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3000 Level Film, Video, and New Media Course
Descriptions
FVNM 3000
Media Practices: About Meaning
In extending the ideas of the course The Moving Image to the
3000 level, the assumption is that students will begin to specialize
in-depth in film, digital authoring, or other possible areas. However,
this specialization does not preclude a broader set of discussions that
again bring diverse interests and positions together in critical dialogue.
At the 3000 level, the discussions about how meaning is created, expressed,
and disseminated will be the core issues for this Media Practices seminar.
The semiology of the image, the idea of authorship, genre, audience,
reception; the full range of dominant and marginal practices/regimes
of meaning production will all be discussed in detail. At this level
a more traditional seminar approach is called for, with students presenting
along with faculty researched topics and critical arguments. Why be
a filmmaker? videomaker? installation or media artist? Prerequisite:
FVNM 2000
FVNM 3002
Basic Video: Production II
This course introduces students to more sophisticated forms of image
manipulation, editing, and theory. Students learn to organize the postproduction
process from off-line to on-line editing. They also screen and discuss
the most contemporary works and writing in the field. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2002.
FVNM 3005
Film III: Advanced Production III
This advanced production course covers topics including sync-sound,
sound mixing, cinematography, filters, picture-sound editing, optical
printing, timing, and contact printing. These topics are set in context
through screening films and discussing the history, theory, and aesthetic
import of technical choices. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010.
FVNM 3020
Directing Actors for Film and Video
This production workshop will explore different ways of directing actors
for camera, particularly within the framework of narrative and character-driven
film and video. The course will cover the history of directing by reading
theorists, such as Stanislavski, Brecht, Grotowski, Mamet and others.
Students will study the work of directors such as Lumet, Frankenheimer,
Kazan, Altman, and others. Students should be prepared to write, direct,
and perform scenes in class exercises. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010, or FVNM
3002, or PERF 2000, 2001, 2004.
FVNM 3025
Writing For Film, Video, and Performance
This class is designed for students who wish to explore the relation
of written and spoken text to the visual image. There will be assorted
script assignments (including narration, voice-over, and silent openings)
as well as screenings of both classic and not-so-classic films and videos
to illustrate specific points. Work on dialogue, scene description,
and structure are emphasized. Students with works-in-progress are urged
to take the course with an eye toward completion of those works. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2002 or FVNM 2005.
FVNM 3026
Experimental Film Narrative
This course is designed around experimental narrative filmmaking in
its most vital and diverse possibilities. Production techniques are
covered as needed, but it is assumed that students already have basic
production skills. Throughout the course, examples of the wide range
of narrative films which do not succumb to simplistic use of the medium
by reducing filmmaking to an illustrated story are shown and discussed.
The bulk of class time for the first half of the course is dedicated
to a major in-class production, and during the second half, post-production.
Students are expected to work collaboratively and to rotate responsibilities.
Additionally, students are required to do pre-production work, readings
outside of class, as well as work on their own productions to be screened
in class. Students are required to present their own experimental narrative
film by the end of the semester (at least a double-system rough cut)
to receive credit. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010.
FVNM 3027
Image Making—The World of Do-It-Yourself Image Making
Filmmakers often run into a problem of depending too much on equipment.
This makes one believe that it is impossible to be creative without
elaborate “tools.” Artists of film can produce images in any
circumstance—with or without complicated tools. If a filmmaker
understands the process and mechanism of how images can be generated,
equipment can be as minimal as one paper clip. This class is designed
to introduce a variety of skills and ideas to make images with simple
tools. Students are encouraged to make their own equipment to produce
their own image effects. The course mainly focuses on reproduction of
images without using large equipment. Some of the ideas introduced in
this course are making images without camera and/or lenses; animation;
pixilation; time exposure; time lapse; images using slides, stills,
and newspapers; all phases of in-camera effects; rephotographing frames;
printing in camera; optical printing; and contact printing. Prior enrollment
in FVNM 2010 is recommended. Prerequisite: FVNM 2005.
