Courses
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
This course prepares students for FMS’s Intersession field trip to Los Angeles, and also serves as an introduction to the professional skills necessary to navigate a career in film, television, and other fields of entertainment. Through discussion, hands-on practice, and guest lectures with FMS alumni, students will learn how to find their way in a complex industry, how to present themselves and their work, how to choose the right path, and how to cultivate the connections and opportunities they’ll need to succeed. We will also discuss what to expect and how to make the most of the week-long intersession course, which introduces students to alumni in a range of professions in film, television, and entertainment. Meets 6 times during the semester. Required for students planning to enroll in The Entertainment Industry in Contemporary Hollywood. Open to all FMS majors and minors.
Area: Humanities
This course will explore film and television career paths and strategies through conversations with producers, screenwriters, directors and other creatives in New York and Los Angeles, some of whom are JHU alumni. Students will gain an understanding of how to track the rapidly changing global entertainment landscape, how to craft a successful path, and how to improve the skills necessary for a professional career in entertainment.
Area: Humanities
Screenwriting workshop. This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and blue-print for production. Several classic screenplays will be analyzed. We will intensively focus on character development, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext, and visual story-telling. Several classic and contemporary films will be analyzed and discussed with film clips screened in class (PSYCHO, CHINATOWN, WITNESS, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, WINTER’S BONE, BOOKSMART, GET OUT). The art of the outline, proper script formatting and character development will be explored as students embark on writing their own 8-12 page screenplays that will be read in class and closely critiqued. Current marketplace and business requirements for screenplays will also be covered.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
This program will provide an overview of the cutting-edge tools and creators shaping the future's narrative journeys. As technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, along with artificial intelligence and machine learning, continue to evolve, how will we create, share, and experience the most fundamental unit of human culture - the story?
Documentary films raise awareness about underreported geopolitical issues, challenge dominant narratives by revealing and amplifying the voices of the marginalized, and advocate for change by expressing the complexity of conflict through first-hand, grounded accounts of human experience. Documentary films claim to be real, true, and right. Are they? Can they serve as a platform for critical analysis and a reflection of human experience in its most urgent form? This course is designed to familiarize students with topical and continuing geopolitical issues caused by overarching American involvement, to analyze award-winning documentary films in terms of their cinematic strategies, and to practice imagining the smell, touch, and scream comprising the human cost of world conflict. Class meets October 5, 13, 26, and November 2. Since this course meets only four times, perfect attendance is mandatory.
Area: Humanities
In this course students will learn the fundamentals of film analysis through a survey of American and international films from the silent era to the early 1960s. With an emphasis on discussion over lecture, the class will consider selections from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and the U.S. In addition to lively class participation, requirements include quizzes, shot analysis exercises, and short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. Non-majors and pre-majors welcome!
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Introduction to Cinema provides an overview of American and international cinema from 1960 to the present. Through lectures and discussion, weekly screenings, and intensive visual analysis of individual films, we will explore the aesthetic, cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped the art and industry of film over the past 60 years. Regular quizzes, writing assignments, class participation required. Mandatory film screenings.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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.
Area: Humanities
This primer to screenwriting will emphasize the power of the image to deliver character, situation, and theme, and to advance even complex plots. Students will analyze narrative films, compose their own still and moving images with cellphone cameras, and write several short dramatic pieces to be read and workshopped by the group. They'll learn the basics of scene design and of screenplay format. For FMS majors in the screenwriting track, this course fulfills the Media and Narrative requirement . $50 lab fee.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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
In this course we will explore the history of anime through weekly screenings and short response papers. Directors include early filmmakers Shimokawa, Kouchi, Kitayama and more contemporary influential directors including Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke), Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Otomo (Akira) and Kon (Paprika). Creative assignments will explore anime's relationship to manga and students will create a short animation as a final project. This class is open to all and no previous animation experience is required.
Area: Humanities
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.
