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 516: Writing The Sitcom Pilot
  Prereq FT 522 or FT512. Got a funny idea for a show? Let's see if it has legs. In "Writing the Comedy Pilot," students will develop an original concept for their own half-hour, TV comedy series. This includes pitching their idea, writing a beat sheet, an outline and the pilot script. We will also create a "leave behind" pitching document that will include an overview of your series, character bios, loglines for future episodes and much more. We'll screen pilot episodes, read produced pilot scripts and see why some worked and some didn't. Then we'll do some other things.
• 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 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.
• COM FT 547: Avant Garde Cinema
  A survey of global avant-garde film and experimental media from the 1920s to the present. We will explore film, video, and digital video as mediums of unadulterated artistic expression resulting in daring, experimental forms and controversial contents. The course covers 1920s and early 30s high modernist cinema of "isms" (Dadaism, Surrealism, Impressionism), Transatlantic and international currents after World War Two including trance film, underground film, structuralism, and "psychedelic expanded cinema of split and multiscreen films (Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Michael Snow, Peter Kubelka, Rudy Burckhardt), 1970s video art including feminist and gay/lesbian filmmakers, X-rated Europeans (Kren and the Vienna Secessionists) and international "trash" cinema auteurs, the digital video avant-garde, masters of found footage cinema, queer digital media, recent transnational trends. Disclaimer: Some of the films shown in this course contain sexually explicit and graphic bodily acts.
• COM FT 552: Special Topics
  Special Topics for Fall 2020 include:FT 552 A1: Producing Writing the Short (Weinberg) Wed 2:30-5:15 pre-req FT 310; FT 552 C1 Crowdfunding & Distribution (Geller) Wed 2:30-5:15 Pre-req COM FT201. Recommended that students bring a project in script phase, in production, or has been produced; FT 552 D1 Researching Creative Projects (Motwani) Fri 11:15-2:00 Media Venture grads ONLY
• COM FT 553: Special Topics
  n/a
• COM FT 554: Special Topics
  Special Topics for Fall 2020 include: FT 554 A1 Broadcast Horror (Jaramillo) Mon, Wed 4:30-6:15 Pre-req FT/CI 303 (this course fulfills the tv studies requirement); FT 554 B1 Transmedia Adaptation Tues 3:30-6:15 Pre-req FT/CI 303 (this course fulfills the tv studies requirement); FT 554 C1 Global Queer Cinema (Grundmann) Thur 3:30-7:15 pre-req FT250/CI202 (this course fulfills the foreign cinema requirement); FT 554 D1 International Thriller (Decker) Tues 12:30-3:15 Thurs 1:30-3:15 (this course fulfills the foreign cinema requirement).
• COM FT 555: The Narrative Documentary Practicum
  This practicum, designed for advanced film and television production students, focuses on the highly specialized filmmaking techniques used for the narrative documentary; that is, character-driven films about real people. The course also explores this tradition's rich legacy: from the Russians of the 1920s, through the CV movement of the 1960s, and on to the present day host of new films spawned by digital filmmaking technology.Course Prerequisites: FT 402 B+ or Better. Or by permission of Instructor.
• COM FT 558: American Independent Film?Part 3 Recent and Contemporary Work
  The course comprises one unit of a four-semester survey (each part of which is free-standing and may be taken separately and independently of each other and in any order, with no prerequisites) of the major achievements of the most important artistic movement of the last sixty years in American film--the independent feature filmmaking movement, in which American narrative filmmakers broke away from the financial, bureaucratic, and (most importantly) imaginative influence of Hollywood values and entertainment story-telling methods to create the most important works in American film--a series of generally low-tech, low-budget, DIY, personal-expression films, made and distributed more or less outside the mainstream exhibition system. This section of the survey focuses on the third generation of American independent feature filmmaking in the period running from approximately 2000 to the present. Since women have made some of the best and most important works in this area, as many female filmmakers as possible are being included. Offered in the fall of even numbered years.
• COM FT 559: American Independent Film-Part 4 Mumblecore, the Voices of a Generation
  The course comprises one unit of a four-semester survey (each part of which is free-standing and may be taken separately and independently of each other and in any order, with no prerequisites) of the major achievements of the most important artistic movement of the last sixty years in American film--the independent feature filmmaking movement, in which American narrative filmmakers broke away from the financial, bureaucratic, and (most importantly) imaginative influence of Hollywood values and entertainment story-telling methods to create the most important works in American film--a series of generally low-tech, low-budget, personal-expression films, made and distributed more or less outside the system. This section of the survey focuses on the younger generation of contemporary American independent feature filmmakers. The past fifteen years have seen the birth and development of a new kind of ultra-low-budget DIY filmmaking that has been referred to by reviewers as "mumblecore." Almost all of these works have been created by filmmakers in their 20s and 30s who themselves write, shoot, edit, and often act in their own films, with other young non-professional actors playing the other roles. The result is a series of films that have their finger on the pulse of contemporary sexual and social mores and communicate what it is to be young, restless, eager, and uncertain in the world in which we actually live. Since women have made some of the best and most important works in this area, as many female filmmakers as possible are being included. Offered in the spring of odd numbered years.
• COM FT 560: The Documentary
  Surveys the history of the documentary and the changes brought about by the advent of television. Examines the outlook for the documentary idea in national and international markets. Periodic highlighting of special areas such as the portrayal of war, historical events, drama-documentary, and propaganda. Students develop critical and professional skills. Lectures, screenings, discussions.
• COM FT 563: French New Wave
  Studies the great 1960s movement in filmmaking that has stayed forever fresh and challenging and has influenced all filmmaking since. The class will view and discuss films of Resnais, Malle, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Varda, and others. We will consider the directors' innovative production practices and film styles, their attitude to their times and to life in general, and what their films finally achieve as works of art. We will talk about this movement's influence and what has developed out of it. Readings will include writings by the filmmakers, many of whom were prolific as film critics and theorists.
• COM FT 565: Motion Picture Editing
  Given its central role in the filmmaking process, examining the way films are edited can reveal a lot about the inner workings of film and help students understand the art of filmmaking. Editing scenes from films, television shows, and other material in a classroom setting and then examining different versions of those scenes can help students become better editors and will help them evaluate/critique their future film and television work. The course is designed for students who have edited a number of exercises and films in previous classes. It provides an opportunity for students to develop advanced editing skills, while learning advanced digital editing techniques on the Avid Media Composer. This is an advanced editing class, and not a course on how to use Avid. By editing scenes from episodic television shows, and other professionally shot footage, students will learn how to select (and reject) material, where and when to cut, how to create pace, how to control what the audience sees and does not see, how to add music and effects to increase the emotional content, and how to use visual effects to enhance the impact of the material.

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