This seminar aims to channel the excitement and interest generated by the film Black Panther into a course that utilizes its themes, design elements, and costumes as a means to explore the art and culture of the African continent. This course will provide students with the tools to assess how African cultures are referenced and reimagined in the film, ultimately allowing them to assess if these allusions are informed and appropriate and how they shape our understanding of the film. The course begins by providing students with several theoretical frameworks for understanding the film and its use of African cultures, followed by an exploration of ancient and historical African empires that served as the inspiration for the mythological empire of Wakanda. The majority of the class focuses on specific characters, examining the actual culture practices and forms of dress that influenced their characterization, providing students with a more nuanced and informed understanding of African cultural practices. Students will examine a diverse range of visual art forms throughout the African continent, with an emphasis on textiles, dress and adornment. Most importantly, this course will encourage students to interrogate and question how African cultures are frequently referenced in American popular culture.

This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples--sound art, environmental recordings, music--will be provided and invited throughout the term.

The Documentary Production class is devoted to the development and production of short 5-10 minute documentaries.

The course promotes the idea of learning production skills through direct practice. Students in the class will be required to demonstrate an understanding of documentary research and development, camera techniques, location sound for documentary, as well as editing both picture and sound.

Students will consider important questions when developing their ideas for a documentary topic.

Course Goals:

Documentary Production will instill in film and television students an understanding and respect for the documentary format and medium.
Documentary Production will encourage students to explore various aesthetic options when shaping a documentary topic.
Students will learn the fundamental technical skills required to thoroughly research and develop a short documentary topic.
Students will learn the fundamentals of camera, sound, and editing considerations necessary for completing a short documentary.
Students will gain an appreciation of the role documentary can play in purposeful forms of filmmaking, with an emphasis on community engagement and community outreach.

During the months ahead, you will develop a screenplay suitable for production in Film 3300W Thesis Film Production. To help accomplish this, you will be discussing various aspects of screenwriting and filmmaking, doing appropriate reading, screening films, completing exercises meant to develop your ideas and, most importantly, writing a five-to-ten page screenplay.

All assignments must be typed. Spelling and grammar count. Assignments are due at the beginning of each class.

Course Objectives and Goals

To complete a series of writing exercises
To present selected scenes from your screenplay to the class
To write a 5-10 page screenplay in proper format for production in an advanced film production class

By paying particular attention to the intersection of films, literature and cities, this course explores the construction of urban spaces and how they are depicted in film and literature. Through an array of primary and secondary sources, students will be exposed to the dark city and film noir, the city of love (Paris), the city in ruins and the divided city (Berlin, Belfast, Beirut), utopias and dystopias (fantastic and virtual cities), ghettos and barrios, the city as queer playground, the global city and cities in globalization. By comparing myriad writings and films about city life and culture, students will also explore the ways in which urban spaces reflect the social realities of race, class, age, gender, and ethnicity and how power relations are organized by these social differences which, in turn, produce urban patterns and processes.

"This class explores composition and arrangement for the large jazz ensemble from 1920s foundations to current postmodern practice. Consideration given to a variety of styles and to the interaction of improvisation and composition. Study of works by Basie, Ellington, Evans, Gillespie, Golson, Mingus, Morris, Nelson, Williams, and others. Open rehearsals, workshops, and performances of student compositions by the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. ĺĘ"

A series of progressive composition projects, culminating in a large final projecting, using various types of music hardware and software. Instruction in recording, editing, synthesis, sampling, digital sound processing, sequencing, and interactive systems. Close listening to computer and electronic music from various genres including Varese, Cage, Schaeffer, Xenakis, Lansky, Stockhausen, Tcherepnin, Barlow, Gunter, and Eno. Subject focuses on using the computer as a means of musical creativity and intuition.

What are the roles of analysis, description and performance in developing musical perception and understanding? How are units of perception different from units of description? Bamberger's text "Developing Musical Intuitions" and the accompanying software "Impromptu" are used as environments for composing melodies and percussion pieces. These, in turn, serve as the basis for students to interrogate their musical intuitions so as to expand and develop them. Term projects involve learning to perform a new composition or an experiment in musical perception, or designing multiple representations for appropriate analysis of a significant work. The goal of this class is practical: to interrogate, make explicit, and thus to develop the powerful musical intuitions that are at work as you make sense of the music all around you. Reflecting, we will ask how this knowledge develops in ordinary and extraordinary ways.

This set of course materials includes lecture slides, activity files, images, quizzes, tests, review questions, and project assignments for Digital Media at Georgia Gwinnett College. The course uses open-source applications such as GIMP and InkScape.