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 to produce several video projects. For their final projects students will pitch an idea and develop a more complex film.
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 provide a survey of American and international films to which city as setting is integral. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Four short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.
Area: Humanities
The Lights, Camera, Action short course series is designed to introduce non-majors, including students in disciplines outside the humanities, to the critical study of film texts. This iteration will explore representations of youth in a selection of films of different eras and national cinemas. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Four short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. This one-credit course will meet August 31, September 7, 14, 21, and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required. In fall 2023, the course will be taught by three FMS senior faculty members, and guest professor Keith Mehlinger of Morgan State University.
Area: Humanities
This mini-course will offer an introduction to the basics of film analysis through a survey of films directed by women. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Short weekly written responses. No prior experience in film studies required; non-majors welcome. This one-credit course will meet September 2, 9, 16, 23, and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.
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 a 12-page screenplay, 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. (Scripts and clips often selected from American films spanning the 60s through the 2000s.) 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
This course will explore how race and ethnicity have been represented in popular American film from the early 20th century to the present. Weekly screenings, regular quizzes, and open discussion will emphasize close observation and critical thinking. Requirements include an oral presentation and a written analysis. No prior experience in film studies required; majors and non-majors welcome.
Area: Humanities
For many, the entertainment business is alluring. For all, it's pretty confusing. Demystifying the Entertainment Business 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 understand 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
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 workshop promotes more effective writing, hones interpretive skills, and encourages the development of a distinctive voice through a series of progressively more complex assignments. By sharing draft essays with the class, commenting on one another’s work, and revising, students will learn to edit their own work and to thoughtfully critique others’. Fulfills the Film and Media Studies expository writing requirement. Lab Fee: $50
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.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152
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
Portraiture has a long history in the arts, in painting, sculpture and photography. The film portrait is closer to these plastic arts, rather than traditional documentary, in that it approaches it’s subject mostly though looking and finding new forms. Screenings will include the work of Andy Warhol, Philippe Garrel, Shirley Clarke, varied screen tests, some animation and more. Coursework will include a presentation, short papers and a film portrait.
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
From the films of Robert Flaherty, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda and Andy Warhol, through the work of Peter Watkins, Ulrich Seidl, Jia Zhangke, Lizzie Borden, Pedro Costa, Abbas Kiarostami, Kevin Jerome Everson, Sacha Baron Cohen and Chloé Zhao, this course explores the dominant techniques, the aberrations, and the virtues and limitations of hybrid filmmaking. Topics discussed include the ethics of representation, the significance of craft, questions of selection, narrative hegemony, the nature of performance, and the porous boundaries between documentary and fiction film. Students will be guided in their own hybrid filmmaking experiments throughout the semester.
Area: Humanities
A workshop devoted to creating compelling short scripts and stories based on personal experience. Analysis of films, memoir, and short fiction, along with collaborative development of student work, will emphasize how unique worlds and world views can reflect a larger shared humanity. All writers welcome. Tell your story!
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
This course will examine films (features and shorts) throughout the history of cinema beginning with Alice Guy-Blaché . We will look at how form reveals content, thematic issues and how films relate to the culture and politics of the filmmaker. Filmmakers include Germaine Dulac, Nelly Kaplan, Marguerite Duras, Chantal Ackerman, Barbara Hammer and Nina Menkes. Readings include critical essays, texts by the filmmakers and fiction. Assignments consist of weekly papers on the films.
Area: Humanities
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 course will take novice television writing students from show concept to show bible and into the early stages of pilot writing. It teaches the basics of how to develop a television concept, and dramatic structure for television writing. Students will read analytical work on what makes a successful television series, dramatic structure, and effective characterization, and will engage in both critical readings and writing workshop. The result will be the creation of their own show bible and the beginnings of an original thirty-minute television pilot.