FVNM 3028
Music and the Moving Image
This class examine aesthetic, historical and economic factors critical
to understanding the role of the music video/film in our contemporary
visual culture. We will analyse advertising, documentaries, music videos,
and experimental media. The class will engage in various aspects of
music-oriented production, with an emphasis on diverse approaches to
cinematography and editing/compositing. Students will produce critical
writings, presentations, and time-based media. Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 3029
Fusions of Performance, Film, and Video
How can physicality and spatial properties of performance be transformed
through a flat rectangular projection of light? How can a film director’s
shot list be influenced by the acting techniques of Meisner? What can
a cinematographer learn from the breath control and movement techniques
of Japanese Butoh dance? When film/video and performance are approached
as a hybrid form, exploring and exploiting the unique properties of
each, fusions between these mediums can truly be successful. This course
will give an introduction to established theories and methods in four
areas: 1) Dance/ Movement for the camera. 2) Experimental theater/Performance
Art combined with film/video. 3) Acting for the camera. 4) Directing
performers for film/video. Prerequisite: FVNM 2002 or FVNM 2005.
FVNM 3030
Sound for Film I: Practice
This course will focus on recording methods, transferring procedures
and analog mixing. It will cover acoustics, microphones, recorders and
other tools of production. The class will incorporate a number of group
shoots as well as individual exercises to illustrate wild and sync sound
recording stratagem. The class would also cover the logic and techniques
behind using mix studio. In addition to class assignments, students
will start developing sound tracks for their independent projects. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2010.
FVNM 3035
Sound for Film II: Concept and Projects
This course will focus on the theories and concepts behind sound editing
and design strategies. Students will work on existing film sound tracks
and discuss the concepts behind them, particularly in light of how sound
works in relation to image. In addition, the course will continue technically
where Sound for Film I: Practice left off, venturing into problems
of mixing, including training on the ProTools system. Students in Sound
for Film II: Concepts and Projects will be expected to
be developing sound tracks for their own independent project. Prerequisite:
FVNM 3030.
FVNM 3040
Sound Design/Sound Mix
This intensive course covers the complete, postproduction use of sound
for film. Topics include: sound transfers, sound design and layout,
building tracks and effects, foleys, voice-overs and narration, cue
sheets, the sound mix room, the mix, optical tracks, and laboratory
specifications for sound. The course is designed for the film student
who needs in-depth knowledge of the mix room and its aesthetic potential.
Students with works-in-progress are encouraged to enroll.
FVNM 3050
Video Strategies
This intermediate-level course covers a wide range of aesthetic concerns.
Various sections investigate genres, methods, and strategies for working
with video. Examples of previous courses include Media File
and Crossing Borders (see following topics).
Topic: Representations of Race and Gender
This course looks at how and why certain images of women and people
of color have been constructed and placed in narrative structures. The
class investigates the social and economic forces prevailing when films
and tapes are made. Also emphasized: works that subvert mainstream stereotypes,
as well as recent solutions by women addressing desire and subjectivity.
Extensive reading list. Students are required to complete one tape by
the end of the term.
Topic: The Expanded Studio
This course examines the boundaries and models of traditional production
studio arrangements with the objective toward developing the video studio
as an expanded creative environment. The course undertakes and engages
in an active investigation of studio production techniques employing
multiformat sources, image processing, create a multidimensional interactive
environment. The course asks students to critique both existing studio
models and formalized program/viewer relationships. In their projects,
students are encouraged to explore new programming strategies that seek
to break through the video “third wall.” Prerequisite: FVNM
3002.
FVNM 3120
Advanced Video Production Seminar I
This course is a production seminar designed to give upper level undergraduate
students hands-on training in advanced video production skills. The
class will cover a full range of topics and techniques including directing,
cinematography, location lighting and sound, mise-en-scene, continuity/discontinuity,
and post-production planning for digital editing. Prerequisite: FVNM
3002.
FVNM 3125
Advanced Video Production Seminar II
This production seminar will continue exploration of topics and techniques
begun in FVNM 3120. Students will be expected to develop advanced skills
in areas such as project conceptualization and planning, production
and digital editing. Prerequisite: FVNM 3120.
FVNM 3204
Literature in Film
Literature in film is a course in adaptation. The course is designed
to give the student the necessary tools and skills to adapt a literary
source into a functional and precise shooting script of storyboard.
The course focuses on close comparisons of literary works and their
motion picture adaptation. The process of adaptation, the different
options available in the different media, and the issue of “translation”
are the central themes throughout the course. Literary sources to be
addressed may include novels, poems, journals, or expository writings.
