Film and Media Studies

In recent decades, film festivals have become important venues for generating international audiences by simultaneously fostering aesthetic communities and creating marketing opportunities. This course considers the purpose and function of the film festival by examining the singularly influential festivals of Cannes. We will read about the culture, politics, and commerce of the festival, and compare Official Selection films with more the more unorthodox choices of the parallel sections: A Certain Regard and Directors’ Fortnight. Meets 5x during the semester.Required for students participating in the Cannes Study Abroad. Open to all.

Area: Humanities

1968 was a year of protest and revolution around the globe, and a new audience of youthful cinephiles was hungry for movies that reflected the changing political and cultural landscape. The films of 1968 rose to the challenge, comprising a remarkable document of the times that collectively upended cinematic traditions and old ways of viewing with bold new forms and content. This course examines those cinematic visions—from classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Once Upon a Time in the West and Night of the Living Dead to influential groundbreakers like John Cassevetes’ Faces, Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise and Lindsay Anderson’s If . . . –looking closely at individual films and examining both their contemporary contexts and their relevance today. Films will be viewed and discussed in class.

Area: Humanities

This is a series of 3 workshops.1. ACTORS’ HOMEWORK & CAMERA AS OBSERVER~Students will discuss and experiment with different methods of preparing for a role. Trying different methods, feel what works for them. We will work on short scenes and have an open discussion about goals, believability, emotional fatigue, distractions of the filming process. ~On the Sound Stage working in front of the camera: ~show how the camera watches performers’ thoughts. ~differences between working in front of a camera and playing to a live audience. ~Shooting: coverage continuity eye lines & marks blocking & restricted movement 2. AUDITIONS AND CASTING: ~Students will be given a variety of scripts to audition for. ~Discussion of casting; from actors’, directors’ and casting directors’ perspectives. ~How others perceive you- an exercise in diplomacy and self awareness. ~Preparing for an audition. both cold and rehearsed. ~Improv during auditions. ~Memorization (quick!) for auditions. ~We will rehearse and film auditions. ~Review and analyze audition videos.3. ACTORS DIRECTING DIRECTORS. Working in groups and/or pairs, students will explore what kinds of direction works for them and for others. Students will have an open discussion as to what they need to hear from their director. This will be a class where it is safe to learn what does and doesn’t work when communicating with actors- from the actors’ perspective. The goal is not to deliver a professional performance in the class, but to explore how it feels to be directed.

Area: Humanities

This course explores the fundamentals of film analysis and encourages students to embark on an exploration of the first half of our first century of movies. It teaches the basic elements of film form, as well as their use in films across the globe from the turn of the twentieth century through the start of World War II. Movements discussed include the silent comedy of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd, moody German Expressionism, the playful anarchy of Surrealism, the fundamentals of editing with Soviet Montage, the beauty of French poetic realism, the rule-breaking of Pre-Production Code cinema, the work of the young Alfred Hitchcock, and, of course, highlights of classical Hollywood filmmaking. $50 lab fee.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Introduction to Cinema provides an overview of American and international cinema from thepost World War II era to the present. Through lectures and discussion, weekly screenings, andintensive visual analysis of individual films, we will explore the aesthetic, cultural, political, andeconomic forces that have shaped the art and industry of film over the past 70 years. Regularquizzes, writing assignments, class participation required. Mandatory film screenings. Lab Fee $50.

Area: Humanities

This course is a study of the visual language used to create a moving picture. Through screenings and discussion of films, videos, and related readings, students will develop a visual critical facility and will demonstrate this facility in a few response papers to screenings and video projects. The course will focus on image construction, including composition, framing, movement inside the frame and use of light as well as use of sound. Students will learn to be attentive to rhythm and tempo in picture editing and sound. In-class video assignments included, in which students will work in small groups of three. Lab fee: $100

Area: Humanities

Through the analysis of narrative films, short fiction, myths, fairy tales, and ghost stories, and through the workshopping of their own creative writing, students will explore the art and science of "a good story well told." The course will offer an introduction to dramatic and visual storytelling, and is an essential primer for upper-level screenwriting. Lab fee $50.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course introduces students to basic considerations of shooting 16mm film. Through lectures and practice, the course approaches the basics of light meter readings, basic camera operations and shot composition. The course also highlights specific readings from classical film theory to augment weekly shooting exercises. Each week students, working in groups, shoot film exercises, providing a general overview of film production. For the final project, each group shoots and edits (physical edits) a short (3-5 minutes) film on 16mm black and white reversal film stock. Lab fee: $200

Area: Humanities

This course introduces students to the world of digital filmmaking. Through screenings, production assignments, and in-class labs, students will develop proficiency in digital cameras, sound recording devices, and software. Students will work individually and in groups to produce several video projects. For their final projects students will pitch an idea and develop a more complex film. Lab fee: $100

Area: Humanities

This mini-course will offer an introduction to the basics of film analysis through a survey of films starring the legendary Humphrey Bogart. Short weekly written responses. No prior experience in film studies required; non-majors welcome. This one-credit course will meet September 3, 10, 17, 24, and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.

Area: Humanities

This mini-course will offer an introduction to the basics of film analysis through a survey of coming of age films. Short weekly written responses, in-class screenings, and emphasis on discussion over lecture. No prior experience in film studies required. This one-credit course will meet September 5, 12, 19, 26, and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.

