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4000 Level Film, Video, and New Media Course
Descriptions
FVNM 4001
Independent Study
Undergraduate Projects gives the student the opportunity to
explore a specific problem in the student’s area of concentration,
carried out independently but with a faculty adviser. A schedule of
conferences is usually established at the start of the semester. Instructor
signature required for registration. Open to students at junior level
and above.
FVNM 4002
Advanced Cinema Projects
Students work independently on a chosen filmmaking project, consulting
when nesccessary with a department faculty advisor. Occasional meeting
of the whole group may be scheduled. The faculty advisor evaluates credit
for the work at the end of each semester. The student may choose more
than one advisor, with a certain number of credits taken with each advisor.
Prerequisite: FVNM 2010.
FVNM 4003
Advanced Video Projects
This course is for undergraduate students who have a sustained interest
in using video technology as part of their art making. Participants
work on a project-oriented basis that include individual critiques,
special class meetings, practicums, and equipment workshops. Students
should be both self-directed and interested in developing a support
system for producing each other’s work. This course will be offered
on a semester-to-semester basis, but students who wish access to the
video department during the winter interim must take both semesters.
Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 4005
Film IV: Advanced Post-Production
This advanced course focuses on the elements necessary to take a film
from its final edit to the lab for a first answer print, and includes
A + B rolling, color and exposure adjustments through timing, sound
editing and preparation, lab techniques, filmstock sensitometry, and
manipulation possible through contact printing. Students are expected
to have a film already shot and edited, ready to begin the final stages
of completion. Some sound work is possible, but is expected to be ready
to go. The 16mm format is stressed, and students must have a final complete
and satisfactory release print to receive credit for the course. Prerequisite:
FVNM 3005.
FVNM 4010
Body Language
This is a course about creating a language for what the body knows by
using sound, video and performance. It will be a production class in
which the aim is to produce work that gives voice to the body’s
moods, resistances, desires and energies. The class is grounded in a
variety of readings, referencing for example, Cartesian thinking about
the mind-body split and Kant’s work on beauty and the sublime.
Secondary sources, such as Krauss’ piece on video and narcissism
also figure into how students will approach their work. Ultimately the
goal is to produce projects in which concrete viscerality is the starting
point for a “body language” written in time, images, and space.
Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 4011
Cinema and the City
Cinema and the City is an advanced film/video production studio that
will explore methods of representing urban cosial space. The class,
through the use of a range of interpretive languages in the film and
video lexicon, will promote a praxis that expands upon those representations
of the city that have infused popular culture and contributed to the
visual representation of urban space. Whether through the classical
techniques of such films as Berlin, Symphony of City or in the contemporary
work of such filmmakers as Chantal Akerman, Jules Dassin, Krzysztof
Kieslowski, Spike Lee or Ozu, the city has provided film and video makers
with an abundant social topography. The course will promote an active
investigation of the production techniques and narrative forms that
struggle with representing an urban reality. Prerequisite: FVNM 3002.
FVNM 4025
Screenwriting
This course is designed for advanced students who wish to complete the
first draft of a feature-length screenplay during a single semester.
Combining the best elements of a script session and a writers’
workshop, students are able to chart their progress by reading their
pages to a class full of fellow writers, who will critique accordingly.
Examples of common and complex script problems are screened and analyzed.
Individual meetings are scheduled with the instructor. Prerequisite:
FVNM 3025.
FVNM 4030
Visualization and Storyboarding
This is a production class that will focus on idea development for time-based
media through the use of storyboards, treatments, location photos, sketchbooks,
and script readings. Students working in film, video, performance, and
animation will learn classical and experimental ways to negotiate these
techniques as integral parts of the production of time-based work. The
final project of this class will be a loose-leaf volume containing treatment,
storyboards, and a research scrapbook for a major work. This volume
will be used for idea development and presentation of your project to
collaborators, granting agencies, fellowship organization, and most
importantly, a record for the maker.
FVNM 4050
Basic Contact Printing
This course is designed to allow students to use the department’s
contact printer as a creative tool, as well as to train students to
complete their projects to final print. The course covers timing of
original film for color balance, notching for effects, double-pass printing,
as well as the differences in print stocks (how and why particular camera
stocks relate to print stocks). Examples of work are shown in class
and several class exercises and projects are required. Successful completion
of this course allows students to gain access to the contact printer
for use in future semesters. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010.
FVNM 4055
Optical Printing
Optical printing is a powerful tool for the manipulation of time and
image in cinema. Aspects studied in this course include: bi-packing,
double exposure, color correction, mattes, zooms, wipes, time manipulation,
color separation, and densitometry. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010.
FVNM 4060
Advanced Optical Printing
This course will explore a variety of methods, strategies, and techniques
for technical and aesthetic use of optical printing as a means of creative
expression. Time and rhythm manipulation, complex matte work, reconstruction
of color separations, color manipulation through hand processing, and
other darkroom techniques will be among topics included in the class.
Prerequisite: FVNM 4013.
FVNM 4070
Cinematography for Film and Digital Video
This is an intensive studio course for advanced students of film/video
who wish to explore the creative uses of light in their projects. Through
the examination of cinematograpic approaches across the various genres
including narrative, experimental, and documentary, students will apply
advanced techniques of lighting and composition to their work. Emphasis
will be placed on the changing role of the cinematographer in the world
of digital media.