Film genres which may be covered include narrative, experimental, and
documentary. Prerequisite: FVNM 2005.
FVNM 3205
Recent Film and Video
Unfamiliar with new developments in the world of independent and alternative
film and video? Looking for a chance to catch up on the recent work
you've missed? There is a rich, messy, irreverent, and diverse pile
of new work emerging: Crossovers, Queer New Wave, Crime Films, Video
Narrative, Low Budget Features, Documentaries, Action, Experimental,
Underground. From high end to low end, the popular to the obscure, this
studio course will expose the student to the world outside Blockbuster
Video, surveying recent releases and current trends, tracing their roots,
and theorizing the future. Through readings and class discussion, the
class will analyze, bash, critique, and cajole meaning. Students from
all departments and disciplines are encouraged to enroll. Prerequisite:
FVNM 3002.
FVNM 3206
Transgressive/Subversive Practices in Contemporary Art
There are some artists who could care less about traditions, conventions,
or museum hours. They would rather graffiti the walls, cover their naked
bodies in mud, produce dark and dirty ‘zines, or float crosses
in urine. This is a video production course which examines a range of
transgressive, subversive, or oppositional forms to determine what’s
at stake for artists who make them, and why some people find this work
so threatening. We try to comprehend the contexts, political imperatives,
and formal experimentation which contribute to and help define a transgressive
art practice, while bashing conventions and breaking down barriers in
our own work. Students are expected to complete and respond to readings,
participate in unruly discussions, and complete two killer video projects
in response to the class. Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 3207
Visiting Artists Seminar
In association with the screening series “Conversations at the
Edge,” visiting artists in the Film, Video, and New Media department
will present their work, and critique students’ work over the semester.
Students will be required to attend screenings at the Gene Siskel Film
Center, and meet with the visiting artist the following morning for
critiques and workshops. Students will be required to participate in
workshops, group projects, and/or attend lectures. The teacher of this
class will be at all screenings and meet with the students the following
morning or afternoon, to lead discussions when the evening program does
not have a visiting artist, and facilitate visiting artist presentations,
lectures, and workshops. Students will be graded on papers written about
the work and class participation.
FVNM 3208
Bordering on Fiction
“Reality television,” despite the furor, is not a particularly
new idea. Direct precedents for shows like Survivor and Big Brother
can be traced back to 1970, to An American Family or its subcultural
counterpart, The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd. Some of
the most powerful and provocative independent film and video being produced
today draws on the age-old fascination with the border between “document”
and “fiction.” The class would provide a context for producing
and critiquing student work, and provide a historical/critical grounding
in examining work of video and cinema “verite” as well as
“experimental narrative” and “new documentary.”
Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 3210
Film Theory I
Film theory has been dominated by Eisenstein’s montage frame, Bazin’s
deep focus window on the real, the Surrealist’s dream as subtext,
the silver screen as an apparatus of ideology, narrative traditions,
formal practice as radical aspiration, the document as illusion, the
self in a Lacanian mirror, and the possibilities of alternative film
practice raised by feminist and non-Western theory. This two-semester
seminar (see also FVNM 4210) interweaves major film theories with the
aesthetic, sociopolitical, and literary texts and images with which
they were in dialogue. Special emphasis is placed on how contemporary
theory and practice renews traditional problematics in film. Detailed
analysis of recent postmodern strategies of deconstruction and cultural
critique are deployed as the central vocabularies for both semesters.
Prerequisite: FVNM 3005.
FVNM 3220
Film And Video: What’s The Difference?
This class is an investigation into the philosophical, practical, and
phenomenological differences between film and video. We include surveillance
and television in our definition of video, and our definition of film
includes theatrical and non theatrical forms (such as video transfers).
Our interrogation will be historical, as well as contemporary. We examine
the multiple cross-overs, collapses, and ambiguities between the media.
Screenings range from an early Orson Welles TV pilot, one of the first
features shot on video (by Jacques Tati), to the latest works by Godard
and Viola. Prerequisite: FVNM 3002
FVNM 3222
Microcinema and the Short
A combined production/studio/critique class and seminar for undergraduates,
this class would bring together students working across a number of
media and platforms and would help provide a critical framework to emerging
film and video makers. This history in the film short and generally
falls under the genre of avant-garde or experimental film. This combined
with a variety of alternative screening venues creates an atmosphere
of enormous possibility, challenge and choice of making and screening
work. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010 or FVNM 3002.
