Making powerfully effective moving images demands an understanding of the fine art of transferring ideas, meanings, and feelings into emotionally charged visual communication. This course examines broad questions of form and content, aesthetics and meaning, and history and culture that underlie the timeless value of works fashioned by the world's master image-makers. Instruction includes lectures, discussion, and critical analysis of texts drawn from feature films, documentaries, television, and other media. Diverse possibilities presented by the cinematic art form are explored through an examination of a wide variety of productions, national cinemas, and film movements. Topics include modes of production, narrative and non-narrative forms, visual design, editing, sound, genre, ideology and critical analysis.

This course provides an introduction to the basic theory, terminology, and practice of modern picture production as applied in feature films, and films made for television and internet through developed skill sets, and teamwork in pre-production, production, and post-production processes. Topics include basic cinematography, including the operation, function and creative uses of production and post-production equipment, scriptwriting, camera operation, shot composition, lighting, sound recording and mixing, and editing.

This course is an overview of desktop non-linear video editing, including acquiring digital video and combining and editing source material to create complete digital movies. Topics include: basic editing techniques; cuts and transitions; adding and altering audio; titling, keying, and transparency; and applying filters and effects.

This course deals with concepts and production skills specific to documentary filmmaking. Included are selected national and international documentary screenings and discussions, and practical exercises from conceptualization through post-production that culminate in the production of a short documentary.

This course introduces concepts and production skills specific to narrative filmmaking, including scripting, story boarding, pre-production planning, budgeting, casting, shooting, cinematography, lighting, sound, and editing. Students write, produce, direct, and edit a personal narrative project and participate in a group narrative project. Current trends and styles in production are discussed.

This course serves as an introduction to the theory and practice of audio production by providing basic knowledge of audio equipment and production techniques used in typical radio, television, multi-media and dramatic productions, including audio consoles, various digital audio recording equipment and workstations. Students will learn the fundamentals of sound design and aesthetics, microphone use, and digital recording equipment. Students gain hands on experience recording, editing, mixing and mastering audio. Skills development focuses on announcing, basic writing, disc jockeying, program production and direction, commercial production, interviewing techniques, station operations and live and recorded audio production for digital film, television, new media and theater. Upon completion, students will have basic knowledge of applied audio concepts, production workflow, equipment functions, and audio editing software.

This course analyzes works of contemporary American cinema, examining theme and focus, industry practices, narrative presentations, selected genres, and cultural representations (gender, race, class, and sexuality). Key filmmakers and movements are emphasized.

This course surveys international cinema from the end of World War II to the present. It investigates the medium's technical, aesthetic, and theoretical developments through the examination of narrative, documentary, and experimental film. The course focuses on the historical, cultural, industrial, and economic influences that contributed to the international art form.

This is a basic introductory course in writing for the film and electronic media. Emphasis is on preparing scripts in proper formats, including fundamental technical, conceptual and stylistic issues related to writing fiction and non-fiction for informational and entertainment purposes in film and electronic media. Includes a writing evaluation component as a significant part of the course requirement.

This course provides a historical and critical survey of motion pictures from its origins in the 19th century through its development up to and including the World War II era. It will analyze a variety of national and international films from the beginning of the cinema until the end of the World War II era. The elements of film making to be considered will be their aesthetic form, economic structures, technological developments, and as social and cultural movements. Significant filmmakers in these eras will be studied for the contributions to the filmmaking process. Lectures, illustrated by screened examples of films, examine filmmaking from its very beginnings in the nineteenth century.

This course provides a historical and critical survey of motion pictures from postwar World War II up to the present with an emphasis on the contributions of postwar modernist filmmakers and those of the intervening years up to the present in the filmmaking process. Lectures, illustrated by screened examples of films from 1945 until the current century.