FVNM 4210
Film Theory II
The second semester of the Film Theory course deals with selected
topics in current theory and analysis with special emphasis on feminist
film theory, studies in popular culture, and the European and American
political avant-garde. The seminar is by no means exhaustive, and avoids
being a “survey.” Consequently, many major themes are not
addressed, though they are to be regarded as equally important. Emphasis
is on the body double, i.e., the body politic and the sexual body as
both subject and subjected. Particular emphasis is placed on feminist
psychoanalytic perspectives on the gendered body subject/object and
the question of personal and cultural memory as the locus of tension
between biography and history in avant-garde film. (Each of the two
courses, FVNM 3210 and 4210, may be taken singly.)
FVNM 4220
Editing Aesthetics and Strategies
The editing strategies of several filmmakers are examined. Students
are encouraged to develop their own film constructing abilities. Vertov,
Brakhage, Hitchcock, and Hanoun are studied. Two analytical papers are
required to receive credit for this seminar.
FVNM 4225
Undergraduate Film Seminar
This course is offered primarily as a forum for discussion of students’
work. Contemporary issues and concerns which take various thematic forms
as well as practical applications of grant and résumé-writing
skills are included. Prerequisite: FVNM 2010.
FVNM 4250
Advanced Undergraduate Seminar: The Ethnographic Image
In this production seminar, we will reconsider some of the traditions,
strategies, and motivations involved in the practice of visualizing
cultures through film and video. In comparing works in differing media
and of various countries, we will question how ethnographic works reflect
or impose notions of time, space, identity, and conflict through their
montage, metaphors, and mise-en-scene. How do varying cinematic and
video techniques express a sense of place and of underlying narratives,
desires, or conflicts motivating our cultural memory and consciousness?
What are the roles of objects, characters, and ethnographic voice in
the ways we understand these differing worlds? How are varying methods
of representation contrary to, or complicit with, colonizing practices
abroad, and how might they relate to expressions of local and regional
identity within the industrial West? Designed for both advanced undergraduates
and graduates interested in developing their own projects, we will respond
to these questions by encouraging work across disciplines and media.
The course also will include readings and screenings of exceptional
works in the history and theory of cultural ethnography by Flaherty,
Gardener, Mohr, Rouch, Taussig, and Viola, as well as critiques of ethnographic
representations and their relationship to colonializing practices by
Diawara, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Alvarez, among others. Prerequisite:
FVNM 3600.
FVNM 4260
In Search of Audience: Curating Practicum for Film/Video
Who do you want to see your work and how can you make that happen? In
this course, students learn techniques for getting film and video to
audiences. In the present environment of funding cuts, it is essential
to comprehend the larger curatorial, exhibition, and distribution apparatus
surrounding film and video and learn to create opportunities for ourselves
as artists. Existing and historical approaches are examined, visiting
lecturers discuss their projects, and students get hands-on experience
through participation in one of Chicago’s many current exhibition
or distribution projects. Exhibition environments explored include traditional
theaters (mainstream venues such as multiplex theaters to “alternative”
venues such as art houses and festivals) as well as unconventional viewing
environments such as clubs, installations, or outdoor projection projects.
A group project designed by the class concludes the course.
FVNM 4830
Radical Software/Critical Artware
Radical Software, a publication which ran from 1972–76,
facilitated an exchange of ideas, media, and tools for video-makers
engaged in the early phases of video art. Currently, through distribution
and use of noncommercial art-oriented software, artists build communities
online and off. Radical Software/Critical Artware examines
new media practices of producing artware in, on, and through networks.
We will define artware broadly, including tools for video data manipulation,
authoring add-ons, attachments and plug-ins for pre-existing software,
and using code as ground material. Through screenings, readings, and
the production of artware, this course seeks to critically analyze the
power of technoseduction while actively engaging in new media arts practices.
FVNM 4850
Digital Video Editing
The convergence of video and computer technologies has resulted in a
new generation of video editing tools with an unsurpassed ability to
structure and restructure images and sound. This course gives students
the opportunity to comprehensively explore industry-standard devices
in the digital realm, bringing to bear the power and versatility of
digital nonlinear editing on their creative projects. Prerequisite:
FVNM 2805.
FVNM 4860
DVD Authoring
This course explore issues of design, interactivity, and technological
considerations in creation and distribution of media art on DVD. Students
will create, critique, and present complex interface designs utilizing
professional and consumer tools. Emphasis will be placed on designing
with the audience/user in mind, as well as options for distribution
and presentation. Prerequisite: FVNM 3805 or FVNM 4850.
FVNM 4900
Advanced Issues in Digital Video
This course provides an in-depth exploration of the sophisticated post-production
applications that are used in conjunction with the School’s higher-end
digital video editing systems. The focus of this class is on visual
techniques such as compositing, keys and mattes, image processing, 2-D
animation, 2-D painting, rotoscoping, and motion tracking. Students
whose work involves this kind of image manipulation will find the capabilities
for the applications covered in this class inspiring. Students in this
class will also pursue solutions to visual problems that would be encountered
in the professional world of post-production houses.
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