Language of Film

Catalog description

This course introduces students to film aesthetics through the analysis of film form and style. The course aims to provide students with a fluency in, and, an understanding of film's unique language as it evolves technologically, historically, and generically. Beyond teaching students how to recognize and describe formal choices and techniques, students will be asked to engage in close readings of films, attending to the greater aesthetic significance and stakes of formal choices and innovations evident within a particular film, directorial oeuvre, period or movement. Understanding form in relation to content, we will look at the conventions of narrative film, the employment of formal techniques like cinematography - including shot sizes (from close-up to long shot), composition of shots, and lighting; editing, mise-en-scene; and the use of sound as they function within particular filmic contexts and as they function within film's systemic languages (like that of continuity editing and genre).