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
This course offers a journey through the history of computer animation. We’ll start with an archaeology of the digital image, look at experimental animations by early computer artists, and sketch out the work of engineers in developing techniques of wire-frame modeling, texture mapping, shadowing, and facial animation. Beginning with short films and digital sequences in otherwise live-action movies, we’ll cover a wide variety of animation styles in an international context. Screenings will be drawn from a selection of fully computer-animated features, such as those from Studio Ghibli and Pixar; live-action movies with digital special effects in the mode of Tron (Lisberger, USA, 1982) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, USA, 1992); films that use computer software to aid traditional methods of animating, such as The Illusionist (Chomet, France, 2010) and Boy and the World (Abreu, Brazil, 2014); and animated documentaries, such as Waltz with Bashir (Folman, Israel, 2008) and Tower (Maitland, USA, 2016).
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
Before film even emerged as a popular entertainment form, motion pictures were used to study the human body for purposes of scientific inquiry and medical practice. The present-day crossovers between imaging science and cinema—the inclusion of medical imaging in movies and television shows, the deployment of informational videos and animations in telehealth, and the myriad ways that digital imaging itself is spurred on by the needs of scientific investigation and the demand for cultural works—suggest that what we know about the human body is caught up in a complex web of technical representations and cultural meanings. This course explores the construction of the human body within this array of cinematic practice. Our approach will be twofold: First, we will consider scientific and medical images not merely as powerful means of seeing what would otherwise be unseeable but also as technically enabled and culturally influenced ways of knowing, that is, images, as in cinema, that are historical and could be otherwise. Second, we will examine representations of the human body in the history of film, focusing on how bodies are represented, what bodies are privileged, and how bodies are figured using medical imaging.
Area: Humanities
This course explores film adaptation by considering how words, images, and sounds offer different affordances and constraints for creative expression. A central goal is to conceive of adaptation outside of typical discussions of fidelity to a source work and instead consider how different artistic media open up unique opportunities for storytelling. To this end, we will draw on a number of different intermedial translations, which may include from novel to film (The Night of the Hunter, from Davis Grubb’s book to James Agee’s screenplay to Charles Laughton’s film), from short story to film (The Turin Horse), from graphic novel to film (Ghost World) or television series (HBO’s Watchmen), from personal essay to documentary film (James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work and I Am Not Your Negro), from poetry to film (O Brother, Where Art Thou), from play to film (A Raisin in the Sun and My Own Private Idaho), from radio drama to film (Sorry, Wrong Number), and film-to-film homage (Far From Heaven and All That Heaven Allows). We will also delve into the vagaries of film-to-book novelizations and the curious case of concurrently writing film and book, as in Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark’s collaboration on the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (both adapted from a short story).
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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
The year 2020 challenged the film industry by imposing restrictions on our mobility, collaboration and access. Unable to gather in large groups or travel to the ideal location, much less rent equipment or leave the confines of our homes, moving-image makers found creative ways to embrace these limitations and continue making exceptional things. This intro-level production course will go back to basics in an attempt to define and explore the essential elements of visual storytelling. In this present, and in the future, how do we embrace the aesthetic challenges that come with limited resources and means? Can we make a compelling film or video without human subjects? Can we tell a dynamic story using only one location? Is there a possibility for drama when only one character appears on screen? Can sound be used to evoke the world outside the frame? And how do we make meaningful, relevant, transcendent work amidst a social, political and public health crisis? Over the course of the semester, students will be exposed to films and filmmakers who use these questions to stimulate their practice, and in turn, will be asked to address these challenging questions for themselves through the work they create for class. This course will fulfill the Advanced Filmmaking requirement for the major and minor. Students should have already completed an introductory and intermediate production course before enrolling.
Area: Humanities
Combining approaches to audio storytelling and multimedia production, this course offers a wide-ranging introduction to the art of podcasting. Students will learn techniques from the innovators of the golden age of radio, read culturally significant radio plays, develop tools for critically listening to and analyzing today’s podcasts, and learn how to research, write for, and produce their own 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. The full suite of podcast materials—written copy, cover image, and audio file—will be posted to the JHU FMS Podcasting channel at https://jhufilmandmedia.podbean.com/. Subscribe to the feed on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. $50 lab fee.
