Spring 2024 Classes
1500 – Fundamentals of Film and Video Production
Taught by Jonathan Waters (section 01) or Mariah Kramer (section 02)
Technologies and techniques of filmmaking. Digital video cameras, staging and lighting, sound recording, post-production sound, and image editing.
Students will be required to attend weekly technical workshops on 4-5 Fridays per semester, with multiple options for workshop times. TBA. No Seniors will be allowed to register for this course.
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts and Communication of Science and Tech
1600 – Introduction to Film and Media Studies
Taught by Mickey Casad or Claire Sisco King
Stylistic tendencies and narrative strategies, genres, and theoretical approaches. Live-action cinema, animation, experimental cinema, television, and computer-generated moving images.
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts and American Studies Major and Art and Communication of Science and Tech
2250 – 16mm Filmmaking
Taught by Jonathan Rattner
Camera operation, lighting, non-sync sound design, and film pre-production for 16 mm and celluloid film.
Eligible for Communication of Science and Tech
2260 – Digital Production Workshop
Taught by Mariah Kramer
Digital cinematography, sound design, and editing. Individual and group projects. Offered on a graded basis only. Prerequisite 1500
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts
2290 – Alternate Media Modes – Waves & Loops: DIY Media Prod
Taught by Jonathan Rattner and Mickey Casad
Genres, styles, and techniques outside of the dominant modes of media-making. Emphasis on production. Offered on a graded basis only. [3] (HCA)
Build a pinhole camera, solder a synthesizer, paint on film, work with old video cameras, learn or review basics in photography, video editing, and sound editing. In addition to conducting lo-fi art experiments in class and completing two mixed media projects, we will read about artists, filmmakers, scientists, and theorists who throughout history experimented with, questioned, created, and challenged old and new media. No pre-requisites for this class.
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts
2300 – Film and Media Theory
Taught by Jennifer Fay
Historical overview of the major analytical and critical approaches to the study of film as an aesthetic and cultural form. Contemporary perspectives on cinema, video, and new media. Prerequisite: 1600.
Eligible for AXLE: Perspectives and the Creative Arts
2370 – Film and Media Aesthetics – History of Sound Art
Taught by Lutz Koepnick
Cinema, television, and digital media. Advanced historical, cultural, and textual analysis. Form, genre, movements, style, and technology.
The term sound art was coined in the mid-1980s, and it has been used ever more frequently since the late 1990s to describe the role of acoustical elements speech, music, noise, silence in contemporary artistic practice and performance-oriented work. And yet, there is little agreement about how to define this term exactly and how to distinguish it from other domains of artistic creativity. This class offers a survey of twentieth and twenty-first century uses of sound as an artistic medium. We will explore how late-nineteenth century composers and early twentieth-century avant-gardists employed sound to renew artistic mediums or drive art beyond its established boundaries. We will study minimalist and post-minimalist artists embracing the acoustical as a means to experiment with new ways of seeing and hearing. And we will engage with artists and filmmakers using the entire range of digital possibilities today to reconfigure the relationship between images and sounds and to recalibrate what it means to listen to our precarious world. Throughout the semester, the focus will be on experimental practices, the relationship of art and technology, and on sound art s at once productive and fluid position between music, film, performance, and installation art.
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts
2600W – Advanced Screenwriting
Taught by Krista Knight
Story structure, character development, and dialogue. Prerequisite: 2500W. Prerequisite: CMA 2500W or THTR 2311W
Eligible for AXLE: 2000-level and above W course / AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts / Communication of Science and Tech
3726 –New Media
Taught by Jay Clayton
History, theory, and design of digital media. Literature, video, film, online games, and other interactive narratives. Not open to students who have completed ENGL 1111 section 60. Serves as repeat credit for CMA 3333 01, section 01 in Fall 2020, and for ENGL 3333, section 01 in Fall 2020. The combined enrollment capacity of CMA 3726 and ENGL 3726 is 20. Although seats may appear open in a section, if the combined capacity has been reached the course will close.
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts / Communication of Science and Tech
3771 – Global Korean Cinema
Taught by We Jung Yi
From the colonial period to the Korean Wave in the new millennium. Film criticism, transnational and national contexts of film production, aesthetics of auteurs and genres, and local and global receptions of Korean cinema. The combined enrollment capacity of ASIA 2412 and CMA 3771 is 20. Although seats may appear open in a section, if the combined capacity has been reached the course will close.
Eligible for AXLE: International Cultures / Cross-listed with ASIA 2412-01
3891 –Special Topics in Film and Video Production –The Art of Editing
Taught by Mariah Kramer
The Art of Editing. Theory, practice, and art of video post-production with emphasis on video editing.
3892 –Special Topics in the Study of Film –Beyond the Zombie
Taught by Mariah Kramer
George Romero, whose cult movies Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are often credited with establishing the flesh-eating zombie as a cinematic monster, is one of the most consequential American directors of the twentieth century. This course employs media industry studies, genre theory, fan studies, intertextual and auteurist perspectives to understand Romeros work. From his origins in Pittsburgh making filmed commercials for local television, to his cult movie successes and commercial failures in the 1970s and 1980s, to his ultimate emigration from the United States and late renascence in Canada, we will consider how Romeros remarkable career illuminates the dramatic transformations in United States film and media production in the second half of the twentieth century and tracks the erosion of Americas institutional legitimacy.
Eligible for AXLE: Humanities and the Creative Arts
CMA 4962: Senior Seminar on Film Practice
Taught by Carmine Grimaldi
Advanced independent filmmaking, portfolio assembly, and professionalism. Offered on a graded basis only. Prerequisite: 1500 and senior standing. [3] (No AXLE credit). Capstone course for CMA seniors only. Students will be require to attend a screening in Buttrick 103 on Wednesdays from 7-8pm on a bi-weekly basis