Area: Humanities

This mini-course will explore the role of place in film; location not merely as setting, but as character, condition, mode of thought. Real and imagined, found and constructed worlds will be considered. Are all cinematic worlds virtual? In-class screenings and an emphasis on discussion over lecture. This 1-credit course will be graded Pass/Fail. Perfect attendance required. Class meets September 19, 26, October 3, 10.

Area: Humanities

This mini-course will explore how cinema makes the invisible visible; how image and audio can reveal not only cultures and practices "invisible" to the mainstream, but also nuance and dimension in a world we only imagine we already see and hear. The camera is itself, in Pater's words, the "sudden light [that] that transfigures a trivial thing.” Fiction, nonfiction, and experimental films will be considered. In-class screenings and an emphasis on discussion over lecture. Four short written responses. Perfect attendance required.

Area: Humanities

An introduction to the basics of film analysis, through the work of contemporary American film and television director David Lynch. Though essentially cinematic, Lynch’s mysterious, dreamlike style, as evidenced by movies like Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, invites a multitude of entry points for discourse. Short weekly written responses, in-class screenings, and emphasis on discussion over lecture. No prior experience in film studies required.

Area: Humanities

An introduction to the basics of film analysis, focusing on the work of the "Master of Suspense," Alfred Hitchcock. Short weekly written responses, in-class screenings, and emphasis on discussion over lecture. No prior experience in film studies required. This one-credit course will meet on Sept. 21, Sept. 28, Oct. 5, and Oct. 12 and will be graded pass/fail.

Area: Humanities

In this introductory course, students will create short films using digital camera equipment, sound recording devices and the film editing software program, PremierePro. We will watch a variety of films in class; hold readings and discussions based on assigned text, take technical workshops on sound, lighting and hold a short workshop on 16mm film. We will study the history of filmmaking, with a strong focus on the avant-garde and experimental genres. We will also learn about current movements and trends that have developed throughout the world and have the opportunity to meet with Baltimore filmmakers in class. Students will finish the course with a greater understanding of the lineage of cinema and will have learned a range of techniques to create, experiment and develop their own language of visual storytelling. We will discuss, engage, explore and most of all have fun! No prior experience with film or video required.

Area: Humanities

David Lynch once said "Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual." This course is dedicated to challenging young filmmakers to conceptualize sound as sculpture and mine the evocative potential of sonic arts. Students will learn and create with a variety of modular synthesizers, digital recorders, and samplers. We will listen to a diverse spectrum of audio content such as musique concrète, plunderphonics, sound collage, and sound design for radio and cinema. Throughout the semester students will create several “imageless films.” In the final month of the semester, students will choose one sound project to refine and incorporate moving image. $100 Lab Fee.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.150 OR AS.061.152

Area: Humanities

In this course students will consider variations of the personal essay film, wherein filmmakers explore their own experiences, both real and imagined. These films constitute dialogues between filmmaker and world using subjective approaches, including but not limited to first person narration. Students will make a short (4-6 minutes) 16mm film from original and possibly archival footage; their own filmic essays based upon personal experiences. We will look at the works of several essay filmmakers including Ross McElwee, Jean Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Su Friedrich.

Area: Humanities

In this course we will explore the basic principles of visual storytelling in narrative film as they apply to the design, creation, and revision of the screenplay. Specifically, we will focus on learning the craft of screenwriting — strategies, processes, and philosophies that writers can develop, practice, and rely upon as they progress through a series of screenwriting exercises and write three short screenplays, which will be critiqued in-class during weekly table reads and with the Instructor (one-on-one) during office hours. Select professional screenplays will be read and analyzed — and clips from select films viewed — to further explore what works well on the page, and how it translates to working well onscreen. Final Draft screenwriting software is required; a FREE 18-week trial will be made available for all students who don’t already have Final Draft.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Each student shoots an essay film (16mm color and/or black and white) written either in first person or third person, or perhaps, both. The third person essay incorporates the ideas of various authors while the first person film is written chiefly from personal experience. Each film should run between 4-8 minutes. Lab Fee: $200. This course satisfies the Intermediate Film Production requirement.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.150

Area: Humanities

A compelling documentary begins with a compelling idea. (The term “documentary," for our purposes, resists categorization.) But by the time that documentary is completed, the initial idea has likely gone through a radical andrigorous exploration. The initial idea may emerge from a sudden thought, a chance encounter. It is the moment when a constellation begins to form. The final driving idea behind a documentary may bear little resemblance to that first thought. We will begin with each of your ideas, perhaps, little more than a vague feeling. The painter, Paul Klee, wrote that “drawing is taking a line for a walk." In this course we will take each of your ideas for a walk, imagining why and how the idea might be realized. The why and the how will involve imaginative thinking, seeking additional ideas that coalesce with that first thought. In this way we begin to assemble the constellation that is your idea. To some degree we are less concerned with the initial idea than the subsequent ideas it suggests. The process may involve archival image research, readings, your own writing, listening to music and sounds, and sometimes, just letting your idea wander off on its own. Our goal is to experience the growth of an idea into an articulated intention. That intention is then expressed through a plan incorporating visual style, sound design, and, if appropriate, text. There is no production requirement for this course. There is no requirement of film or video experience. You are required to bring with you an idea that has found you. The point of all of this is for each of you to engage, on a deep and thoughtful level, with an idea that has asked for your help.

