Become an Actor or Director with These Film Courses at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large.

Film theory is about the cinema as a medium rather than about individual films, although theorists often use individual films as examples in generating their theories and film theory is frequently applied to discussions of individual films. Film theory is generally distinguished from film criticism, which concentrates on evaluating individual films. Film theory can also be distinguished from film analysis, which aims to describe how specific features of a film relate to each other in the structure of a film (or body of films) as a whole. Thus, a film theory might note that a film is unlike reality in that a viewer cannot control what he or she sees; a film analysis might note that a specific shot restricts the viewer's knowledge of a future plot point; and film criticism might praise the cinematographer's use of framing to increase suspense.

Coolest courses in Film Studies

Production

FILM 2000: Beginning Filmmaking (3 Credits) - Instructs students in making Super-8 films. Covers use of cameras and editing equipment, basic editing and splicing techniques, and analysis of pertinent films. May emphasize making personal, experimental films or making narrative sound films, according to instructor. Students need to purchase materials and rent the necessary equipment. The Film Studies Program maintains an equipment pool with modest rental fees for students needing equipment.

FILM 2010: Moving Image Computer Foundations (3 Credits) - Provides students with artistic foundational hands-on experience in integrated use of media software in both the PC and MAC creative imaging making digital working environments. Includes fundamentals in general computer maintenance, creative and practical audio editing, image management and manipulation, and creative moving image practice.

FILM 2500: Introduction to Cinematography (3 Credits) - Film production class focusing on developing a basic understanding of the aesthetics and principles of Cinematography. Through projects, screenings, and critiques, students learn creative camera lighting processes.

FILM 2900: Lighting (3 Credits) - Covers the basics of "why you need lighting", color temp, as well as camera techniques, lighting theory, and lighting set-ups for still and motion picture film video.

FILM 3400: Cinema Production I (3 Credits) - Exploration of creative cinema production through short production and post-production projects. A short final project will be required. Focuses on the tactics and strategies of independent cinema production, examining a variety of approaches to genre.

FILM 3600: Digital Post-Production Process (3 Credits) - Through projects, discussions, and screenings, this class explores the practices and aesthetics of computer-based moving-image art editing.

FILM 3610: The Art of Filmmaking Technique (3 Credits) - Explores the application of the technical methods of production for coherent, expressive purposes. Using classic, independent, and experimental films and videos as models, learn how to use light/shadow, composition, editing, and sound for the articulation and interpretation of content.

FILM 3620: Experimental Digital Animation (3 Credits) - Instructs students in the making of digital animation. Covers the use of the exposure sheet, frame series manipulation, digital motion techniques, and an analysis of pertinent films. Emphasis is on digital tools to create individual, personal, or experimental animated works. Includes experimental techniques of transfer between digital media and film.

FILM 4030: Visiting Filmmakers Seminar (3 Credits) - Examines creative issues in contemporary cinema art. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students explore filmmaking ideas with guest artists within a seminar setting. Filmmakers, videographers and programmers of national and international reputation, with an emphasis on "experimental" practice, interact with graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and discuss their work at seminar meetings, public lectures or events.

FILM 4600: Creative Digital Cinematography (3 Credits) - Explores creative approaches to single camera digital cinematography through short projects, discussions, and screenings. Relates creative photography and poetic approaches to the digital camera cinema.

History

FILM 3051: Film History 1 (4 Credits) - Intensive introduction to film history from 1895 to 1935. Topics covered include the beginnings of motion picture photography, the growth of narrative complexity from Lumiere to Griffith, American silent comedy, Soviet theories of montage, German expressionist films, and the transition to sound.

FILM 3061: Film History 2 (4 Credits) - Starts with the late 1930s and early 1940s films of Renoir and Welles and follows the historical growth and evolution of film aesthetics to the present. Studies Italian neorealist, French new wave, and recent experimental films, as well as the films of major auteur figures such as Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Antonioni, and Coppola.

