limited to declared Film & Media Studies majors.  Exercises in the use of video for fiction shorts.

• R 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• 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.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Greta Diaz Moreau
  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 2 p.m.-5:45 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 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 0 points

Augmented Creativity: practical uses of

Augmented Creativity: AI

We are entering a new age of creativity, where generative AI is transforming how artists and creators work. This course invites undergraduate and graduate students at Columbia's School of the Arts to explore the powerful intersection of AI and creative practice. Through hands-on experimentation with AI tools—ranging from large language models (LLMs) to image and video generators—students will unlock new creative potential across ideation, visual development, and storytelling.

The course emphasizes how AI can augment existing creative methods, from generating ideas and developing personas to blending AI with traditional storytelling techniques. Students will also critically engage with the ethical implications of using AI in art. Culminating in a speculative design project, this course prepares students to envision and prototype the future of creative practice, where AI becomes a true collaborator in the artistic process.

• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• 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 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 0 points

Cinema and Television: Entangled Media H

Cine & TV: Entangled Medi

Is this cinema or television? Moving beyond the advent of streaming platforms like Netflix and the rise of “global television,” the course will examine the 1970s and 1980s, an exciting period of collaboration between public television and independent filmmakers around the world, in which coproductions between cinema and television proliferated. From a historical and theoretical perspective, we will study key debates around media specificity and convergence, television as a “utopia,” and the challenges of coproduction between the “North” and the “South,” among other issues. The course is an invitation to approach film and television histories through an interconnected approach (across media and across nations), while focusing on a wide range of directors from the U.S., Europe and the so-called “Global South” (these might include Rossellini, Fassbinder, Godard & Miéville, Burnett, Ruiz, Black Audio Film Collective, Sarmiento, etc.).

• T 10:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth Ramirez Soto
  Info
• 3 points

QUEER CINEMA

This course examines themes and changes in the (self-)representation of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in cinema from the early sound period to the present. It pays attention to both the formal qualities of film and filmmakers’ use of cinematic strategies (mise-en-scene, editing, etc.) designed to elicit certain responses in viewers and to the distinctive possibilities and constraints of the classical Hollywood studio system, independent film, avant-garde cinema, and world cinema; the impact of various regimes of formal and informal censorship; the role of queer men and women as screenwriters, directors, actors, and designers; and the competing visions of gay, progay, and antigay filmmakers. Along with considering the formal properties of film and the historical forces that shaped it, the course explores what cultural analysts can learn from film. How can we treat film as evidence in historical analysis? We will consider the films we see as evidence that may shed new light on historical problems and periodization, and will also use the films to engage with recent queer theoretical work on queer subjectivity, affect, and culture.

• M 10:10 a.m.-1:45 p.m.
• Instructor: Ronald Gregg
  CULPA: 2 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

When American Television Became American

When Amer TV Became Amer

In a 2015 interview with David Simon (creator of
The Wire
) President Barak Obama offered that
The Wire
is, "one of the greatest -- not just television shows, but pieces of American art in the last couple of decades."  
The Wire
combines hyperrealism with the reinvention of fundamental American themes (from picaresque individualisms, to coming to terms with the illusory “American dream”, to a fundamental loss of faith in American institutions), and engages in a scathing expose of the shared dysfunction among the bureaucracies (police, courts, public schools etc.) that manage a troubled American inner city.  On a more macro level
The Wire
humanizes (and therefore vastly problematizes) assumptions about the individual Americans’ who inhabit America’s most dangerous urban environments from gang members to police officers to teachers and even ordinary citizens. 
The Wire
, of course, did not single-handedly reshape American television. Scholars like Martin Shuster refer to this period of television history as “new television.” That is, the product of new imaginations that felt television had exhausted its normative points of reference, subject matter and narrative technique. Many of the shows from this period sought to reinvent television for interaction with an evolving zeitgeist shaped by shared dissolution with 21st century American life: “I’d been thinking: it’s good to be in a thing from the ground floor, I came too late for that, I know.  But lately I’m getting the feeling I might be in at the end.  That the best is over,” Tony Soprano confides to Dr. Malfi in S1.E1 of the Sopranos.  Series that fall within this rubric include (in chronological order):
The Sopranos
;
The Wire
;
Deadwood
;
Madmen
; and
Breaking Bad.

