Course Catalog

Topics vary by semester

This course explores audiovisual production and video editing, not only as creative tools, but as modes of critical inquiry. It is a highly creative, hands-on course designed for students to reflect critically on their own habits of media production and reception while consolidating their audiovisual skills and digital literacy. Students will develop foundational skills in audiovisual production, from image composition to the principles of montage, video editing, sound mixing, audiovisual remix… With each new skill acquired, students will discover alternative ways of weaving criticality and reflexivity into their media practices. They will use the audiovisual medium to ask questions and produce knowledge on the social, cultural and political issues of our times. Students will be encouraged to create videographic projects shaped by their (inter)disciplinary interests and engage creatively with media linked to their other ongoing courses or final thesis. No filmmaking or editing experience required.

In Art of Screenwriting students consider the elements necessary for successful screenwriting practices, with close attention to the theory of screenwriting as influenced by other arts. In particular, a close emphasis of the course is on the art of narrative and the central role played by adaptation of novels in screenwriting practice. Character development, structure, dialogue and conflict are analyzed through exemplary scripting such as in the works of Jane Campion, Roman Polanski and others. The course culminates in a hands-on guided approach to scriptwriting by students.

This course surveys the earliest periods of cinema from its inception in the late-19th century up to its consolidation as a form of mass art by the beginning of World War II. At its point of origin,cinema was considered "an invention without a future" by its makers, but we will put this idea to test by exploring the uncanny shocks of the very first short films, through the development of visual storytelling across decades of experimentation, culminating in the extravagant, technically dazzling productions of the 1920s. From then onwards, we will investigate the late silent and early sound cinema through a global lens, making transnational discoveries on how the invention of cinema travelled alongside radical ideas at a time of political upheaval. Through readings and select primary materials, the students will learn about the contextual study of film by considering the technological, economic, aesthetic and social factors that shaped the circumstances of the films' production, exhibition and reception.