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 course will be a hands-on, immersive, deep dive into executing comedic moments through cinematic tools and language. Through screenings and critique, we will analyze a diverse spectrum of films and television until we distill and synthesize that ineffable substance of what makes something funny. Subjects like “Spoof,” “Slapstick” and “Not Funny” will be covered. Students should expect multiple artist visits, time to edit in class and plenty of group discussion. Each student will create two short comedy films throughout the semester, and work collaboratively on a third. We will also have technical days devoted to operating advanced cameras such as the Canon C300 MK2. $100 lab fee.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152
Area: Humanities
A workshop devoted to creating complex characters in challenging moral landscapes. Students will view and discuss a wide range of films; and creative assignments may include profiles, short fiction, monologues, and dramatic scenes for the screen. Short critical and creative written exercises, and a longer, creative final project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.315 OR AS.061.316 OR Instructor Permission
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
A workshop devoted to creating compelling short scripts based on personal experience. Analysis of screened films and collaborative development of student work will emphasize how unique worlds and world views can reflect a larger shared humanity. Short critical and creative written exercises, and a longer, creative final project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.315 OR AS.061.316 or Instructor permission.
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
Using narrative theory, this hybrid course teaches students the ins and outs of narrative forms that interact with cinema, engaging with both screenwriting and narrative studies. Using the adaptation of author Neil Gaiman's Coraline to teach students the differences in narrative structure that align with fiction, the graphic novel, and the film, it also enables them to engage in their own adaptation. Taking an original concept from short fiction to a graphic novel treatment to a film treatment, culminating in a short film script and storyboard, the course teaches the fundamentals of narrative theory and encourages students to engage with them creatively.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.205
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Since the rise of HBO in the late 1990s, cable, network, and streaming television has become home to a diverse range of "quality" shows that showcase strong perspectives by unique creators. These series creators work within an intensive commercial medium and a cultural context they speak to but cannot themselves determine. This course examines the relationship between the cultural milieu in which they create work and the show creator themselves. Featuring such examples as Donald Glover's Atlanta, Michael Shur's The Good Place, Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, Rebecca Sugar's Steven Universe, Mindy Kaling's The Mindy Project, and Terence Nance's Random Acts of Flyness, among others, it encourages students to engage in aesthetic critique as well as cultural analysis, with the ultimate end of making students better understand the relationship between television and auteur, and be better able to engage with the culture in which they swim via its media.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
Area: Humanities
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
From tap dancer to gangster, assassin to anguished teen, versions of the male in film from the silent era to the present. Cross-listed with Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. One core course in Film and Media Studies is preferred but not required.
Area: Humanities
Fantasized, mythologized, and revised: the cinematic west as landscape and idea through the lens of classical Hollywood and of contemporary independent women and indigenous filmmakers.
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
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
Shadows, dead ends, and dangerous women in the postwar films of Sam Fuller, John Huston, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Jacques 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
With its unique ability to transcend both time and space, cinema is particularly suited to address the nature of memory and the politics of remembering. This course will examine how film frames, revises, translates and transforms memories—personal, historical and cultural—through a range of examples in recent global cinema. Films may include those by Pedro Almódovar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lee Chang-dong, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Andrew Haigh, Joanna Hogg, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Christian Petzold, Sarah Polley, Hong Sang Soo, Celine Sciamma, and Jia Zhangke.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
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
In Italo Calvino’s book, Invisible Cities, Marco Polo depicts an eclectic array of imaginary, and fantastic, cities to Kublai Khan. Using this book as a guide, each student will create an imaginary city composed entirely from online archival footage. Following Calvino’s advice, these projects will “take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders but in the answer it gives to a question of yours”. Additional readings will include works by Louis Aragon, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Rainer Maria Rilke, and W.G. Sebald. This course satisfies the Advanced Film Production requirement for FMS majors and minors.
