Film & Television

• COM FT 492: Directed Studies
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of supervising faculty and department chair
  Individual projects; opportunity for advanced students who have completed a major portion of their degree requirements to engage in-depth tutorial study with specific faculty in an area not normally covered by regular curriculum offerings.
• COM FT 493: Internship
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing, a 3.0 GPA for COM courses, completion of COM FT 201 & COM FT 310. This includes Film/TV internships through abroad programs
  Opportunity for students to gain professional experience at television and radio stations, film and video production houses, and other media institutions. Responsibilities vary. Availability depends on market needs.
• COM FT 494: Internship
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing, a 3.0 GPA for COM courses, completion of COM FT 201 & COM FT 310. This includes Film/TV internships through abroad programs
  Opportunity for students to gain professional experience at television and radio stations, film and video production houses, and other media institutions. Responsibilities vary. Availability depends on market needs.
• COM FT 500: Writing Film Criticism
  This course examines the art of film and television criticism and gives students extensive practice in writing about film and TV in a way that balances informed, insightful analysis and lively writing. Students write several film and TV reviews, each covering a different type of film or TV show, as well as a longer think piece. Students will review films currently playing in local theaters and TV shows currently available on broadcast, cable or other internet platforms, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like. Key critics discussed include James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Emily Nussbaum, Matt Zoller Seitz, Anthony Lane, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Critical Thinking
• COM FT 502: Sound Design for Film and Television
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 353.
  Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 707.
  A comprehensive technical examination of the role of sound as an emotional motivator and major storytelling component in both fiction and nonfiction films. Covers location sound recording, acoustic theory, track building, foley and dialog replacement, and mix preparation, as well as music editing and composition. Introduces a variety of postproduction pathways and technologies, including current digital innovations in the field and in audio postproduction, and provides an ongoing workshop for solving editing and track building problems.
• COM FT 504: Post production FX Editing
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 353.
  Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 707.
  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: Real World Productions
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 353; a 3.0 COM GPA
  Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 707; a 3.2 COM GPA
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 353; a 3.0 COM GPA Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 707; 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. Application only.
• COM FT 507: Television Studio Production
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 201; COM FT 201 or Instructor Consent
  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
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: FT353
  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 509: Broadcasting Horror
  
• COM FT 512: Writing Episodic Drama for Television
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 310.
  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 513: Global Queer Cinema
  
• COM FT 514: Writing the Television Pilot
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 512 or COM FT 522.
  Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 512 or COM FT 522.
  Prereq FT 512 or FT 522. "Writing the TV Drama (or dramedy) Pilot," explores the creation and development of your very own "one-hour" Television Series Pilot. Each student will pitch a concept, write a treatment, outline and pilot script. Also, you'll create a "leave behind" document, which will consist of an overview of your series, complete with character descriptions, future episode ideas and much more. We will closely examine the ingredients of a pilot script through lectures, script analyses of successful pilots, written assignments and group workshops.
• COM FT 516: Writing The Sitcom Pilot
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 512 or COM FT 522.
  Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 512 or COM FT 522.
  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 518: Media Money Trail
  Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 517.
  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
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 353.
  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: Television Studies
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 303.
  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 521: Promoting Your Content Online
  The course teaches students how to market their creative content online. Students will learn how to identify targeted marketing and distribution platforms for new websites, pilots, video channels and series, blogs, etc. and how to use social media to find an audience, generate buzz and identify potential funding sources. Students will also learn practical entrepreneurial tools needed to organize their creative work as a business venture.
• COM FT 522: Writing Television Situation Comedy Scripts
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 310.
  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 523: American Cinema to 1960
  This course offers a survey of American film history from the beginnings to 1960. The course is intended to help students familiarize themselves with key works of American film history from the beginnings to 1960. As it is impossible to cover this period comprehensively, the course represents a selection of major topics and artists that is supposed to provide students with a basic framework for future studies in American film. *Undergrad pre-req: FT250