Courses

The nature of cinema as a technology, a business, a cultural product, an entertainment medium, and most especially an art form. Study of cinematic genres, stylistics, and nationalities; outstanding film artists and artisans; the relationship of cinema to other art forms and media, as well as to society.

In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, plumes of dust fill the New York City streets as the monster Bowser attacks the city. Mario, seemingly beaten, hides in a pizzeria. What inspires him to keep fighting? He sees himself in a TV ad for his plumbing business, wearing a superhero cape and flying next to the Freedom Tower. He finds solace in the representation of himself as a superhero and in a city that refused to concede that the game was over after 9/11. Such a scene is emblematic of a seminar that will explore the superhero’s relationship to the city’s history and its traumas. Our eye will move between Hollywood blockbusters and global art cinema to help us mull how the superhero exemplifies, for some, the excesses of the U.S. during the global War on Terror. We will see Batman’s alter-ego Bruce Wayne run towards what looks like an imploding World Trade Center on 9/11 (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and witness the superhero framed as an ideological smokescreen for the callous administration of George W. Bush who used the attacks to justify an endless war (The Broken Circle Breakdown).

While strongly focused on the post-9/11 superhero and its links to New York City, the cross-media seminar will track the superhero’s initial rise in popularity during the trauma of World War II. It will mobilize the archival resources of Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library collections around the papers of noted X-Men writer Chris Claremont, so students can read how the artist conceived of bringing histories around the Holocaust into his spectacular stories. Such dips into the archives will help us assess how such empowered figures offer surprising routes of representation for the disenfranchised. We will also consider the authoritarian possibilities of the vigilante Batman, situating Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns against a cultural study that draws links between the comic and Bernhard Goetz who killed four black teenagers in a Manhattan subway in 1984. To further frame how the superhero serves as a potent means of socio-political critique, acclaimed artists and writers will be invited into the classroom. These include Paul Pope whose Batman: Year 100 (2006) presents a dystopian superhero that allegorizes the oppressive aspects of the War on Terror’s surveillance regime. A culminating field trip to the National September 11 Memorial Museum will be organized. There, students will visit “The World Trade Center in the Popular Imagination” exhibit which showcases the decades-long link between the superhero and the architectural marvel in popular culture. Grounded in Columbia’s and New York City’s resources, profoundly interdisciplinary, and punctuated by artist perspectives, the class will ultimately offer students tools to perform theoretically incisive research on American pop culture that joyfully flies across boundaries.

Cinema and videogames are moving-image-based media, and, especially over the past two decades, they have been credited with influencing each other. But how deep do their similarities actually go? In what way do the possibilities available to game developers differ from those available to filmmakers? How does each medium segment and present space, time, and action? What aesthetic effects are open to games that are not open to cinema, and vice versa? This course offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamic relationship between cinema and video games. Through a combination of film screenings, gameplay, theoretical reading/discussions, and practical assignments, students will examine the historical, cultural, aesthetic, and narrative connections between these two influential media forms. The course aims to foster an understanding of how cinema and video games intersect, inform, and influence one another, providing a unique perspective on storytelling techniques within these mediums. The course will culminate in a final presentation where students will adapt an existing intellectual property, preferably a film or TV show, into a video game (or vice versa), justifying their creative choices.

This class focuses on the role of a creative producer during development of low budget film. Students will learn the framework for identifying good stories and developing them into a 3-5 minute short screenplay. We will explore the fundamental aspects of script development and the collaborative relationship between a producer and writer during the development phase. Students will learn critical elements such as writing an effective logline, treatment, and screenplay, and how to provide constructive notes and script analysis thereafter. Through lectures, screenings, writing assignments, and discussions, students will complete the course having written a first draft of a  short screenplay, revision and set of written notes as a producer.

This practical lab focuses on the fundamental aspects of development, planning and preparation for low budget films. While using a short film script as their own case study – students will learn pitching, development, script breakdown, scheduling, budgeting and fundraising. Discussion of legal issues, location scouting, deliverables, marketing, distribution and film festival strategy will allow students to move forward with their own projects after completing the class. Using weekly assignments, in-class presentations and textbook readings to reinforce each class discussion topic, students will complete the class having created a final prep/production binder for their project, which includes the script breakdown, production schedule, line item budget, financing/fundraising plan and film festival strategy for their chosen script.

Modern feature-length screenplays demand a specific architecture. In this class students will enter with an idea for a film, and during the first eight sessions build a coherent treatment; that is, a summary of the events and major emotional arcs of the film's three acts. In the final four sessions students will begin and complete the first act of their feature-length screenplay.

Tech Arts: Post Production delivers a practical introduction to the post production process, a vital part of filmmaking. The course will look at the process of moving efficiently from production to post production, the techniques of non-linear editing and ultimately the process of professionally finishing a film for modern distribution. Students will learn foundational post terminology, how to create the best workflow for your film, how to manage data/footage in the edit room, and offline and online editing. Additionally, the class will cover other key steps in the post production process including audio syncing, transcoding, exporting and mastering. The hands-on lessons and exercises will be conducted using the industry-standard Non-Linear Editing System, Davinci Resolve, and will serve as a primer for other professional systems, including Adobe Premiere and Davinci Resolve. Each lecture will consist of hands-on demonstrations and self-paced practice using content created by the students and/ or content provided by the program.

Documentaries are increasingly proliferating across small and large screens around the world. They circulate as market commodities, forms of entertainment, and vehicles for social change. In this seminar we will compare different national and regional contexts of contemporary documentary production, including projects created within the media industries of Mexico, Peru, India, China, Cambodia, and Israel. We will also examine how documentaries resonate locally, but can still transcend geographic borders and engage viewers across the globe. Crucial to our course will be the close analysis of how documentaries actively address civil rights struggles, oppressive government regimes, cultural trends, environmental crises, and progressive social movements to create more inclusive, equitable communities. So, too, will we examine emerging technologies (such as VR/AR), strategies of international co-production, star-studded film festivals, as well as the global reach and impact of mega studios such as Netflix and Wanda. This course fulfills the Global Core requirement.