FILM 3081: American Film in the 1980s and '90s (3 Credits) - Examines the relationship between American films of the 1980s and '90s and their cultural and historical context. Includes films by Lynch, Stone, Solondz, Scott, Scorsese, Lee, Duyne, Lemmons, Tarantino, Altman.

FILM 3091: Post-War American Film/Culture/Politics (3 Credits) - Examines the relationship between American films from the mid-1940s to the present day and their cultural and historical context. Includes films by Capra, Curtiz, Frankenheimer, Kazan, Kramer, Jewison, Wexler, Pakula, Cimino, Fincher, Lynch, Stone, and Lee.

FILM 3191: "The Golden Age": Film Directors, Actors, and Writers from the Golden Age of Television (3 Credits) - Traces the roots of live television and anthologies of the fifties. Examines several of the most interesting and radical Hollywood directors, writers, and actors of the sixties and seventies who emerged from this "golden age" of television: Frankenheimer, Penn, Altman, Lumet, Cassavetes, Serling, and Chayevsky.

FILM 3501: Film Production Management (3 Credits) - Familiarizes students with principles of film management techniques as well as problem-solving methodologies developed specifically for the film industry. Emphasizes the technique of production boarding as the central tool in production management as well as budget and contracts information.

FILM 4021: Directing/Acting for the Camera (3 Credits) - Offers an intensive workshop that provides students with experience directing dramatic material, acting before a camera, and interpreting or adopting dramatic material for film. No experience in directing or acting required.

Genre and Movements

FILM 2312: Film Trilogies (3 Credits) - Study of films designed as trilogies, drawing on a wide range of international cinema. Films include Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy (India), Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy (Poland), Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel cycle (France), and Abbas Kiarostami's Iran Trilogy (Iran).

FILM 2412: Melodrama and Culture (3 Credits) - Explores the evolution of melodrama as a film genre from the 1910s to the Hollywood classical era and contemporary cinema, and the genre's adaptability to different historical cultural contexts outside of American cinema. Analyzes the political and cultural functions of melodrama in contexts ranging from classical Hollywood to Latin American cinema, from European films of the 1960s to revisionist films of the 1990s.

FILM 2522: Hollywood Western (3 Credits) - Surveys the genre of the Hollywood western, showing forth the cinematic best of that form of filmmaking in juxtaposition with the nine documentaries comprising the film The West, by Stephen Ives, presented by Ken Burns. The facts of the Ives series are in careful juxtaposition with the myths of the western.

FILM 3042: Horror Film (3 Credits) - Serious investigation of the horror film genre as well as its origins in, and relation to, works of romanticist literature (e.g., Poe, Shelley). Issues include: the relation of fantasy and reality; gender in horror film; psychological issues raised by the films; historical issues generated by the genre.

Topics

FILM 2003: Film Topics (3 Credits) - Varying topics on important individuals, historical developments, groupings of films, film directors, critical and theoretical issues in film. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours, provided the topics are different.

FILM 2613: Exploring Good and Evil through Film (3 Credits) - Eighteen films depict our capacities for good and evil. Topics addressed include the following: the Holocaust, Jung's concept of "the Shadow," the Seven Deadly Sins, altruistic and sociopathic personalities, capital punishment, the redemptive narrative, and the satanic in film.

FILM 2003: Major Film Directors (3 Credits) - Focuses on the work of a single director or a group of related directors. Course content varies each semester. Consult the online Schedule Planner for specific topic. May be repeated up to 12 total credit hours with departmental consent. May be used for partial fulfillment of a college requirement only once.

FILM 3033: Color and Cinema (3 Credits) - Examines color and cinema from historical, technological, aesthetic and theoretical perspectives. Students will be required to complete both creative and scholarly assignments.

FILM 3603: Sound and Vision (3 Credits) - Historical and aesthetic overview of sound in relation to film, ranging from Hitchcock's Blackmail to Mailick's The Thin Red Line. Pursues issues in sound design, mixing film scores, voiceovers, and film/sound theory in narrative, experimental, and documentary films. Among the filmmakers to be studied are Vertov, Welles, Altman, Brakhage, Lipsett, Eisenstein, Coppola, Scorcese, Stone, Leone, Godard, Nelson. Also explores a limited practicum using Pro Tools for sound design.