This course will explore how race and ethnicity have been represented in American film from the early 20th century to the present. Through in-class screenings, open discussion, and short, analytical written responses, students will learn the basics of film analysis and improve their critical thinking skills. No prior experience in film studies required.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

For many, the entertainment business is alluring. For all, it's pretty confusing. Demystifying the Entertainment Business is a two-week online course that offers students insight into: behind-the-camera careers in the field (specifically writing, directing, producing, and developing); how to best prepare for those careers; and how to break into the industry once graduation finally comes. Students should be prepared to write and read scripts, offer feedback to their fellow students, shoot and edit videos, and create career goal maps and resumes. (Note: some level of basic shooting and video editing acumen will be necessary, as a short film deliverable will be required for successful course completion.) By the end of the course students will understated the basic mechanics of the entertainment industry and where they might like to fall within it, and they will walk away with a complete short film they've written and directed.

Area: Humanities

This course explores the exchange of ideas and techniques between literary modernism and modernist cinema: how Virginia Woolf’s writings on the cinema connect with her use of shifting points-of-view as literary devices, how James Joyce influenced the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and how Eisenstein in turn influenced the American novelist John Dos Passos, how Franz Kafka's frequent trips to the movies reflect in his fiction, and how artists ventured broadly to develop experimental languages for expressing the new speeds and scales of modern life. Additional texts will be drawn from novels, essays, poems, and films from Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Anita Loos, Andrei Bely, Dziga Vertov, Gertrude Stein, Louis Aragon, and René Clair. The course fulfills the writing intensive requirement and involves a series of essays on literature and cinema from a critical perspective.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Students will produce several animations using hand-made techniques, including drawinganimation, paper puppets and stop-motion. Screenings and readings will provide a historical and conceptual context to the exploration of animation as an experimental technique within both narrative and non-narrative works.

Area: Humanities

A survey of silent era masterpieces. From Murnau's horror film Nosferatu to Keaton's slapstick comedy Sherlock Jr to Dreyer's great tragedy The Passion of Joan of Arc, these are films of exceptional beauty and artistry. Chaplin, Eisenstein, von Sternberg, and others also considered. Recommended course background: AS.061.140 or AS.061.141 or AS.061.145. Lab Fee: $50. Counts toward 200-Level critical studies requirement.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This class will guide students through the process of producing an independent film in the United States. The chronology of lectures and coursework will follow the lifeline of a project, from conception through financing and development, production, postproduction, marketing, and exhibition. Students will learn how to package and pitch projects, budget and schedule a screenplay, develop a financing plan, supervise production and post-production, and mount a viable festival and distribution strategy.Lab Fee: $40

This course provides an introduction to the critical analysis of popular culture through the major theoretical paradigms of media and cultural theory. The teaching method uses a combination of media studies and sociology to explore popular culture and is designed to encourage students to become more active critics. The course presents a range of media from contemporary popular music to film and television. Smaller subjects include the teen "pop" love song, the politics of representation, and the forming of subcultures.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Law and economics shape the movie business. This course will survey the legal doctrine and financial concepts of film production and distribution, providing both an overview of one particular industry (i.e., Hollywood) as well as an introduction to fundamental principles applicable to any industry. $40 Lab fee

Area: Humanities

A workshop that focuses on writing critical and analytical essays about movies recent and classic. Students will write progressively longer and more complex essays– submitting working drafts and making revisions– and participate in critiques and discussions of one another’s writings. Fulfills Film and Media Studies expository writing requirement. Lab Fee: $50

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

An introduction to the basics of film analysis through a survey of American coming of age films from the mid 20th century to the present. Attention to questions of race, class, and gender. A variety of genres considered. No prior experience in film studies required. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Each student will write regular film responses, give an oral presentation, and write a short essay, 8-10pp., with a revision.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

An exploration of the major films and directors of the French New Wave that is also designed to help students consolidate their skills in the analysis of film. The course will examine the origins of the French New Wave, looking at the directors as critics and as passionate film fans, along with the institutional and historical context of the films. It will also ask how the French New Wave changed the process of filmmaking, and transformed the way we think about the work of the director--inspiring more vocations in filmmaking than any other movement in cinema history. Film screenings T 7:30-10:00PM. $40 lab fee.

In this production course, students will create multiple video projects that reflect the representation of dreams, psychosis, and altered states in cinema. We will screen and deconstruct a variety of feature films, video artworks, and music videos to understand the mechanics and language of subjective realism as a narrative form. We will trace this stylistic lineage from its roots in art house cinema to its rise as an accepted Hollywood modality. We will also explore editing and software techniques that will further students' ability to create stunning works of strange beauty.Basic proficiency with digital cameras and editing is required. This class fulfills the intermediate film production requirement.