FVNM 3420
Three-D Puppet Animation I
This is a production class where students will learn the production
of sets and puppets, for stop-motion filmmaking. Students design and
construct storyboards, puppets and sets for stop-motion filmmaking.
Students will consider lighting and framing, and finish the class with
a series of cinematically lit slides that will prepare them for the
next phase of production: sound, shooting, and editing. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2420.
FVNM 3425
Three-D Puppet Animation II
This production class will follow 3-D Puppet Animation I, giving
students the opportunity to animate and film their puppets and sets.
Special attention will be paid to animation technique, lighting, camera
movement, and framing as introduced through 3-D animated works and animation
cameras and equipment. Sound will also be introduced as a guide to shooting,
or edited after shooting. Students will be exposed to examples of 3-D
animated works, culminating in the screening of the students completed
films. Prerequisite: FVNM 3420.
FVNM 3430
Digital Cel Production
As animation moves from a primarily film-based medium to a mostly digital
one, animators need to be aware of the techniques and issues of the
medium. How animation is created and finished is determined by the intended
final product. The class will explore how an animated “film,”
to be delivered over the Web, incurs an entirely separate set of problems
from one that is to be printed to film or tape. Software to be covered:
Painter 6; Animation Stand; Flash4, and Photoshop 5.5. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2425.
FVNM 3500
Advanced Animation Projects
This course is a continuation of the animation sequence, where the specific
needs and problems of advanced students are addressed through demonstration,
critique, and the discussion of aesthetic and formal implications in
short and long work. Prerequisite: FVNM 2425.
FVNM 3600
Documentary and Non-Fiction Film
This course considers the use of film as it pertains to the recording
of events and the documentation of phenomena. Forms are studied that
relate to these uses and cover various aspects of film production. The
instructor works with students individually when possible. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2010.
FVNM 3610
Documents: The Mechanics of Memory
This studio course chronicles the evolution of documentary theory and
questions the traditional definitions of the genre. Students explore
the implications of the Grierson-British documentary in relation to
the personal portrait, diary films, propaganda, educational, and Hollywood
narrative works. Students must complete four short films for credit
in the class.
FVNM 3705
Video Installation I
This class-combining studio work, readings, discussion, and group critiques-explores
video installation. Students build a theoretical and critical context
within which to analyze examples of a wide range of video installation
work, both contemporary and historical. The class addresses such questions
as: Why and how is video installation being used by artists of color,
women, lesbians and gay men, and politically motivated artists to engage
issues of identity and representation, race, class, sexuality, and gender?
To what extent do these works constitute different models of art making?
Do they challenge or support the commodity status of the art object?
Does this new genre require a rethinking of the positions of both artist(s)
and audience? Students who enroll in this class should already have
basic knowledge of video production. However, students with backgrounds
in all media-whether film, sculpture, painting, or photography—are
encouraged to use ongoing projects as a basis for investigation in this
class. Because of the intensive, concentrated schedule of classwork,
collaboration between students is encouraged. Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 3710
Video Installation II
This class will continue exploration of topics and techniques begun
in FVNM 3705. Students will be expected to develop advanced projects
relative to their own installation-derived production. Prerequisite:
FVNM 3705.
FVNM 3805
Digital Media Production II
Interdisciplinary? Interactive? Accessible? What are the opportunities-and
limitations-of new digital technologies? This advanced level production
course is a further exploration of topics and techniques introduced
in Digital Media I (FVNM 2805) Students continue work in both analog
and digital video and audio; on various programs and systems, including
Premiere and Media 100; and learn basic HTML (hyper-text mark-up language)
for CD-ROM and web site design. Through readings on, discussions about,
and actual navigations of cyberculture, the class also aims to reconsider
the role and identity of the artist. Prerequisite: FVNM 2805.
FVNM 3810
dotVideo
Pixilated and pulled across the web, dotvideo will develop ways in which
media artists can use the internet. From newvenue.com to ifilm.net the
internet is rapidly altering the way artists produce, distribute and
conceive of media art. In dotvideo we will analyze and create works
online with approaches as diverse as webcasting, video and film on demand
and video and film as site. The politics and practices of downloading,
recoding and repositioning media will be analyzed from a video maker’s
perspective. Prerequisite: FVNM 2805.
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