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 over the Vietnam war, civil rights, and the feminist movement affected American filmmaking between roughly 1967 and 1980, heralded by a new generation of filmmakers working both within and outside of the system. Emphasis will be on both close formal analysis and historical contexts. Filmmakers to be discussed will include Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Charles Burnett, Ivan Dixon, Francis Ford Coppola, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Alan Pakula, Arthur Penn, Bob Rafelson, Martin Scorsese, Melvin Van Peebles, and Claudia Weill. This is a discussion-based class, and regular participation is required.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
This course will explore a range of Almodóvar’s work, from the early films emerging out of La Movida Madrileña up to and including The Human Voice and Parallel Mothers, with particular emphasis on All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education, Volver, and Pain and Glory. We will examine the director’s influences and antecedents—Bunuel, Hitchcock, Sirk, Cassavetes, among others—against the backdrop of Spain’s dramatic political and cultural transformation after the death of Franco. And we will closely analyze the characteristics that define Almodóvar’s status as an auteur: his groundbreaking approach to sexuality, queer politics and gender transformation; his innovative use of melodrama; and his dazzlingly eclectic visual style.
Area: Humanities
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. (Scripts and clips often selected from American films spanning the 60s through the 2000s.) 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
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
Area: Humanities
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 course traces the history of the soundtrack from Vitaphone at the coming of sound to Dolby Stereo in the New Hollywood era to the fully immersive, atmospheric sound systems of today’s cinemas and home theaters. We consider major theories on the relationship between sound and image, the production of sound space, the role of the voice in cinema, and the effects of film music. Assignments will engage with the materials through both analytical reflection and short creative sound production. Screenings and examples are likely to include early sound classics, such as Sunrise (1927) and 42nd Street (1933); notable international innovators, such as The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) and A Man Escaped (1956); pathbreaking stereo entries, such as Fantasia (1940) and Apocalypse Now (1979); recent exemplars of film music, such as In the Mood for Love (2000) and Morvern Callar (2002); and films that reflect on the very nature of sound recording, such as The Conversation (1974) and The Lives of Others (2006).
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
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.
Area: Humanities
This course introduces students to some of the most exciting female directors of the 21st 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
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.226
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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
If you love watching thrillers — and believe you are possessed with the right blend of obsession, stamina and blind faith required to write one — then please join us for 13 weeks of screenwriting exploration as we tangle with this most beguiling and and satisfying of film genres. By semester’s end, you’ll have written a “killer” first act of a feature script, developed a detailed step outline for acts 2 and 3, designed a look-book to inspire yourself and future collaborators, and hatched a plan to see you project through to completion (on your own, or in a future class.)
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.205 AND AS.061.373
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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
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.
You’ve just finished the first draft of your feature screenplay or long-format teleplay. If you’re like most mortals, including the teacher of this course, it’s likely to be terrifically average. Here’s the chance to make it good — and possibly great — with a semester’s worth of systematic, high-octane rewriting. Hard labor, creative breakthroughs and a glimpse at what it takes to get Hollywood’s attention included.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.404
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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
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
An independent study in Film and Media Studies gives students the opportunity to pursue an independent research project or develop/produce a film project or a script under the mentorship of a Film and Media Studies faculty member.
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.
An internship in the field of Film and Media to be overseen and approved by a Film and Media Studies faculty member. Prior approval is required.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
An internship in the field of Film and Media to be overseen and approved by a Film and Media Studies faculty member. Prior approval is required.
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
An independent study in Film and Media Studies gives students the opportunity to pursue an independent research project or develop/produce a film project or a script under the mentorship of a Film and Media Studies faculty member.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
An internship in the field of Film and Media to be overseen and approved by a Film and Media Studies faculty member. Prior approval is required.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.