Introduction to Film, Television, and Digital Cinema

Course Overview

This course is an introduction to film, television, and streaming media studies and is designed to help students develop the fundamental skill of close reading by introducing them to the elements and techniques that comprise the art of filmmaking and motion picture production.

The critical, argumentative, and written skills gained in this course are those assumed to be used in upper-level film and media studies courses as well as in other critical engagements with the world of media. Through a study of perceptual principles, photography, sound, and the moving image, students will learn about the underlying forms, principles and processes of media production.

This course will introduce students with little or no previous knowledge of video and film to basic technical and aesthetic concepts in motion picture production. Areas of study will include composition, image design, light and optics, aesthetics and technology of still and motion picture photography, the stages of production, film and video cameras, film stocks and video formats, lenses, lighting, sound design, sound recording, basic approaches to editing and postproduction. Through screenings, discussion, and related assignments students will develop a critical vocabulary and an analytical perspective that will provide them with the background necessary to pursue further film, television, and web/streaming media studies and production.