We need to consider carefully that these shows emerged during a particular moment on American history.  This was a period shaped by an increasingly relativist conceptualizations of truth (and, at times, outright fraud) and a resultant loss of faith in American institutions.  Resistance movements (MeeToo, and Black Lives Mater) began to shape.  No wonder that so many of the series under discussion take place amid American cultures defined by a liminal faith in law and order, within the contexts of vague moral authorities and hold American institutions with a shared, deep, suspicion.

These show

• M 2 p.m.-5 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

• W 2:10 p.m.-5:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Annette Insdorf
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

World Cinema: Latin America- Women Filmm

Wld Cine: Lat Amer-Women

This course presents a survey of Latin American cinemas focusing on films directed by women filmmakers from the 1960s up to the present day. This broad historical perspective will help us understand how films made by women directors have developed in the region in close dialogue with the complex historical and political context in which these productions emerged. What are the main topics explored by these women filmmakers? How have these films been produced? What are the similarities and differences between these women’s works? Is it possible to talk about feminist film in Latin America? While we explore these issues, we will be learning about a wide range of national and transnational film histories, examining the work of major women filmmakers working both within and outside of their countries of origin.

• T 2:10 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth Ramirez Soto
  Info
• 3 points

American Film: Comedy

TPCS IN AMER CINEMA

Grad section for FILM UN 2190 Topics in American Cinema.  Comedy or Film Noir 

Comedy:

This course will explore the history of American film comedy from the origins of cinema to the present. In its various forms, comedy has always been a staple of American film production; but it has also always been a site of heterogeneity and nonconformity in the development of American cinema, with neither its form nor its content fitting normative models of film practice. This course accounts for that nonconformity by exploring comedy’s close and essential links to “popular” cultural sources (in particular, vaudeville, variety, stand-up); it looks at how different comic filmmakers have responded to and reshaped those sources; and it examines the relation between comedy and social change. Rather than engage the entire spectrum of comic styles (animation, mockumentary, etc.), this course is primarily focused on a single tradition bridging the silent and sound eras: the performance-centered, “comedian comedy” format associated with performers as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, and, into the present Amy Schumer, Kevin Hart, Will Ferrell, and others. “Laughter and its forms,” writes theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, “represent the least scrutinized sphere of the people's creation.” This course will restore film comedy to the scrutiny it deserves, examining both its inward formal development and its external relation to other modes of cultural expression.

 

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 number of critical and theoretical approaches to the genre, and will also study a number of film noir adaptations and their literary sources.

• R 10:10 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Robert King
  CULPA: 7 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 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Andrew S Bienen
  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

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.

• R 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.

• M 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• T 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• T 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• R 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Minhal Baig
  Info
• Instructor: David B Schwab
  Info
• Instructor: Andrew S Bienen
  Info
• Instructor: Trey Ellis
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Rania Attieh
  Info
• 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 9:30 a.m.-12:30 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.

• M 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• M 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• T 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• T 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Jon Shear
  Info
• Instructor: Lisa Milinazzo
  Info
• Instructor: Keith Manning
  Info
• Instructor: Shira-Lee Shalit
  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
• Instructor: Mary Jane Skalski
  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.
• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Jack Lechner
  Info
• Instructor: Anthony Weintraub
  Info
• 3 points

STORY STRUCTURE WRITERS/DIR

This is a lecture course designed to provide writers and directors with a thorough understanding of screenplay structure, from the basic to the rococo. Each week, students will watch a feature film outside of class, then analyze it structurally in class. Students will also read and parse Robert McKee’s
Story
, a dense but rewarding guide to the techniques of cinematic storytelling. Finally, lectures will include numerous modules on particular structures, genres, and storytelling paradigms.

• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Jack Lechner
  Info
• 1.5 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

What Is An Image?

How can we define the image in the digital age? Can we (still) believe our eyes? What is underneath the image? As we will see in this course, these fundamental questions are not new within the history of media. Through the ages, the image has been questioned and redefined as image, surface, visual representation, index, etc. Philosopher Vilém Flusser once remarked that the composite essence of digital technology was already embedded in photography because the photographic image is an image composed of points, which the human eye synthesizes into an image. This course revisits Flusser’s notion of the “technical image” and proposes to rethink the image beyond its visual dimensions, from the perspectival image of the Renaissance to the AI-generated image of today. Instead of following a strict chronological path, we will delve into various theoretical debates on “what is an image?” – ranging from the binary image of textile to the haptic image of video art, from the technological image of the optical toy to the operational image of surveillance and warfare. Both mainstream and experimental films will be analyzed and discussed as critical interventions in the history of image technologies.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Wanda Strauven
  Info
• 3 points

Conspiracy Theory in American Film and C

Conspiracy Theory in US F

This class will look at the history of conspiracy theories in American culture from the 50s and 60s (UFOs, the red scare, JFK’s assassination) to the 21st century (from 9/11 truthers to Covid conspiracies and QAnon) with particular attention to cinematic representation. What is the lure of conspiracy theories? Are there particular reasons that conspiracy theories thrive in American culture?  Do different media forms and platforms encourage the spread, and even transform the content, of conspiracies?  What is the difference between theory in the social sciences and humanities and conspiracy theory?  We will read a range of theoretical material including writings by Richard Hofstadter, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Eve Sedgwick, Sianne Ngai, and many others.  Films will include:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
The Parallax View
,
Videodrome
,
The Matrix
,
Get Out
, and others.

• T 2:10 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
• Instructor: Nico Baumbach
  Info
• 3 points

The Face on Film

Illuminated, exposed, projected, magnified—the cinematic face is at once spectacular and mysterious, commanding and vulnerable, an inexhaustible object of wonder. The seminar will explore the workings of the human face as privileged object of representation, as figure of subjectivity, as mode and ethic of address through film theory and practice. How has the technological, mass-circulating art of the moving image mediated this singular entity—this visual incarnation of the
person
? How did it confront its mythic and iconic resonance, its charge of identity and identification, its revelatory and masking play of expression, its social, racial, and affective registers? Among filmmakers and writers who inform our discussion: Roland Barthes, Mary Ann Doane, Carl-Theodor Dreyer, Jean Epstein, Buster Keaton, Alfred Hitchcock, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Gilles Deleuze, and others.

• T 5:10 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Noa Steimatsky
  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.

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

• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Char Simpson
  Info
• 3 points

Digital Storytelling III: Immersive Prod

DS III: Immersive Product

Digital Storytelling III: Immersive Production is a mix of theory and practice. Teams of students work to design, build and deploy a digital storytelling experience that is staged for an audience at the end of the semester. The course combines project work, mentors, emerging technologies and collaborative methods to create a dynamic hands-on immersive environment that mixes story and code.

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

• M 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Chloe Gbai
  Info
• 3 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.
• None None-None
• R 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Minhal Baig
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• Instructor: David Klass
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• Instructor: Trey Ellis
  Wikipedia Info
• 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.

• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• W 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
• T 2 p.m.-5 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
  Info
• Instructor: Maureen A Ryan
  Info
• Instructor: Mynette Louie
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

Writing for the Screen

Revision

Section 001: 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.

 

Section 002
 Writing For the Screen is a screenwriting workshop for second/ Reserach Arts year creative producing students. Each student will write and present a feature screenplay.  Students will submit their work for critique, while critiquing the work of fellow students. The class is about process rather than product; the aim is to further each students understanding of writing visual narrative. Students will also pitch ideas to the class, and work collaboratively to determine which format those ideas are best suited to feature films.

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

GRADUATE RESEARCH THESIS

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

• Instructor: Nico Baumbach
  Info
• 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