Area: Humanities

This course will serve as an introduction to Adobe After Effects. Students will learn a variety of motion graphics techniques such as digital character animation, rotoscoping, motion tracking, chroma key compositing and automating 3D cameras. Through screenings and discussions students will gain insight into the myriad of ways After Effects is used in Film and Television. Throughout the semester students will complete several short video art projects.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.152OR AS.061.145

Area: Humanities

This Production course focuses on key movements in both Experimental Film and Video Art. Production assignments will arise from: Structural Film, Performance Art, Lyrical Film, Psychedelic Video, and Experimental Ethnography. Students will explore how these movements developed outside (and at times in opposition to) the mainstream, and became integral to the aesthetics of contemporary art, film, and television. Students will think critically about the personal and societal function that video artwork serves, and gain insight into the history of Experimental Film. At the end of this course, students will have a more nuanced understanding of contemporary media art, and they will be more proficient in video editing and cinematography, which they can apply to future work on: commercials, music videos, webcasts, and feature films.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.152 OR AS.061.145

Area: Humanities

In this production course students will gain proficiency on a variety of Digital Cinema Cameras. Students will work with the Canon C300, C500, and FS7. We will discuss picture profiles, different lense options, external capture devices, and shotgun microphones. We will thoroughly explore the various unique functionality of each camera. Throughout the semester students will complete several cinematography focused video projects.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152

Area: Humanities

This course will emphasize close observation and critical thinking. Through weekly screenings and class discussion, students will practice noticing; seeing and hearing with fresh eyes and ears, and taking nothing on screen for granted. And they’ll learn to reflect on and contextualize what they find, drawing evolved conclusions about how film texts communicate ideas and what those ideas may be. They’ll consider all elements of cinematic form; an array of analytical frameworks including genre, historical era, authorship, and modes of production; and representations of gender, race, and class. Regular quizzes, a short oral presentation, and a short written analysis. No prior experience in film studies required; majors and non-majors welcome.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

As the unprecedented ascendency of Donald Trump has changed the world in record time, so has it changed the way we look at the world. Along with the attendant political and social implications, the rise of Trump has engendered altered perspectives on art and entertainment, posing questions about the power of film in an age of protest. This course will explore how films speak to us differently in this time of political and social upheaval. Through weekly screenings and discussion, a range of JHU faculty will look with fresh eyes at both classic and recent films—from Casablanca to Selma—whose narratives take on new meaning in the age of Trump. In addition, a series of renowned contemporary filmmakers will share their recent work and address how film and filmmaking have changed since the 2016 election. Course requirements are attendance, participation, and 3-4 short response papers. Screening and discussion will take place Wednesdays in in the beautifully restored Parkway Film Center, a historic 1915 movie theater that opens in Station North in spring, 2017. $50 lab fee.

$40 lab feeA survey of American genres: the Western, the Gangster Film, Science Fiction, Horror, Comedy, Melodrama, and others. Twice-weekly screenings. Short film responses and a final paper, 10pp.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course offers an introduction to the major paradigms of film theory, covering how significant thinkers have conceived of the medium from its inception to the present day. Frequent film screenings help to illustrate key concepts. Topics include the classical opposition between formalist and realist film theories as well as critical approaches to narrative, spectatorship, and representation. Students are expected to enter the course ready to engage in discussion. Weekly film screenings. $50 lab fee.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Teen angst and togas in comedies of American youth from The Graduate to Animal House to Lost in Translation. Course will provide an introduction to the basics of film analysis with an emphasis on discussion over lecture. Several short film responses and an essay with optional revision. No prior experience in the subject required.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Using P. Adams Sitney's text: The Cinema of Poetry, this course will explore the relationship between poetry and the moving image. When experimental film began to define itself in the 1950s and 60s the terms cine-poem and film-poem were ubiquitous as identifying avant-garde cinema. Poetic structures in the moving image will be studied in relation to language, images and formation of meaning. Students will independently research a poet who greatly inspired and influenced a filmmaker/moving image artist and write on that filmmaker's work. One moving image project will be undertaken and completed during the semester as well. Weekly assignments will include screenings, reading, writing, and or video work.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This class is intended for all students of film with the goal of providing them with the experience of acting in film, in both dramatic and comedic roles. The ability of the students as actors is not the focus. Instead they will understand how the writer, director and cinematographer can influence, inhibit or enhance performance. The students will explore practical methods used on set, different approaches to acting and working with directors, writers and crew. It will also include discussions of professional performances and screenings. Students must have strong verbal skills and be prepared to actively and regularly engage in acting exercises, including improvisation and reading aloud.

Area: Humanities

A workshop devoted to the art and science of a funny story well told. Students will analyze comic fiction, film, and classic television, and create their own short, comic works. 220.105, 220.106, or 061.148 recommended. This course satisfies the Film and Media Studies screenwriting requirement.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course will teach the basics of dramatic structure and plotting for the television series, with a focus on content designed for serial formats. Students will read analytical work on what makes a successful television series; dramatic structure; and effective characterization, and will engage in both critical written responses to readings and the creation of their own original five-episode series arc that will be drafted and redrafted, creating a complete mini-series with which they will leave the course.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.205

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course offers an introduction to internet studies through the many ways digital culture has touched our everyday lives: memes, blogs, gaming, social networking, instant messaging, and more. From its origins in connecting scientific researchers to its present form as a multi-device, multi-platform web connecting us to everything from each other to our smart homes, the internet has proven that nearly our entire social world can be processed as data and linked up. While this has meant greater connection, it has also raised questions about how we learn, communicate, behave, and organize. The internet has long promised new avenues of personal expression, but it has also brought with it the quandaries of echo chambers, information silos, and disinformation campaigns. In response to these complicating effects, the course offers an opportunity for students to develop the critical mapping tools necessary to orient oneself within this vast cultural network and its rapid historical unfolding.

