Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• COM FT 503: TV to Tablets
  This course examines how film and television companies are racing to catch, keep pace with, and monetize emerging new technology. The course provides students with an overview of how leading film and TV brands have evolved their creative, strategic, and content distribution processes to sustain competetive value and to reap the monetary and reach benefits of new distribution platforms.
• COM FT 504: Post production FX Editing
  This course teaches all aspects of video post production including window dubbing, rough cuts, A/B editing, non-linear editing, digital graphics, digital sound, and the integration of all of these processes and technologies that apply to the postproduction completion of video projects. Familiarity with Macintosh computers is desirable. Experience with video timecode editing is a necessity.
• COM FT 505: Television Production Hothouse
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 325 and COM FT 353; a 3.0 COM GPA Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 707 and COM FT 727; a 3.2 COM GPA This is a class that operates as a student-run, client-driven production company. Projects include PSA's and web videos for local, national, and international non- profits. GPA of 3.0 or higher. 4 credits only.
• COM FT 506: Digital Game St
  
• COM FT 507: Television Studio Production
  Course presents the requisite strategies, processes, technology, and skills training to successfully create live multi-camera productions. Emphasizes the roles and responsibilities of the director and producer. Intended outcome is for students to demonstrate proficiency in the academic, practical, and professional components established for the course. 4 cr, either sem.
• COM FT 508: Line Producing for Undergrads
  Any film- even a very short one- requires the making of thousands of decisions. How long do we shoot? How many mouths do we feed? How much will the props cost? This course offers systems for arriving at intelligent answers to these myriad questions. In covering logistics of getting a media production made, the course addressed how to catalog all the practical considerations that go into a production, how to schedule a shoot, how to budget a production and how to plan for distribution of the final product.
• COM FT 510: Social Activism Documentary
  This course explores how documentary can be used as a tool for social change. A hybrid of studies and production, the class will be dually-devoted to looking at films that have successfully instigated change (social, corporate, political, etc.), and making socially-conscious, activism oriented films that tell stories about important issues in the local Boston community. It will take a three-pronged approach towards these objectives: 1. Documentary filmmaking techniques and practices 2. Social activism documentary theory and application 3. Local activism and community-based learning within the Boston community
• COM FT 512: Writing Episodic Drama for Television
  Deals with the process and techniques of writing a dramatic series for commercial network and cable television. Students will select a current prime-time drama, develop A, B, and (possibly) C stories for an episode, and complete a Writer's Draft and polished First Draft, suitable for a Writer Portfolio. Lectures will include the life of a working television writer, one-hour story, structure, genres, and character development. We will view and analyze TV series from the past and present, and focus on proper drama script format, character development and voice.
• COM FT 514: Writing the Television Pilot
  Prereq FT 512 or FT 522. Explores the development and creation of the Television Series Pilot. Each student will pitch a concept, write a treatment and a finished pilot script for an original series, either comedy or drama. Emphasis on premise, story structure, characterization and originality. Lectures, screenings, script readings, written assignments and critiques. 4 cr. 2nd sem.
• COM FT 516: Writing The Sitcom Pilot
  Students will develop an original concept for their own TV situation comedy series. This includes pitching their idea, creating characters and submitting a beat sheet and outline for workshop review. We will also create a "leave behind" pitching bible that will include character bios and loglines for future episodes, among other items. Once the concept and characters are sufficiently fleshed out, the process of writing the pilot will begin. Each student will complete a first draft of his/her pilot.
• COM FT 517: Television Management
  This course will examine current management and leadership issues facing television executives. Research, content development, revenue models, consolidation, regulatory restrictions, distribution and ethical considerations are explored using lectures, readings/screenings, case studies, and discussion. 4 cr. Fall/spring
• COM FT 518: Media Money Trail
  This course examines the critical financial and strategic challenges that businesses face whether they are in start-up, expansion, or exit mode. Students will use case studies to delve into the lives of the founders and CEOs of some of the world's most innovative and enduring brands and industry game-changers. We'll delve into each company's business model(s) and learn why some evolve to become industry gold standards while others fail.
• COM FT 519: Storyboarding
  Storyboards are essentially ʻdirecting on paper.ʼ They are the blueprint for live action or animation projects. This fun yet in-depth course teaches the fundamental skills needed to create dynamic storyboards and animatics (moving storyboards), skills that are crucial for filmmakers 2D & 3D animators and motion graphic designers. Storyboard Artists must think like a director, cinematographer storyteller and artist, yet you donʼt need to be any of those to take this course. Through progressive lessons youʼll learn visual storytelling, scene composition, timing, and transitions, camera angles, and cinema-graphic language. We cover basic drawing with Adobe Animate CC, color, perspective, character design, acting, and action poses. Youʼll complete numerous projects for your portfolio and demo reel.
• COM FT 520: TV Theory and Criticism
  As an omnipresent site of entertainment and information, "reality" and fantasy, "quality" and "trash," and commerce and the public interest, television requires an active, critical analysis of its texts, uses, and production of meaning. Students in this class will engage in such analysis, confronting television as a rich and contradictory site of entertainment, culture, politics, ideology, and signs. This discussion driven seminar sets aside evaluative considerations of TV in favor of theoretical and critical approaches that challenge widespread assumptions about the medium and expand our understanding of its role in our lives. These approaches, which constitute some of the dominant frameworks in Television Studies, include analyses of culture, industry, narrative, genre, images and sounds, liveness, and the television schedule. This course fulfills the additional TV Studies course requirement. Pre-req: FT303.
• COM FT 522: Writing Television Situation Comedy Scripts
  Intense writing workshop learning how to write professional sitcom scripts. Elements of character, dramatic story structure, how comedy is created, how scenes build and progress a story, formal story outlines, dialogue, the business of sitcom writing, pitching, arc, comedic premise are analyzed. The class becomes a sitcom writing team for a current hit series and writes an original class spec script to understand the process of group writing employed on most sitcoms. Also, students write their own personal spec scripts with individual conferences with the professor.
• COM FT 525: Creative Producing II
  Course takes the student through the process of creating a fictional program or film. The course covers comedy and drame series and movies-of -the week from development through production and post-production. The student learns the complexities of the industry, the layers of decision makers to be dealt with, the place of agents, the nature of negotiation, and the fundamentals of hiring crews, scheduling and budgeting. 4cr, 2nd sem.
• COM FT 526: Directing
  Students learn all aspects of directing, with particular emphasis given to script analysis and working with actors. The director's involvement in blocking action, composing shots, managing the production process and editing are also covered. Acting experience is helpful but not required.
• COM FT 529: Michael Haneke
  
• COM FT 536: Film Theory and Criticism
  An introduction to classical and contemporary film and media theory. Topics include montage theory, realism, structuralism, post-structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and cultural studies. The course includes screenings of films that have contributed to critical debate and those that challenge theoretical presuppositions.
• COM FT 544: Documentary Production
  This course is designed to develop skills necessary for producing long-form documentaries. There is an emphasis on exploring new, more engaging forms of storytelling and a broad range of stylistic approaches. It covers the entire process: finding a topic, developing a story structure, conceiving a style, shooting, editing, and post-production. Students develop their own ideas and form small groups to produce them.

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