• Screenwriting 2
  
• Film Directing 2
  
• Cinematography 2
  
• Production Lab 2
  
• Edit Lab 2
  

SCREENWRITING 2

This course advances the storytelling concepts covered in Screenwriting 1 by employing dialogue, exploring inner and outer motivations, and additional subplot devices. Students write and develop short narrative scripts to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts. They use this opportunity to embark on writing scripts for a feature length screenplay or for their individual thesis film project.

FILM DIRECTING 2

Students are assigned advanced level storytelling projects to develop their individual directorial styles. Through this course students explore the relationship between the director and the actor. Studio exercises allow student directors to work with both experienced and inexperienced film actors to learn the delicate art of acting for the camera. Student directors will learn how to articulate character motivations, pull performances, or properly execute eyelines and the axis. Blocking and staging techniques train students to direct their work within the confines of the cinematic frame.

Students conduct a large scale casting call through which they learn techniques for strategic casting and coming to know the film “look”. From there, read throughs and rehearsals give the student director a “real world” and practical experience to mold their thesis film projects.

CINEMATOGRAPHY 2

This course explores the creative depths of cinematography. The latent image is always at the service of the story and an approach must be developed. The careful choices a cinematographer makes with respect to composition, color, light and texture affect the overall look and mood of the film. Students explore the impact of the visual language of film and related topics such as design principles and forces of visual organization. The affects of scene direction and lines of action on the editing process are explored Students learn cinematic composition, the rule of thirds, spacial relationships and proper framing. In being able to manipulate the frame students learn advanced techniques for calculating focus, determining depth of field, angle of view, and perspective. Lighting is as much an art as it is a science.

This course covers both. Students learn how lighting affects the tone, mood and texture of a film as well as lighting as a storytelling device and its impact on space, subtext, symbolism and emotional context of a scene. Students are taught to develop a pictorial lighting style that best serves the script then to design a technical lighting schematic in order achieve the desired effect. Multiple strategies to lighting a scene are covered. From these approaches students can develop a realistic lighting plan for a film.

PRODUCTION LAB 2

Once again students are brought into a film set to better refine their production skills. In this course students produce a short film project in-class. Using a pre-designed script, sets, and cast students focus their attention on the finer details of production workflows as they pertain to camera operation, focus, exposure, slating, lighting placement, color, miking, audio mixing, and continuity. Students rotate every two weeks through key departments on the production portion of this courses.

Students are also introduced to the Hi-definition format as this project is shot in parallel fashion with 16mm thereby giving students a true comparison of formats. During the production both camera and lighting instructors take time for lectures on technical information or processes related to the production at hand.

EDIT LAB 2

This course takes the editing process a step farther. Students learn how to input audio elements from a variety of sources including CDs, MP3, DAT, or Compact Flash. These elements are then brought into AVID for syncing and layoff with picture. Audio editing and mixing are covered via AVID including topics on sample rates and conversions. Students export their work to DVD for review. This course also takes DVD burning to a more advanced level. Covered is DVD encoding, compression and authoring.

Topics include menu design and creating alternate DVD features. Image capture from non-tape based Hi-Definition sources is quickly taking over traditional tape workflows. This course teaches students how to import media from these types of sources including P2 generated MXF files, SxS or Express34 Cards. Computer file formats continue to evolve. This course also covers compression codecs including, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Long GOP, H264, AVC and a variety of other schemes. File formats such as OMFI, quicktime, MXF, mov, wav, dpx, avi and many others are introduced as they pertain to the editorial process and the software application.