Area: Humanities

In this workshop for 10 students (no gender preference) documentary filmmaker and media theorist Bernadette Wegenstein and filmmaker and director of the Saul Zaentz Film Innovation Fund co-teach the fundamental principles of gender theory and feminism as applied to practical filmmaking. We will cover the history of women filmmakers, as well as embark on a concrete mini-production where students will be placed in the roles of writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, and editors to make a feminist film. The anthology Feminist Film Studies(Hollinger) and Feminism and Documentary(Waldman/Walker) will be among the readings that our workshop is based on.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152

Area: Humanities

In this course, each student is responsible for the design and production of a short 16mm film. The film may be shot on color and/or black and white negative stock. The format is Super 16mm. The film may include sync and/or non-sync sound. The idea behind the “mongrel” film is for the student to incorporate a variety of genres within this project. These may include stylistic elements typically associated with documentaries, experimental, narrative, animation, and lost and found films. Students are expected to have previously completed AS.061.150 and an intermediate level film production class.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.150

Area: Humanities

In this critical studies course with a creative component, students will learn about the history and cultural significance of podcasting, develop tools for critically listening to and analyzing podcasts, and learn how to research, write for, and produce podcasts. Examples will come from a broad sample of narrative, documentary, interview, and discussion-based podcasts. While no formal training in audio production is necessary to take the course, students will be expected to learn the necessary skills to create their own podcasts. In-class demonstrations of microphones, editing software, and approaches to sound design will be offered, and students are encouraged to take advantage of office hours for further help with audio production.

Area: Humanities

This hybrid After Effects course will offer two simultaneous tracks of study. One for students using After Effects for the first time, the other for intermediate After Effects users who are looking to master the program. The class will meet to learn new techniques and to discuss each other’s work and the instructor will regularly introduce exciting new material applicable for all skill levels. Students will have the option to create a motion graphics reel for their final project, a valuable asset when applying for any post-production job. The coursework will be supported with robust video tutorials, weekly group instruction, and critique as well as periodic individual meetings with the instructor. Additionally, the entire class will gather for several Zoom sessions with professionals working in the industry.

Area: Humanities

This is an advanced production course focusing on artistic influence. Each student will be working with and around a filmmaker who greatly inspires and influences their work. The evolution of style will be considered. The work will include screenings, readings, and short projects all feeding into a final movie. This course fulfills the advanced production requirement. Students should have completed a Introductory and Intermediate Digital Video Production course prior to enrollment. $100 Lab fee.

Area: Humanities

In the first half of the semester, students will be presented with prompts from a variety of media photography, literature, popular music, et al. intended to stimulate the imagination and spark ideas. These ideas will be explored, cultivated, and mined for their visual information, with emphasis on information that might appear in their filmic representation. In the second half of the semester, students will search independently for cinematic ideas with an eye toward the details of a scene. As students identify scenic elements, their ideas will be developed and carried through the traditional workflow: outline, scenario, and screenplay. At the end of the semester, students will have prepared short scripts ready for pre-production.Lab fee: $50

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Story design for the screenplay with special attention to the genres of comedy, horror, melodrama, and adventure. Regular workshops, short written exercises, and a longer final project.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.270 OR permission of the instructor.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

A workshop devoted to creating complex characters for the screen. Students will examine memorable film characters from the silent era to the present, with attention to how these characters are revealed through both the drama and the mise en scene. Weekly screenings. Short critical and creative written exercises and a longer, creative final project.Recommended Course Background: AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.265

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

An exploration of cinema’s unique capacity to reveal the world, this course presents an international and richly historical survey of environmental films. Examples come from narrative, documentary, and experimental filmmaking, including blockbusters, exposés of waste and pollution, guerrilla media projects, and poetic contemplations of landscapes and oceans. Filmmakers and artists include Andrei Tarkovsky, Angès Varda, Jia Zhangke, Lucy Walker, Ai Weiwei, Edward Burtynsky, and Werner Herzog.

Area: Humanities

A survey of female beauty, villainy, comedy, and humanity in film and television from the silent era to the present. $50 lab fee.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 or permission of instructor.

Area: Humanities

The bad guy as hero from Little Caesar to Goodfellas. Film screenings Th 7:30-10:00 PM, Sun 7:00-9:30 PM. Lab fee: $40.

Area: Humanities

A survey of primarily American, 20th century, popular crime film: hits, heists, cons, organized crime, crimes of passion, and other "left-handed form[s] of human endeavor." Oral presentation, short critical response (5 pp.), essay (12 pp.).

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 AND AS.061.141 AND AS.061.238 AND AS.061.144 or Instructor Permission.

Area: Humanities

$50 and one core course or permission required. Monstrous others and monstrous selves in classic 20th century horror. One core course or permission required.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.238 or permission of instructor is required.