Intensive and Small Courses

FILMS 3004: Films of Alfred Hitchcock (3 Credits) - Intensive, critical investigation of the films of one of cinema's greatest directors, Alfred Hitchcock. Concepts to be examined include authorship, desire, gender, and film acting. Critical and theoretical writings about Hitchcock are explored.

FILM 3104: Film Criticism and Theory (3 Credits) - Surveys the range and function of film criticism, introduces major positions and concepts of film theory, and focuses on students' abilities to write about film.

Workshops

FILM 2005: Movies and Screenplay Analysis (3 Credits) - Analyzes the narrative structure of films and screenplays. Familiarizes students with the specific narrative characteristics of the classic motion picture, the three-act structure, and the multiple tasks involved in the process of adaptation. Dissects the form and structure of feature films through analyzing movies and screenplays.

FILM 2105: Introduction to the Screenplay (3 Credits) - Explores, through close reading and original student work, the form and structure of the screenplay from the writer's perspective. Students will begin by analyzing structural and character elements of such screenplays as Chinatown and Witness, then analyze screenplays of their choosing. Students will learn the basics of screenwriting form, then develop and write 10 minutes of an original screenplay.

FILM 3515: Camera Workshop (1 Credit) - Three intensive workshops focusing on the development of independent cinema production and post-production skills. The instructor must certify students in order to continue with their BFA studies.

FILM 3525: Cinema Editing Workshop (1 Credit) - This course gives three intensive workshops focusing on the development of independent cinema post-production skills. The instructor must certify students in order to continue with their BFA studies.

FILM 4075: Scriptwriting Workshop (3 Credits) - This is one of course I'd be most interested in taking. It is designed to give students practical criticism of their script writing and technical format requirements. You will be studying either stage plays or screenplays as announced. This class may be repeated up to 9 total credit hours.

About the University of Colorado at Boulder

Little known facts: The school was established back in 1876. Their motto is "Let Your Light Shine". There have been approximately 24,000 undergraduates and 4,000 post-graduates. They were the first to create a new form of matter, called the "Bose-Einstein condensate" which is a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero. They were the first to observe a "fermionic condensate" formed from pairs of atoms in a gas. They discovered a protein in the blood that can prevent the AIDS virus from reproducing and spreading to healthy cells. The university has also accomplished many more things; such as, the creation of a classifying and numbering system for human chromosomes, and the production of computerized 3D images of the entire body in anatomical sections.

University or college location: Boulder, Colorado

Directions to the college or university

From DIA: You will fly in or out of DIA or should I say, Denver International Airport. Driving time between DIA and Boulder is approximately 60 to 90 minutes. From DIA, follow Peña Boulevard (10 miles) south to I-70, and exit onto I-70 west. Follow I-70 west to I-270 west. I-270 merges into U.S. 36 west and takes you west into Boulder (about 23 miles). Exit at Baseline Road; turn left on Broadway and turn right or north. The campus is to the right. For alternate routes, see the map from DIA to Boulder.

From the Denver Area and South: To get to Boulder from the Denver area, go west on U.S. 36 (from I-25 or I-270) and exit at Baseline Road. Turn left (west) on Baseline Road, then right or north on Broadway to campus.

From the North: From the north, take U.S. 287 south to Highway 119. Highway 119 becomes Highway 157 (Foothills Parkway) just north of Boulder. Turn right or west from Foothills Parkway onto Baseline Road. Drive west on Baseline to Broadway, then turn right (north) on Broadway to campus.

From the West: Take I-70 east to U.S. 6. Go east on U.S. 6 to CO. 58. Turn right (east) on CO.58 to CO. 93. Make a left (north) onto CO. 93 towards Boulder. CO. 93 will turn into Broadway once in Boulder. Continue on Broadway west until you see the campus on your right. It will be shortly after you pass Baseline Rd.