How does a scene or a story affect us, and why? What is cinematic storytelling and why does it work? To answer these questions, we will explore film production techniques as they have been used over time, such as sound, editing, lighting, focal length, framing, and more.

DicksonFilm_Still

In this introductory lecture course, students will be introduced to the global history of film production with a strong emphasis on innovation, auteur visionaries, experimentation and the advent of new technologies.  Film production has a symbiotic relationship with cultural, political and historical time periods as well as with other filmmaking innovations within and beyond the film industry. The story of film is one of creative inspiration, stops and starts, overlaps and radical experimentation. In this course, we will think about how the story of film production responds to the question posed by ground breaking filmmakers: “How can I do this differently?”

Particular emphasis will be placed on filmmakers who broke new ground in technological and creative innovations, and how technical approaches bounced across borders and genres, and at times even disappeared. Instead of following the money, we will follow the creative innovation.

Alongside these creative innovations are technological advances such as the move from silence to sound, black and white to colour, static to moving camera, celluloid to digital and the influences of editing and visual effects.

The history of film production did not happen in isolation, and we look at filmmaking as a global practice exploring cinema in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, as well as the American and Canadian context.  Students will examine these topics through readings and by analyzing scenes and whole films from different time periods and filmmakers.

Format of the course: Lectures & Screenings

Note: This is a lecture class with video & written assignments.

Professor Shannon Walsh: shannon.walsh@ubc.ca

TA: Sam Mohseni

Time: Monday

ASSIGNMENTS
READING & RESOURCES