Area: Humanities

American setting and identity: the frontier, the city, the highway, the sea, the small town, the suburb, and outer space as represented in popular film from the silent era to the present.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.238 OR AS.061.244 or instructor permission.

Area: Humanities

Postwar film noir: Fuller, Huston, Lang, Mann, Tourneur, and others.

Area: Humanities

This course explores how French films have interrogated the body. We will ask how they have attempted to come to terms with human physicality, desire, and fragility--and with the ability of cinema itself to move spectators emotionally and even physically. Themes explored will include sexuality, gender identity and disability. AS.061.140 or AS.061.141 or permission of instructor. $50 lab fee.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 or instructor permission.

Area: Humanities

Savage landscapes and savage states of mind in films by Ford, Herzog, Boorman, Weir, and others. Lab fee: $50 Counts toward 300 or 400-level critical studies requirement.

Area: Humanities

This course will examine the ways film represents, remakes, and re-visions cultural and personal memory in a range of recent national and international films, including those by Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almdódovar, Lee Chang-dong, Claire Denis, Joanna Hogg, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Terrence Malick, Joshua Oppenheimer, Christian Petzold, Sarah Polley, Hong Sang Soo, and Jia Zhangke.

Area: Humanities

This course will explore changing representations of adolescence in films from the 1950s to today across a range of mainstream Hollywood, independent, and international films. We’ll examine how this dynamic and misunderstood genre shapes and reshapes perceptions of youth, and we’ll discuss the frank and sometimes explosive ways teen films address difficult questions of race, class and sexual identity, often in the guise of “pure” entertainment. Recommended Course Background: Introduction to Cinema I or Introduction to Cinema II, or permission of instructor.

Area: Humanities

This pre-production course brings together student filmmakers from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), providing intensive training in the crucial aspects of preparing to shoot a successful narrative film. Students work with a professional screenwriter, allowing students to hone and improve their existing screenplays, practice the elements of writing for film, and learn how to do a script breakdown. Workshops on working with actors, taught by a professional actor, will teach students the ins and outs of casting and directing. Supplemental workshops will cover elements of pre-production such as budgets, production schedules, call sheets, and legal issues. Film screenings will train students to see films as festival curators do, with an eye toward what constitutes exciting, innovative filmmaking. This course is the prelude and prerequisite to Narrative Filmmaking II, a production course during which students will collaborate to shoot a short narrative film based on student screenplays.

Area: Humanities

Media Workshop mixes the theory and practice of media-making in a workshop environment that allows upper-level students to hone their craft as filmmakers. Based upon the idea of a creative community, the workshop is an advanced lab designed to give students a place to share ideas, create new work, and receive intensive and supportive critique. Work produced in this class will consist of non-narrative experimental exercises, exploring issues of the image, editing, perception, and sound. Students will read filmmaker-theorists like Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Bresson, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren and Wim Wenders and will produce creative work inspired by the texts.

Area: Humanities

"7 in the City" is a multimedia journalism project that explores what it is like to be a seven-year-old growing up in Baltimore today. The project is modeled after the legendary British documentary Up series. The goal is to screen and publish the resulting documentaries and articles in partnership with a major media outlet. The class is being taught in partnership with the Hopkins MA in Writing Program. Students in this class will produce short documentaries (4 to 6 minutes) while the writing students will produce a series of articles and in-depth written profiles of seven year olds in different neighborhoods across Baltimore—focusing on public health issues, race, class, educational and economic disparities. With an eye toward documenting the ethics and social justice issues surrounding disparate childhoods in the city, film students will gain hands-on practical experience in filming, editing, and producing a short documentary about a particular 7 year old living in the city. This course counts toward the advanced production requirement for FMS majors and minors in the production track. Students should anticipate extensive work outside of the scheduled class time.

Area: Humanities

Narrative Productions is a joint production course for JHU and MICA undergraduates who have completed Acting and Screenwriting for Narrative Productions (AS.061.348). Students work in teams to produce a narrative short from a script written in AS.061.348. Students are assigned a primary and a secondary role on the production or post-production of their chosen film. Students fill all roles from casting, producing, direction, design, cinematography, sound recording and editing. Throughout the course, instructors will facilitate contact with relevant films and film professionals to illuminate the key creative roles necessary in the making of a successful narrative film.  Instructors serve in an advisory role in the production of student projects, offering technical information and guidance throughout the filmmaking process. Students should be prepared to spend a significant amount of time outside of class working on their films.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.348

Area: Humanities

Documentary Theory: The Work of Documentary in the Age of Reality Reproduction This course explores contemporary documentary film and video with an emphasis on selected directors and the theoretical implications suggested by their work. In particular, we look at the notion of the ‘real’ as it is constructed and maintained through and by documentaries. This inquiry necessarily involves a reflection that is philosophically as well as politically motivated. Directors include Errol Morris, Trinh Minh-ha, Ross McElwee, and Werner Herzog. Readings are eclectic, ranging from Annie Dillard to Martin Heidegger. Counts toward 300 or 400-level critical studies requirement.

