HONR 181C - Intro to Film Appreciation

The aim of this course is to acquaint students with the history and development of film as narrative art and form of communication. Looking at movies from the perspectives of how they are made and how they are consumed, the course will provide students with the basic vocabulary of film studies while also introducing them to critical methods for close analysis of films and ways of writing about them. Honors students will also study the topic of genre in greater depth, reading a separate short text on the topic and pursuing independent research to write a longer essay on the genre of their choosing and present their conclusions to the rest of the class using visual media. Finally, Honors students will also create independent special project also of their own design. This could include creating a short film, writing a short film-script or combining text/image/audio/video/and/or computer animation to engage critically with a film from the syllabus or the films they analyzed in their longer essay.