Course Catalog

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WRITING FICTION FOR TELEVISION (FM2018)

Over the past twenty years, Granada, HBO, and the BBC have been creating series such as The Singing Detective, Cracker, MI5, The Sopranos, and The Wire that are much darker and more persuasive and perverse than anything else on television or on the big screen. Students will examine these 'visual texts,' and will also outline one or two series of their own, working on individual scenes that will be dramatized in class.

WRITING FICTION FOR TELEVISION (FM2018)

Over the past twenty years, Granada, HBO, and the BBC have been creating series such as The Singing Detective, Cracker, MI5, The Sopranos, and The Wire that are much darker and more persuasive and perverse than anything else on television or on the big screen. Students will examine these 'visual texts,' and will also outline one or two series of their own, working on individual scenes that will be dramatized in class.

THE ART OF SCREENWRITING (FM2028)

In Art of Screenwriting students consider the elements necessary for successful screenwriting practices, with close attention to the theory of screenwriting as influenced by other arts. In particular, a close emphasis of the course is on the art of narrative and the central role played by adaptation of novels in screenwriting practice. Character development, structure, dialogue and conflict are analyzed through exemplary scripting such as in the works of Jane Campion, Roman Polanski and others. The course culminates in a hands-on guided approach to scriptwriting by students.

INTRO TO HISTORY OF NARRATIVE FILM I (FM2075)

Studies film history, aesthetics, and techniques of film analysis. Illustrates the basic theories of film-making with specific films of important directors such as Griffith, Eisenstein, Stroheim, Chaplin, Keaton, Murnau, Sternberg, Lubitsch, Renoir, Hawks, Ford, Welles, and Sturges.

INTRO TO HISTORY OF NARRATIVE FILM I (FM2075)

Studies film history, aesthetics, and techniques of film analysis. Illustrates the basic theories of film-making with specific films of important directors such as Griffith, Eisenstein, Stroheim, Chaplin, Keaton, Murnau, Sternberg, Lubitsch, Renoir, Hawks, Ford, Welles, and Sturges.

INTRO TO HISTORY OF NARRATIVE FILM II (FM2076)

Analyzes classical Hollywood style from the 1940s onwards, looking at the work of some of the masters of the American system including Welles, Wyler, and Hitchcock. Studies postwar Hollywood genres including: film noir, the musical, the comedy, the Western, the gangster film, and sci-fi films. Traces important directions of postwar European Art Cinema (in particular Italian Neo-Realism and the Italian and French New
Waves) and offers a brief overview of ‘new' cinemas worldwide.
Explores the important developments that have taken place in Hollywood from the 1960s through to the present covering topics such as: New Hollywood cinema, the auteur renaissance of the seventies and eighties, neo-noir in the nineties, the digital age, and contemporary cinema.

ORSON WELLES & HIS INHERITORS (FM2080)

Studies Welles' chaotic film career - his spectacular rise and fall, quest for a total cinema, exile, frustrations and triumphs, both as actor and filmmaker - and his place in American cinema. Films include: Citizen Kane, The agnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear, The Lady From Shanghai, Macbeth, The Third Man, Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, and The Trial.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK (FM2081)

Studies Hitchcock's art and its contradictions: his pessimism, his perverse sense of play, his love of manipulating an audience, his ability to produce disturbing 'fables' about our deepest anxieties and sexual malaise while working within the Hollywood system. Concentrates on the films: Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, and The Birds.

TARANTINO & HIS MANY FATHERS (FM2082)

Studies the most influential filmmaker of the past 20 years, and his quirky, exciting, bewildering narrative, 'cannibalizing' other directors to produce a highly original vision. Films include: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and films of Kubrick, Melville, Godard, and others which can be seen as influential for Tarantino's provocative art.