Foundations of Digital Filmmaking

Catalog description

Credits 3. 1 Lecture Hour. 5 Lab Hours. This course introduces students to the essential creative, technical and analytical foundations of digital filmmaking. Emphasizing the integration of production craft and cinematic literacy, students engage in hands-on exercises in camera operation, lighting, sound recording and non-linear editing while critically analyzing how these techniques shape meaning, emotion and rhythm. Through the study of film form, aesthetics and visual storytelling, students develop the ability to translate abstract narrative ideas into concrete audiovisual expressions. The course positions filmmaking as both a practical craft and an interpretive art, an iterative process of seeing, composing, recording and refining, linking the expressive choices made on set and in post-production to the analytical understanding of cinematic form. By the end of the term, students will have completed a short digital project demonstrating technical fluency, aesthetic awareness and reflective critical insight. Prerequisites: Graduate classification or approval of instructor.