Intro to Film and Media Studies

Required Text
Robert Kolker, Film, Form, & Culture. Third Edition. Text & DVD-Rom

Course Description
Over 100 years ago, film evoked a "gaping astonishment" in its earliest spectators. In today's post-Blair Witch Project landscape, spectators can create their own astonishing films. As celluloid evolves into myriad new forms, film studies requires more than ever a "wide angle" perspective. This course will consider film as artistic medium, repository of dreams, ideological construct, and political tool. We will discuss the pleasures of being "sutured," or emotionally drawn into films, even as we cultivate the distanced perspective that facilitates critical analysis. Course goals include:

- mastering basic film vocabulary using both the text's glossary and my hand-outs
- gaining a broad overview of film history
- establishing a familiarity with classic film genres
- working towards an understanding of basic film theory
- doing "close readings" of films that read between the lines
- articulating sophisticated, original insights in verbal and written form

Requirements
First and foremost, students are expected to be prepared, engaged participants in class. This means carefully preparing the readings and films. To this end, each Tuesday class will begin with a short quiz on the film and reading material. Classes will revolve less around formal lectures than analysis of the films, and our goal throughout is to promote good, original thinking and a strong eye and ear for interpreting film. By the end of the semester I hope that your ideas will be our primary focus in class.

Written assignments will take two forms: essays and electronic responses. Once during the semester you will write a 250 word response to the assigned film and reading and post it via Blackboard to the entire class. Think of yourself less as a film critic offering a thumbs up or down than a film scholar. The latter considers what films mean and how they make their meanings. In general, your response should raise useful questions, suggest possible issues for class discussion, and offer original analysis. It will serve as our starting point in class, so please avoid unconsidered editorializing. Electronic responses are due Sunday evenings by 9pm.

Between Tuesday and Thursday, those who posted responses will come together and work on a joint, 20-minute presentation which offers an analysis of one or more scenes in the assigned film. Ideally, each person in the group will be responsible for talking about one of the following five categories: narrative, cinematography, editing, sound and staging. Technological considerations should always be coupled with interpretative possibilities. In other words, what meanings emerge, for instance, given the camera's positioning, the type of lighting used, the look of the mise-en-scene, etc.?

During the course of the semester you will write two essays of approximately 3 - 4 pages which offer an original analysis of a film discussed in class. Please refrain from reiterating ideas already expressed in class. No secondary readings or internet sources should be used for these essays. Your final research paper of 8 - 10 pages should include a bibliography of at least 5 - 8 sources. See the course schedule for due dates.

Alternately, in lieu of a final paper, students are invited make their own film, either alone or in groups of no more than three. If enough students do so, we can plan our own film festival in December. Filmmakers should identify themselves by the end of October so I can coordinate with Kristen Eschelman at the LRC for training sessions and equipment use. You will also be expected to do a short write-up, for which I will provide written guidelines. Beware: making a film is highly time-consuming and a potentially emotionally exhausting endeavor. Do not underestimate the time commitment it will demand, and start early. Your creative process should draw on course material and discussions and synthesize them in a cinematically intelligent way.

Students are allowed TWO unexcused absences. Thereafter grades will drop by one third of a grade for each absence. All work should be pledged.

Grades
Preparation and class participation 15%
Leading class discussion 15%
Electronic responses to material 30%
Essays 40%

Film screenings and secondary readings
All films will be on reserve in the library. Viewing rooms are on the second floor and in the basement. No film may leave the library. I would strongly encourage you to watch each film twice since it is much easier to recognize deeper levels of meaning after repeated viewings. Take notes on what you see and think about why things are represented as they are.

Group viewings of films are much more collegial and fun, and accordingly I will cue up each film in Chambers 3187 at 8pm on Sunday evenings. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE FILMS OUT OF THE LIBRARY. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THE FILMS TO A VIEWING ROOM ON SUNDAY EVENINGS.

Readings for the course will be on electronic reserve.

Schedule
August 23 Discussion of syllabus
August 25 Introductory considerations; reading a film clip
August 30 - September 1 The Matrix (Andy & Larry Wachowski, 1999)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter One: Image and Reality;
Aylish Wood, "The Collapse of Reality and Illusion in The Matrix"
Respondents:
September 6 - 8 Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)
Reading: Bill Nichols, "The Trials and Tribulations of Rodney King"
Respondents:
September 13 -15 Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Two: Formal Structures
Excerpts from Thomas Elsaesser, Metropolis
Respondents:
September 20 - 22 Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Three: Building Blocks I;
David Bordwell, "Classical Hollywood Storytelling";
Andre Bazin, "The Evolution of the Language in Cinema"
Respondents:
SEPTEMBER 27 FIRST SHORT ESSAY DUE
September 27 - 29 Selected short films by D.W. Griffith
Eisensteinian Montage
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Four: Building Blocks II;
Siegfried Kracauer, "From Caligari to Hitler"
Respondents:
October 4 - 6 Run, Lola, Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Five: The Story Tellers of Film I;
John Hill, "Film and Postmodernism"
Respondents:
October 13, 18, 20 PICK TWO OF THREE FILMS:
Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter 6: The Story Tellers of Film II;
Peter Wollen, "The Auteur Theory"; Dudley Andrew, "The Auteur Today"
Respondents:
October 25 - 27 Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Seven: Film as Cultural Practice;
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema";
Barbara Creed, "Film and Psychoanalysis"
Respondents:
NOVEMBER 1 SECOND SHORT ESSAY DUE
November 1 - 3 Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)
Reading: Richard Dyer, "Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars & Society"; Bordwell, Staiger, Thompson, "An Excessively Obvious Cinema"
Respondents:
November 8 - 10 The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Sin City (Frank Miller & Robert Rodriquez, 2005)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Eight: The Stories Told By Film I;
Paul Schrader, "Notes on Film Noir"
November 15 - 17 All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
Reading: Kolker, Chapter Nine: The Stories Told by Film II
November 22 PICK AN ANIMATED FILM
November 29 - December 1 TELEVISION???
December 6 Evaluations; student film festival?
December 15 FINAL PAPER DUE

Selected Bibliography
Altman, Rick, ed. Sound Theory. Sound Practice. London: Routledge, 1992.

Bordwell, David. Making Meaning. Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.

_____. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: The U of Wisconsin P, 1985.

_____, Janet Staiger & Kristen Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.

Braudy, Leo & Marshall Cohen. Film Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Gledhill, Christine & Linda Williams. Reinventing Film Studies. London: Arnold, 2000.

Hill, John & Pamela Church Gibson. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.

Hjort, Mette & Scott MacKenzie. Cinema and Nation. New York: Routlege, 2000.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.a

Nichols, Bill. Blurred Boundaries. Question of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.

_____. Ideology and the Image. Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981.

Rosen, Philip. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.

Stam, Robert. Film Theory. An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

Thompson, Kristin. Storytelling in the New Hollywood. Understanding Classical Narrative Technique. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.

_____ & David Bordwell. Film History. An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.