Film Studies Courses

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FILM - Film Studies Courses

FILM-110: Making Sense of Movies,And Aesthetics (Credits: 4)

This course examines the formal elements of film and its history, from the earliest experiments in motion photography through the present. Students will learn the terminology and concepts of film analysis (mise-en-scene, montage, cinematography, etc.) in the context of film's evolution across the twentieth century. Films may include profanity, violence, and/or sexually explicit images. (WCore: WCFAH, RE)

FILM-2045: Commercial Film Production (Credits: 4)

Exchange Program SLCC

FILM-210: (Un)American Cinema (Credits: 4)

This course seeks to understand American film history in light of one decisive set of events: the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on communism in the film industry and the resulting industry blacklist. These events extended from 1947 until the late 1950s, which is obviously a small portion of American cinema history. We will situate them in relation to a broader historical context. For instance, the blacklist is incomprehensible without some sense of how the Hollywood studio system operated and the threat it was under in the late forties. And if the economic conditions in Hollywood played a decisive role in the blacklist, they continue to determine the political and aesthetic character of American movies to this day. We will treat the blacklist as a particularly vivid convergence of the factors that have shaped American cinema from the beginning, including the circumstances of international capitalism (and communism), the political beliefs and artistic aspirations of particular filmmakers, and the struggle between nativism and cosmopolitanism in American culture as a whole and in American cinema in particular. (WCore: WCFAH, RE)

FILM-212: Film Genres (Credits: 4)

This course explores the history, procedures, and consequences of organizing popular films into distinct "genres" (i.e. Western, Sci-Fi, Fantasy). The course will consider such questions as how genres get established, how we know that a film falls into a particular genre, how genres organize audience expectations, and how films may either meet or upset those expectations. (WCore: WCFAH)

FILM-220: Transnational Cinema (Credits: 4)

Because it is generally directed at a mass audience and because it has played a founding role in modern societies' ways of representing themselves and educating (or indoctrinating) their citizens, cinema is even more visibly and emphatically political than other art forms. In this course, we will study three "cases" in the history of world cinema in an effort to get some understanding of how films operate on and in history. We will conceive "history" not as a progression of events through time but rather as a series of struggles among individuals and groups within particular societies. Because resistance to oppression is an explicit goal of the films we will study, we will focus on how cinema addresses sites of solidarity and oppression like ethnicities, tribal structures, religion communities, and genders and modes of sexual expression and practice.(WCore: WCFAH, DE)

FILM-300: Special Topics in Film (Credits: 1 to 4)

This is the general designation for film electives, which explore specific elements of film, film history, and interdisciplinary film studies. Courses include: Film Theory, Cinematography and Editing, National Cinemas, Documentary Film, Sociology of Popular Culture, Screenwriting, Film Genres, Narrative and Adaptation, and Race in Film.

FILM-310: Humans, Monsters and Things In-Between (Credits: 4)

Many critics regard D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915) as the single most important achievement in early narrative cinema. In addition to being a magnificent movie, The Birth of a Nation is a virulently racist one: the black people in the film are less "human" than the white characters are. These differences are absolutely essential to the narrative, and they are, sadly, part of the film's achievement. This course begins with the idea that, at least in films, the category "human" is very complex. It explores some of the ways that certain films have depicted the "humanness" of people, animals, and even objects. It also considers how the inhuman has operated in cinema-for example, in films that depict monsters. As the example above shows, at the heart of these questions are the issues that shape identity in everyday human experience: race, gender, sexuality, and bodily constitution (body type, sex role conformity, "ability," etc.).

FILM-320: Seeing Time: Science/Fiction & Film (Credits: 4)

This class will explore the nature of cinema as a visual medium. How do images mean? What problems of interpretation are raised by images? What insights are available exclusively through images, and what are the limitations of images? How is a moving image different from a still one? How have historical and technological factors (including the emergence of digital culture) effected our consumption of moving images? In order to answer these questions, we will read closely selected theoreticians of images and film, such as Plato, Walter Benjamin, C.S. Peirce, Andre Bazin, and others. We will analyze how selected films exemplify answers to these questions, but also how selected films such as Blowup and Mulholland Drive attempt to understand their own nature as visual artifacts. The class, therefore, will also address the issue of meta-cinema, cinema about cinema. Additionally, we will focus on films portraying science, science fiction, and fiction portrayals of time travel, the passage of time, and philosophical understandings of time as an experience, conceptual construct, and/or scientific fourth dimension. Films may include profanity, violence, and/or sexually explicit images.

FILM-345: Video Production (Credits: 4)

Covers the basics of video production and editing. Topics include storyboarding, camera operation, sound, lighting and editing, as well as a wide variety of film and video genres including narrative, documentary and experimental.

FILM-378: Podcasting (Credits: 4)

As a disruptive technology, podcasts have reinvented the way we listen. While washing the dishes, walking the dog, and commuting we listen to podcasts on comedy, music, horror, news, knitting, murder, boating, walking, eating, film, TV, and video games. The topics for podcasts are endless and, so it appears, is our insatiable hunger for them! In this course we will spend our time listening and creating podcasts. We will explore different genres such as political podcasts and podguides and different formats such as video podcasts. The goals for this course include understanding audio storytelling, ethics, and diversity in podcasting through a transgender BIPOC-inclusive feminist approach that seeks to celebrate? lived experiences. You will learn basic broadcasting skills such as writing, research, interviewing, and editing. The projects for this course will involve podcasting about Salt Lake City, helping you develop an understanding of the historical and current impact of sex and gender on societies, individuals, and institutions in Salt Lake City and the greater Utah area. This requires that during class time we meet outside of campus. Students are required to have a smart phone or a camera with the capacity to record both sound and video. This course fulfills the Language & Media requirement for LMW majors.

FILM-380: Video Game Culture (Credits: 4)

Video games have emerged in the 21st century as one of the most-watched spectator sports. Pro-gamers compete for hundred-thousand-dollar prizes, and they receive sponsorships that can be worth millions. But to view the video game medium as only an economic force denies the complicated nature of gaming. In popular culture, gaming is the domain of nerdy teenagers, but video game conventions demonstrate that the average player is, well, everyone. This course focuses on the critical analysis of social issues in video games. Class time will be split between playing across different video game genres (such as role-playing, action-adventure, life simulation, strategy, sports, music, and literary hypertexts) and participating in current academic debates around gaming and game studies. Class discussions will engage with the ludic and narrative elements of game theory from an interdisciplinary perspective that considers video games as cultural artifacts, economic powerhouses, educational tools, drivers of technological innovation and works of art.? This course fulfills the Language & Media requirement for LMW majors.

FILM-401: Directed Studies (Credits: 1 to 4)

A tutorial-based course used only for student- initiated proposals for intensive individual study of topics not otherwise offered in the Film Studies Program. Requires consent of instructor and school dean. This course is repeatable for credit.

FILM-440: Internship (Credits: 1 to 8)

Offers students the opportunity to integrate classroom knowledge with practical experience. Students will be graded on assigned coursework and evaluation by their site supervisor. Prerequisites: 60 college credits completed (for transfer students at least 15 hours competed at Westminster or permission of instructor), minimum 2.5 GPA, and consent of faculty advisor and Career Center internship coordinator. Interns will work for 42 hours per each registered credit. This course is repeatable for credit. Some majors limit how many internship credits may count towards the major, consult your faculty advisor. REGISTRATION NOTE: Registration for internships is initiated through the Career Center website and is finalized upon completion of required paperwork and approvals. More info: 801-832-2590 https://westminstercollege.edu/student-life/career -center/internships.html