Area: Humanities

Close examinations of Hitchcock's films from the Lodger to Frenzy. $40 lab fee.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course will explore the extraordinary renaissance in American film that arose from the death of the studio system and ended with the advent of the blockbuster. We'll discuss how the political and cultural struggles of the Vietnam era affected what came to be called New Hollywood cinema; how classical Hollywood narrative was (or wasn't) upended by the likes of Altman, Scorsese, Coppola, and Peckinpah; and how the films of this crucial period addressed or failed to address race, class and gender. Lab fee $50.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course examines popular culture's role in everyday life, tracing its path from its origins to the present. It explores the aesthetics, politics and theory of cinema, television, popular music and internet culture, as well as the study of subcultures and fandom. The endpoint of the experience is to draw students into a more complex and conscious relationship to the mediascape that surrounds them. It also encourages the cultivation of an active practice of cultural critique. Students will debate issues central to a long history of dealing in popular culture, including the potential "dumbing down" of mass culture, the use of artistic formulas in the creation of popular works, the celebration of the popular in the notion of "popular art," representations of race, gender, and sexuality in media, power and the question of the popular, and the basis of taste in media. It will apply it to a range of media as diverse as films, television programs, the punk and "pop" movements, and internet phenomena. A background in writing on media is encouraged.Lab fee: $40

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course will explore strategy and process for developing a short screenplay from pre-existing literary or journalistic source material (short story, news/feature article, etc.). By exploring several “case studies” — feature films and the source material that inspired them — students will identify the practical strategies employed by professional screenwriters with the goal of employing such strategies with their own screenplay adaptations. Bulk of class will focus on designing, writing, and rewriting a 20-30 page screenplay, and sharing multiple drafts with the class (and with the professor one-on-one) for critique over the course of the semester. Each student should have 2-3 pieces of material under consideration for possible adaptation by the start of class. Discussions from time to time will also touch on the business of screenwriting. Students will be required to purchase a license for Final Draft screenwriting software for $99. Students are expected to have previously completed AS.061.205 or another lower level screenwriting class.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

This course will closely examine Malick's films, with particular emphasis on his visionary manipulation of the epic vastness and lyrical intimacies of screen space. With this primary concern in mind, we will consider his films' engagement with philosophies of history and time; their increasingly experimental approach to narrative and stylistic conventions; and their enduring fascination with the interaction among the human, natural, and spiritual worlds. We will also look at recent films influenced by his work, including Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light and Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, addressing the question of what constitutes a "Malickian" cinema.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141

Writing Intensive

We will define Surrealism through primary texts, including those of Andre Breton, Antonin Artaudand Rene Daumal and other works that defined and influenced the movement in the early part ofthe 20th century. Using an understanding of the practice of surrealism found in the readings, aswell as in surrealist games and automatic writing, we'll study a diverse group of filmmakersinfluenced by the practice, including Luis Buñuel, Joseph Cornell, Raul Ruiz and contemporary artists such as David Lynch. Assignments include weekly papers and one final creative project. Weekly film screenings Thursday 7:30-10:00 PM. $50 lab fee.Media, Online

Writing Intensive

A hand-made, 2-D animation course based on ideas of automatism. Students will create their own animated movie during the semester with in-class animation exercises. Readings will included Dada and Surrealist texts, poetry and theory of poetics. Sounds ideas will be discussed and pursued related to the ideas explored throughout the semester. $125 lab fee.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152

An exploration of a series of contemporary French films that bear witness to the contemporary reality of France as a multi-ethnic society and ask essential questions about cultural identity. Is cultural and ethnic identity something that you are born into or it is a role that you elect or perform? How should individuals living today understand their relation to historical injustices? Are there things that we can learn only through relationships with people from other cultures? Screenings include works of Abdellatif Kechiche, Jacques Audiard, Claire Denis, Céline Sciamma, Michael Haneke, Mathieu Kassovitz, the Dardennes. $50 LAB FEE

Area: Humanities

This 3-credit upper-level course will offer undergraduates from both JHU and MICA an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate on all aspects of designing soundtracks for film. Utilizing a combination of pre-existing and in-progress pieces, student filmmakers will create soundtracks, from the initial phases of concept, ‘spotting’, and ‘temping’ through to composition and scoring in the final stages of recording, sound syncing and mixing. Students will work in small teams in a lab setting to create their soundtracks, exploring a variety of scenarios, following the post-production process typical of today’s film industry. Lab work will be supplemented by guest lecturer presentations on various aspects—practical, theoretical, and historical—of applying sound to film. Guests may include sound designers and engineers, composers, editors, and filmmakers working in live action, animation, and documentaries. At weekly screenings of classic and contemporary cinematic masterpieces students will analyze the evolving art and craft of the film soundtrack, applying the principals in their lab exercises.Lab fee: $50

Area: Humanities

Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes, “the real is a closely woven fabric”. In this course we will consider how several artistic disciplines weave their own version of that fabric. These disciplines include documentary film, prose poetry, landscape painting, literature, and music. The course will be predicated upon Martin Heidegger’s essay, “The Age of the World Picture” and follow the lead of Roland Barthe’s essay on the “effect of the real”. We will also highlight various hybrid forms within these disciplines, with particular attention to the work of W.G.Sebald and StevenReich.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141

Area: Humanities

This workshop provides students with access to professional events at the Cannes Film Festival, including screenings, non-competitive programs, tributes, master classes and directors' showcases. Students are expected to participate in festival events and take an active role in organized discussions, critiques and dialogues. Written and oral assignments. Special Application: Open to JHU Cannes Program participants only.

