Intermediate Video builds on the concepts and technical skills introduced in Intro to Video, and has a different theme each term. This semester of Intermediate Video will be focused on the following thematic, conceptual and formal questions: How do we approach storytelling with the consciousness that history is understood differently by victors and vanquished, images read differently in centers and peripheries, words have different weights in different languages, and even our founding myths and fairy tales exist in multiple variations? In particular, how can we work with narratives around places and histories that are particularly contested? Edward Said wrote in After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986) that “we can narrate ourselves against another people’s pattern, but since it is not ours … we emerge as its effects, its errata, its counternarratives. Whenever we try to narrate ourselves, we appear as dislocations in their discourse.” How do we narrate against the grain? What truth claims can art make in post-war and post-colonial contexts where, as one Atlas Group work denotes, “the truth will be known when the last witness is dead”? How do we reposition the margins as a site of resistance or, as Kevin Young wrote in The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, “read for the shadows” in between the lines of official history? We will read some of the key texts that established these ideas, and look at possible narrative strategies, including counterpoint, polyphony, unreliable narration, destabilized points of view and audition, and multiple-channel work.
Learning Outcomes:
Students will be expected to:
- become more proficient in the use of cameras, lighting, sound equipment, and editing software, including more advanced cameras and more complex post-production workflows, through technical workshops, in-class exercises, and practical application;
- engage with ideas and works important to both historical and contemporary discourse around the medium;
- continue to develop the vocabulary to critique each other's work;
- produce two assigned projects and one project of their own design, after meeting with the instructor to discuss their final project proposal.
Delivery Method: Fully in-person
Prerequisites: Introduction to Video. Please email the instructor to express interest in enrolling and include a link to work produced in previous film/video courses. Preference will be given to students who have Plans in film/video or related to the course theme; please include this information in your statement of interest if relevant.
Course Level: 4000-level
Credits: 4
Th 1:40PM - 5:20PM (Full-term)
Maximum Enrollment: 14
Course Frequency: Every Term
Categories: All courses , Film and Video , Fully In-Person , Visual Arts (VA)
Tags: decolonization , film and video , Narrative , production , Storytelling , video