Daniele Wilmouth

This course is designed to introduce students to the language and histories of the moving image arts and the diverse ways in which artists have contributed to them. Throughout the semester we will examine a range of approaches to creating moving image work. We will compare and contrast established ?norms? with radical and experimental approaches to these various media, leading to an understanding of the rich, complex, and evolving landscape upon which individuals have been making, and continue to make, moving image art.

Students will engage with this expanded field through lectures, readings, screenings, meetings with visiting artists as well as becoming active in discussions and practitioners in the field via group projects.

Working in small groups, students will complete a series of short projects to introduce them to the various pathways of the department. By the end of the semester, students should have gain basic production and postproduction skills as well a good understanding of the key concepts relevant to contemporary film, video, new media, installation and animation.

Form and Meaning is a rigorous investigation of the art of moving image editing and provides a historical and theoretical understanding of both classical film editing and newer modes and models of editing and perception. The course provides a working foundation and framework.

A close reading of films will train the student in the core aesthetic decisions, structures, strategies and demands of editing cinematic works. In addition, we will look at examples and discuss how editing functions for the installation artist, and further, how the Internet, New Media, television and video art have made an impact on concepts surrounding editing. Weekly readings will expand on the work presented in class.

Students should expect to research and write both a midterm and final papers as well as a few short responses to works presented in class. Form and Meaning is a theory-based seminar and is not designed to offer critique for works in progress.

Sonics and Optics is an intensive study of lenses, optics, sensors, stocks, materials, laboratory processes, microphones, and recorders as essential tools in film/video making. Throughout the semester students will learn the fundamentals of a lens (focal length, aperture), its relationship to the camera (shutter, ISO), and aesthetic options available. The course will offer the same immersive perspective of sound technologies; including choosing microphones (stereo, cardioid, shotgun, contact, etc), recording options (sound device, field recorder, mixing board), and methods of field recording. This course is an essential technical base for all advanced moving image work.

In-class screenings of films and videos and weekly readings will expand on the technical workshops at the core of the course.

Students should expect to complete a series of quick technical exercises as well as a more in depth final project.

Sonics and Optics is an intensive study of lenses, optics, sensors, stocks, materials, laboratory processes, microphones, and recorders as essential tools in film/video making. Throughout the semester students will learn the fundamentals of a lens (focal length, aperture), its relationship to the camera (shutter, ISO), and aesthetic options available. The course will offer the same immersive perspective of sound technologies; including choosing microphones (stereo, cardioid, shotgun, contact, etc), recording options (sound device, field recorder, mixing board), and methods of field recording. This course is an essential technical base for all advanced moving image work.

In-class screenings of films and videos and weekly readings will expand on the technical workshops at the core of the course.

Students should expect to complete a series of quick technical exercises as well as a more in depth final project.

The course is survey of documentary film practice, from its inception up to current times. Throughout the course we will review the change in formal, thematic and ethical concerns underlying documentary filmmaking, with an emphasis on the ways in which technological development impacted the production of time-based journalism, the presentation of subjective perspectives on political and social issues, the use of documentary as a political tool for generating impact or propaganda, narrative structures in the documentary format etc. Emphasis will be placed on the question of the use of visual media as a form of knowing, recording and telling.

Viewings will typically include films by Lumiere Brothers and Edison, early documentary filmmakers such as Flaherty, Vertov, Lenny Reifenstahl, Pare Lorenz, Walter Ruttman, Joris Ivens and John Grierson, the lyrical documentary work of Basil Wright, the social documentary films of Humphry Jennings, Direct and Verita filmmakers such as Rouch, Weisman, Maysles brothers, Leacock, Pennebaker and Ross McElwee, the audio documentaries of Glenn Gould, the archival documentaries of Ken Burns, contemporary social reflection and engagement by filmmakers such as Errol Morris and Michael Moore, the work of the Sensory Lab and much more.

In the course of the semester students will be researching, assembling material, interviewing and editing video for three short assignments and a final, longer, documentary project that will be incorporating the material viewed and discussed in class and demonstrate a mastery of -- and inquiry into -- the documentary film/video tradition.