Spring 2023 Courses

SCRN Courses

 

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Course Descriptions

SCRN 2001-1 | Introduction to Screen Arts

Paul Catalanotto

In this introductory course taught by Artist-in-Residence Paul Catalanotto, students can expect to get a taste of different aspects of filmmaking and video production as well as study a variety of filmmakers, styles, and genres. 

SCRN 2001-2 | Introduction to Screen Arts

June Pulliam

This introductory course explores film, television, and video.

SCRN 3001-1 | New Media

Jason Buch

As digital platforms and filmmaking continue to evolve, it can be difficult to make sense of it all. The intersection of technology and narrative offers possibilities for telling stories in exciting new forms. Study what's happening with streaming, podcasts, virtual reality, augmented reality, video games, and other interactive content and put what you learn into practice by completing your own New Media project over the course of the semester.

SCRN 3010-1 | Cinematography

Glen Pitre

A mostly workshop course, SCRN 3010 is designed to teach motivated beginners how to use digital cameras and associated gear to tell compelling stories with moving images. Students complete successively more ambitious film assignments working hands-on with gear available for check out from Screen Arts. Planning and reviewing students’ films and practicing film industry procedures occupies the bulk of the 3 hour weekly class time. Emphasis is on how to control and manipulate lighting, framing, movement, sound, and image qualities to shape mood, convey emotion, tell story, and create a coherent look, first working individually, then as a crew. Classes will offer some basic, relevant cinema history but will concentrate on a workshop style, largely nuts-and-bolts approach. While grades remain private, the instructor’s critiques of each student’s work will be shared publicly among all students.

SCRN 3012-1 | Directing

Glen Pitre

Students interested in directing, producing, acting in, or crewing on movies will learn the elements, techniques, and disciplines that go into directing a film as they develop skills in on-screen storytelling; manipulating performance, mood, and emotion; logistical, technical, and artistic problem-solving; and managing time, money, and people.

SCRN 3501-1 | North African Cinema

Touria Khannous

This course is an introduction to contemporary North African cinema covering the period from after the 1960s to the present in countries including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt.  Students will gain not only an expanded knowledge of a broad range of international films from North Africa, but also an increased understanding of films’ aesthetic approaches to a range of issues such as identity, gender, masculinity, and violence. We will analyze the films in light of theoretical essays and key concepts in film studies. 

SCRN 3503-1 | J-Horror

Kathryn Barton

Contemporary Japanese horror cinema has spawned so many imitators of its subject matter, style, and cinematic technique that it has practically become a movement unto itself. We will consider everything from vengeful ghost stories to serial killer thrillers, body horror to techno-horror, while considering the following: 1) What does J-horror owe to traditional folklore and forms of visual art? 2) How are monsters conceived and depicted, 3) modernity problematized, and 4) what makes us afraid? How does horror elicit feelings of dread, suspense, terror, shock, and fear? What is so pleasurable about horror and what is the sociological function served by such affective states? No previous classes in Japanese culture or language are required, and all readings, films and discussions are in English.

SCRN 3505-1 | Zombies in Film & TV

June Pulliam

The zombie is a relatively new monster in fiction, film, and folklore, but proliferation over the past 140 years is testament to how the creature resonates with audiences as a representation of their worst fears. The zombie figure originated in 19th century Haiti when multinational corporations were beginning to purchase sugar plantations and processing facilities and the residents of this former slave colony began to fear being re-enslaved. For them, the zombie was a horrific representation of the slave--someone who lacked free will and whose only purpose was to be a fleshy piece of agricultural machinery. The figure of the zombie was popularized in the United States beginning with William Seabrook's 1929 book The Magic Island, which recounted Haitian folktales that the author heard during his travels in Haiti, and the 1932 film loosely based on one of these stories, White Zombie. While the figure of the zombie proliferated in horror comics between the 1930s and 1950s, it would not become popular in film until after George Romero's groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead (1968), where former loved ones rise out of their graves to become mindless, flesh-eating ghouls. Night of the Living Dead also tied the zombie to contagion and pandemic as well as the apocalypse. Later zombie film and television use the figure to consider everything from the savagery of humans, Othering, free will, and the post-human. In this course, The Zombie Film, we will view multiple films and television shows and explore why this creature so fascinates audiences across the world. 

