Check-out the Spring Term 2017 Cinema Studies Courses!

The complete Spring 2017 Course List is now available! Spring term registration begins February 27, 2017

Take a look at a few of the Cinema Studies courses offered winter term:

NEW! CINE 408–Workshop: Art of Directing (4 credits)
Monday / Wednesday 4:00-5:50 p.m. and Tuesday 6:30-8:50 p.m. 
Instructor:  Masami Kawai

This class focuses on the building blocks to develop a narrative director’s voice. Students will explore how to build compelling characters, work with actors and non-actors, and use the power of cinematic language to affect audiences. The award–winning Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari will guest teach four classes, sharing her approach to directing and providing feedback on a specific film exercise. We will view and discuss Tsangari’s films, investigate narrative tools and aesthetics, and critique your classmates’ work as a way to integrate theory into practice. By the end, students will be empowered to generate strategies to create personal, original films. Instructor approval required to register.

CINE 270–Intro to Narrative Cinema Production (4 credits; previously taught as ENG 270, not repeatable)
Monday / Wednesday 12:00-1:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Michael Bray

CINE 270 is an introductory course to narrative production. It includes lectures, screenings, workshops, and hands‐on production experience. We will focus on short narrative fiction, which will enable you to engage each aspect of the filmmaking process—from page to pre‐production/production and editing to (digital) exhibition. Course assignments will build toward an original short narrative video; however, you are expected to write, revise, and plan on paper as much as you record and edit images and sounds. This is not a class about technology, but about visual storytelling and collaboration. Planning, practice, and problem solving are as critical as creativity and technological skill.

CINE 399–Global Blockbuster (4 credits)
Monday / Wednesday 10:00-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: HyeRyoung Ok

This course explores one of the most visible, yet least critically discussed forms of popular culture: the movie blockbuster. We will endeavor to evaluate or re-evaluate the cultural significance of this often easily dismissed cultural phenomenon by positioning it at the intersections of such discourses as globalization, transnationalism, film historiography and genre. At the same time we will trace the genealogy of the movie blockbuster and examine its shifting definitions and generic conventions. In particular, challenging a myopic perception that blockbusters are the exclusive products of Hollywood, this class will survey the global dissemination of the movie blockbuster and focus on blockbusters, spectacles or “event movies” from Asia, including, but not limited to, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and India. In addition to looking into the formal, aesthetic, and industrial elements of blockbusters across nations, the analysis of films will lead us to interrogate cinematic and cultural constructions of history, nation, gender and sexuality.

CINE 399–Cinema Careers (2 credits; previously offered for 4 credits as 399 Internship Devel and 399 Intern/Job Search; not repeatable)
Tuesday / Thursday 10:00-11:50 a.m.
Instructor:  Staff

This course bridges the gap between education and employment by helping students identify the various career paths possible with a Cinema Studies degree. Students will learn how to make informed decisions about internships, jobs, and/or graduate school while producing resumes, cover letters, and/or portfolios of their scholarly and creative work.

CINE 399–Defining Film Melodrama (4 credits)
Monday / Wednesday 2:00-3:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Amanda Doxtater

When people hear the word “melodrama” it’s often in the sense of “Stop being so melodramatic!” The term conjures up simplistic emotions and a kind of lowbrow overacting. This course, Defining Film Melodrama, aims takes a closer look at the assumptions underlying the term’s pejorative valance while also indulging fully in the pleasures of melodrama’s highs and lows. The course surveys ways in which film scholars have attempted to define melodrama (as genre, style, sensibility and mode), and highlights melodrama’s potential for societal critique, particularly in relation to gender, class, and race. Screenings will range from the silent era to contemporary cinema and will draw from Hollywood and world cinema traditions.

CINE 420–Advanced Screenwriting (4 credits)
Tuesday 2:00-4:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Masami Kawai

This course is designed to take students through the process of developing a feature film screenplay. The class will combine analytical and practical approaches. We will read critically acclaimed feature scripts to analyze the various techniques used by screenwriters to engage an audience. Building on these insights, students will write a detailed outline of a feature script and the first act of the screenplay. By the end of the course, students will learn how to evaluate story ideas, develop compelling characters, create engaging plots, and hone the skills to give and receive feedback. This class is aimed at students who have completed Beginning Screenwriting and who have written a successful short film script.

CINE 425–Topic: Making Music Video (4 credits; previously taught as 399 Music Video Prod and 425 CINE Prod Music Video; not repeatable) 
Tuesday / Thursday 12:00-1:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Andre Sirois

This course combines the study of the developing aesthetics of music videos with actual production. Students will explore ways of telling stories and promoting songs/artists through music videos by engaging in the creative process. The main focus of the course is on the production of music videos: from writing and pitching treatments and presenting storyboards to on-location filming to post-production technique and execution. Students will be given the opportunity to be creative and spend the whole term developing, executing, and refining a content-legal music video. While there will be several individual assignments, the majority of work in this class will be done with a team of peers to produce a professional music video with the opportunity to collaborate with local or nationally recognized artists.

CINE 470–Topic: Postwar Cinema (4 credits; previously taught as 399 Neorealism and 410 Ital Post-War Cinema; not repeatable.)
Tuesday / Thursday 2:00-3:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Sergio Rigoletto

The term Neorealism refers to a set of films made in Italy at the end of WW2. This was a time when the country was in ruins and the Italian film industry was on its knees, but the obstacles actually instigated the emergence of a new way of making films. Shooting on location and in available light became a necessity; and because of the impact of the war on the landscape, contemporary reality became the inevitable prime subject matter. In addition, non-professional actors were widely cast to play leading roles, often next to more experienced actors. Neorealist cinema has been defined as a particular “moral position to look at the world”. This is partly due to its concern with the life of ordinary people and with experiences of social and economic marginalization. The course will provide an overview of Neorealist cinema within its particular social, economic and industrial contexts. Students will learn what particular formal and technical specificities characterized Neorealist filmmaking. They will also explore the aesthetic and ethical significance of Neorealism in the context of world cinema and its particular attitude to reality.

Spring course poster

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