Individual chapters are available for download due to the large file sizes. Web-based assignments to supplement these materials are located on the GGC Wiki: All Digital Media Assignments

Topics covered include:

Digital Images
Image Processing
Audio Processing
Video Processing
Creating Animation

How does the editing of images and sound reveal the complexity of an experience? Through editing we will learn to manipulate time, space, sound and emotions to create a subjective experience we can share with the viewers. In this course you will work to develop skills in the craft of editing. This is a hands-on course, emphasizing non-linear editing using Premiere Pro CC. In addition to the technical aspects of editing, we will study the art and theory of the craft through screenings of a variety of works. We will explore various conventions and expressions in narrative, documentary and experimental forms. Over the course of the semester, you will begin to define your role as an editor, understand editing as a potential profession, and discover how it enriches your overall process as a storyteller.

FORUMS is a collection of open online resources supporting post-secondary instruction of music in general studies. FORUMS includes links to authentic, academic and scholarly materials; pedagogical materials. FORUMS seeks to build community among gen ed music teachers. See the FORUMS and community box below for more information. In this prototype pilot version (FORUMS v.1.1), the best way to navigate the site is to use the pull-down tabs from the above menu. FORUMS’ purposes are:

1. to provide an access point to collected, evaluated open access music sites for undergraduate students and faculty;

2. to develop community among those teaching undergraduate general education students; and

3. to support the teaching of music to adult learners, especially students in general studies college courses.

Site users include, but are not limited to: students and teachers of music in general studies classes and adult learners of music worldwide.

Contributors include, but are not limited to: music educators, music performers, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, museum and archive curators and educators, music librarians, SoTL specialists, and others with expertise related to teaching music to adult learners.

This open set of course materials for Film Aesthetics is a downloadable version of a course created for a learning management system. Included are learning modules and a quiz bank based on introductory film concepts including the following topics: Narrative Structure and Motifs, Mise-en-Scene, Cinematography, Sound Design, Music, and Visual Effects.

The goals of this class are two-fold: the first is to experience the creative processes and storytelling behind several of theater's arts and to acquire the analytical skills necessary in assessing the meaning they transmit when they come together in production. Secondly, we will introduce you to these languages in a creative way by giving you hands-on experience in each. To that end, several Visiting Artists and MIT faculty in Theater Arts will guest lecture, lead workshops, and give you practical instruction in their individual art forms.

Introduces students to the basics of musical structure and proficiencies expected of musicians through participation in three integrated hands-on approaches. Lectures introduce students to the basics of music--pitch, rhythm, and its combinations--in a variety of musical settings, including analysis and discussion of students' compositions and of related larger works. Sight-singing lab focuses on developing practical musical skills through oral, aural, and written experiences with rhythms, melodies, intervals, scales, chords, and music notation. Piano lab introduces and continues development of fundamental music skills through keyboard practice.

The topic for Fall 2006 is short film and radio plays. This course investigates current trends and topics in German literary, theater, film, television, radio, and other media arts productions. Students analyze media texts in the context of their production, reception, and distribution as well as the public debates initiated by these works. The topic for Fall 2006 is German Short Film, a popular format that represents most recent trends in film production, and German Radio Art, a striving genre that includes experimental radio plays, sound art, and audio installations. Special attention will be given to the representation of German minorities, contrasted by their own artistic expressions reflecting changes in identity and a new political voice. Students have the opportunity to discuss course topics with a writer, filmmaker, and/or media artist from Germany. The course is taught in German.

A continuation of Harmony and Counterpoint I, including chromatic harmony and modulation, a more extensive composition project, keyboard laboratory, and sight-singing laboratory.

Basic writing skills in music of the common-practice period (Bach to Brahms). Work includes regular written assignments leading to the composition of short pieces, analyzing representative works from the literature, keyboard laboratory, and sight-singing choir. It is recommended that entering students have some concert music listening or playing background. Enrollment may be limited.

This course examines the production, transmission, preservation and qualities of folk music in the British Isles and North America from the 18th century to the folk revival of the 1960s and the present. There is a special emphasis on balladry, fiddle styles, and African-American influences. The class sings ballads and folk songs from the Child and Lomax collections as well as other sources as we examine them from literary, historical, and musical points of view. Readings supply critical and background materials from a number of sources. Visitors and films bring additional perspectives.

Through a progressive series of composition projects, students investigate the sonic organization of musical works and performances, focusing on fundamental questions of unity and variety. Aesthetic issues are considered in the pragmatic context of the instructions that composers provide to achieve a desired musical result, whether these instructions are notated in prose, as graphic images, or in symbolic notation. No formal training is required. Weekly listening, reading, and composition assignments draw on a broad range of musical styles and intellectual traditions, from various cultures and historical periods.

An introduction to the basic components and practices of preproduction and production methodologies for content creation in commercial video and film production. Through lectures, reading assignments, screenings and practice, students will learn the basics of all stages of production and working together, creating effective production aesthetics in pre-production, production and post-production, script-writing and story-boarding, cinematography aesthetics (lighting and camera), and design and graphics functions in editing.