Area: Humanities

This course introduces students to some of the most exciting female directors of the 20th century, asking how gender shaped the production and reception of their films. Do particular directors attribute any significance to the fact of being a woman? Does a director's gender shape her choice of subject or how she represents it? Does wider knowledge of works directed by women change our sense of the canon and authorship? Covers non-U.S. films, strongly encouraged for FMS majors and minors. Cross-listed with WGS. No pre-requisite.

Area: Humanities

In this course, we explore different understandings of "love" and the way that film has dealt with the concept as a medium. We explore a variety of approaches to the question of "love" - from the agapic to the familial to the romantic - through a series of interdisciplinary readings ranging from philosophy to anthropology. We will also equally explore the question of how film has engaged with the question of love as a concept, and what depictions of human affection - from the general to the personal - it has offered us. Screenings are required for this course. Lab fee: $50

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Violence, ritualized and anarchic, celebrated and deplored in popular film from silent era melodrama and slapstick comedy to contemporary sports, crime, and combat films. Twice-weekly screenings; oral presentation; two essays, 6 & 12 pp.Lab fee: $50

Area: Humanities

This course uses French film to examine the history of twentieth-century Paris. We will consider how filmmakers interpreted the social, political, and technological transformations that shaped Paris in the modern era, treating movies as expressions of change and means by which filmmakers comment on it. Taught in English. $50 lab fee.

Area: Humanities

Examines changing ideals of masculinity in France after 1960 as they found expression on film, rooting the work of iconic stars and directors in their cultural, political and historical contexts.

Area: Humanities

Students will create their own stop-motion models (puppets) based on a wire armature model. In small groups, students will design and create a simple set and make a short stop-motion movie using a DSLR camera. The question of "why animate" will be explored in student projects and responses to screenings. We will study the history of stop-motion puppet animation from Starewicz to Svankmajer to Nick Park.

Area: Humanities

Intensive workshop course where students will write a first draft of a feature-length screenplay. Classes will focus on the specific challenges of the students’ works-in-progress, with an emphasis on developing a story idea that is suitable for a feature, and the craft to see it through to completion. Particular emphasis will be placed on the feature screenwriter’s central challenge: creating enough of a structure in the early writing stages to keep the screenplay on track, while remaining open to new ideas for scenes and sequences that inevitably arise as the characters come to life. Select professional screenplays will be read and analyzed — and clips from select films viewed—to explore what works well on the page, and how it translates to working well onscreen. Students will aim to have a solid and workable first draft at the end of the semester, at which point avenues for further revision may be discussed. Throughout the course, Instructor will also devote a portion of class time to discuss the business of screenwriting. Students will be required to purchase a license for Final Draft screenwriting software for $99.

Writing Intensive

This course explores the sonic elements of film and media studies, and encourages a form of deep and attentive listening in students. Analyzing film, television, music, sound art, and the newer platforms for sound media, it teaches students the tools for sound analysis as well as the basics of sound theory. This course is designed to allow a deeper sonic appreciation of the media created that is created with the ears in mind, even more than the eyes. In this way, it works to "fill in" what is often missing from an education in media studies - a focus on the other sense of the audio-visual media we experience every day. Lab fee: $50 Counts toward 300 or 400-level critical studies requirement.

Area: Humanities

Animating Cartoons: This class will focus on character animation. Through weekly screenings of cartoons and animations and reading comics, the form will be analyzed in class discussions and short papers. Students will create their own hand drawn character and create an extensive story board for an animation involving their character. A scene will be chosen and a short hand-drawn animation from the storyboard will be created.

This course will investigate Paul Thomas Anderson’s stylistic and narrative innovations, as well as cinematic influences such as Altman, Kubrick, Scorsese, and Welles.

Area: Humanities

This course explores various elements of film production and filmic expression through a somewhat nebulous field typically described as lost films. Lost films (or as they are sometimes called, "orphan" films) can be generally described as films that have, for a variety of reasons, fallen out of the public view. They frequently come from educational, scientific, medical, or industrial films from the 1950s and 1960s. Using these films as source materials, lost film filmmakers explore and expose cultural conventions, visual icons, and historical value materials. Each week, students are responsible for re-editing sources found on an internet archive site. The assignments follow thematic concerns related to film editing. Students complete a final project (4-8 minutes). All editing for the course is accomplished with non-linear software, generally Adobe Premiere or Final Cut.

Area: Humanities

How do films inform, shape, or fundamentally alter our sense of the past? What are the strengths and limitations of cine-history? This course pairs traditional and avant-garde fiction films and documentaries with essays about history, historiography, memory and the political uses of the past to investigate fast-changing relationships between image and text, film and history. Lab fee: $50 Counts toward 300 or 400-level critical studies requirement.

Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

Area: Humanities

Critical studies track students complete an independent research project.

Area: Humanities

Area: Humanities

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

For students who wish to explore an aspect of film studies not covered by existing courses. The course may be used for research or directed readings/viewings and should include one lengthy essay or several short ones as well as regular meetings with the adviser.Permanently required: Lab Fee: $100 (if production related)

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Permission required

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Permission required. Screenwriting Track students complete an independent project.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Area: Humanities

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.