SCRN 4001-1 | Aesthetics in Art Cinema

Kalling Heck

The subject of this class is the mode of cinematic production known as “global art cinema.” This mode plays a prominent role in the history and arrangement of film, but its status, structure, and contours are notoriously difficult to define. In this course, we will explore global art cinema, attempting to map its invention and significance while also thinking about what role it might play in the current industrial landscape. 

Global art cinema, sometimes called festival circuit cinema, has been described as an aesthetic category, which is to say that it has certain locatable characteristics that link the disparate films it describes together. But it has also been classified as an industrial category, defined not by its form but by its significance as an alternative site of production set against Hollywood and other forms of more commercial filmmaking. The industrial and aesthetic definitions of global art cinema are frequently at odds, and the task of this class will be to determine what global art cinema even is, where it comes from, what kinds of tendencies link these films together, and why this genre (if it is a genre) is important to the history of narrative filmmaking.  

SCRN 4011-1 | Advanced Editing

Paul Catalanotto

Advanced Editing explores editing theory and history as well as offers students a chance to learn practical skills on the Adobe Premiere editing platform. The course functions as an in-depth study of the history, concepts, and skills involved in film and video editing techniques. Additionally, students will receive formal instruction and practice in non-linear editing software as a means to gain a better understanding of concepts such as montage, continuity, and narrative.

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ENGL 2009-1 | Writing Screenplays

Jason Buch

Want to write a movie? TV Pilot? Learn the form and structure of Screenwriting to bring your ideas to life, while reading, watching, and discussing current films and television programs. Workshop your scripts to get friendly and helpful feedback from your fellow students. You will write your own short script and begin work on a feature film script or television pilot.

ENGL 4109 | Capstone in Film & TV Writing

Mari Kornhauser

Permission of instructor needed if prerequisites are not met: meaning if you want to take this class, please directly contact the instructor.

It’s here: a re-writing workshop to help you achieve a final draft of your script from ENGL 4009 or another one you’ve written. So, roll up your sleeves and get ready to spitball then re-write (a few times) your script towards a “pencils down” draft.  Your script can be a full-length narrative screenplay or television pilot. You’ll be analyzing its strengths and flaws THROUGH YOUR OWN EYES AND YOUR FELLOW COHORTS, discovering things about both process and your writing style. You’ll read and critique each other’s scripts, both written and verbally.  An analytical paper around the genre you’re working in is also required. Oh, and that adage, well it is true: “Writing is re-writing.” A secret though: re-writing is also fun.

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CMST 2012 | Intro to Film

Emily Graves

Study and practice of film as a mode of communication and the basic language of cinema; selected films screened and studied. The course includes a required weekly screening and introductory video projects.

CMST 3012 | History of Film

Patricia Suchy

In this course we study historical and cultural contexts, events, people, technologies, and films that are especially significant to selected developments in the history of cinema, focusing on American and European cinemas. The course includes a required weekly screening on Tuesday evenings.

HNRS 2020-65 | Sex and Zombies

Naomi Bennett

This course requires SCRN Director approval to count towards SCRN degree requirements.

This course will take a close look at zombies as sexual beings. We will begin by looking at the origins of the zombie in West and Central Africa, coming to Haiti through the transatlantic slave trade, and eventually landing on the shores of the United States as one of the most enduring and undying horror monsters. As a representation of the dangerous “Other,” we will critically examine what it means to be a gendered, sexualized, and sexually active zombie. We will examine the zombie as metaphor for cultural anxieties related to the fear of miscegenation and racial tensions, the sexually liberated woman, gay male sexuality and the threat of AIDS, and the zombie as an unlikely focus of budding teen sexuality in shows such as Bob’s Burgers.