Department: School of Film/Video

Code Name Description
FAIC170 Animation History I Course is for BFA1s and BFA2 transfer students, but other students can add it with Permission of Instructor on Course Advising Day. This is the first semester of a yearlong international historical survey of animated media, covering the period from t...
FAIC171 Animation History II Course is for BFA1s and BFA2 transfer students, but other students can add it with Permission of Instructor on Course Advising Day. This is the second semester of a yearlong international historical survey of animated media, covering the period from...
FAIC300W Student Initiative: Film/Video Curating "Film Video Curating" is a class designed to encourage student initiative, based on a successful practice associated with the spring session of "Film Today" that has been in place- albeit informally- since 2012. Students will work with the instructor...
FAIC370 Survey of CG Art & Animation Historical survey of CG (computer graphic) art and animation from the early introduction of digital technology to current developments. The course will engage in frequent discussions about the theory and practice of CG art and animation. Class sessio...
FAIC372 Women of Animation History From the beginning, women and underrepresented groups have held a strong presence within animation, yet when examining history, minimal emphasis is placed on their contributions. The truth is, throughout most of the 20th century, leading women artist...
FAIC373 Animation, Design and Cultural Identity This is a class where theory meets practice. Animators have to design and create their characters from scratch, and whatever designs they come up with convey social and cultural meaning, whether consciously or not. This class aims to raise awareness...
FAIC374 Commentary Through Cartoons Political cartooning is a vital element of a free press in a democracy and contributes to the critique of the modern political landscape. Through an examination of the history of political cartooning in the United States, as well as specific cartooni...
FAIC385 Seminar in Black Experimental Film/Video Seminar in Black Experimental Film/Video This seminar is designed to facilitate a creative and rigorous conversation around Blackness and the audiovisual, particularly in experimental film/animation, documentary/non-fiction, and video art. Particular...
FAIC390 Screenwriting for Animators Course receives Critical Studies credit in the Arts in Context (AIC) category. A writing class for animators that avoids traditional gag-oriented animation writing. Screenwriting basics such as format, structure, action, conflict, story and character...
FAIC392 The Writers' Room This course teaches students the fundamentals of how to collaboratively write screenplays for animated network television. "The Writers' Room" will be modeled from a real-life network television writers' room scenario. The teacher will provide instru...
FAIC394 History of Character Anim This course covers the history of character animaation, mainly focusing on the American studio system. It focuses on studio and individual styles, as well as the influences of technological development, other arts, and historical events (including po...
FAIC395 Character Animation in Disney Features Course receives Critical Studies credit in the Arts in Context(AIC) category. In this course, students will learn about Disney 2D animated features from the studio's beginnings through the 1960s. Readings, lectures, and screenings will be prepare st...
FAIC400 Film Today A beloved CalArts tradition "Film Today," offered by the Program of Film and Video, is open to the entire Institute, to graduate and undergraduate students in all programs, for Critical Studies credits. Opening a window into the world as well as into...
FAIC405 History of Experimental Film A survey of experimental a.k.a. avant garde film from the 1920's to the 1970's. Dominant traditions to be examined include: Dadaist and Surrealist cinema of the 1920's, Trance films and Psychodramas of the 1940's and 50's, the Mythopoetic cinema of t...
FAIC410 History of Documentary Film I This course is available for online registration and also open by Permission of the Instructor at Advising Day. An historical survey of documentary (or non-fiction) tradition in motion pictures and it major genre: the exploration film, the ethnograp...
FAIC411 History of Documentary Film II This course is available for online registration and also open by Permission of the Instructor at Advising Day. An historical survey of documentary (or non-fiction) tradition in motion pictures, with special emphasis on the development of the origin...
FAIC412 Documentary Inquiries This course will investigate a broad range of media art and documentary projects, with attention to the performative act of witnessing, the creative address of media archives by artists, and the aspiration to negotiate new social relations with colla...
FAIC413 Documenting Conflict: Palestine, Israel This is a course in documentary theory / studies through the lens of films made in or about Palestine and Israel. We may also include works from other zones of conflict chosen by the students. Issues of politics and form, ethics and aesthetics are ce...
FAIC415 Questions of Third Cinema The concept of 'Third Cinema', coined in Latin America by filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, implies a critical reappraisal of the national or cultural specificity, post-colonial identity, the dialectical connection between domination/su...
FAIC416 Cinema and Media: East Central Europe Course open to BFA3 and BFA4 students across the institute. This course will also have spaces available to enroll at Course Advising Day. This course will examine narrative films from Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic and Slovakia] and Hungary from...
FAIC420 Film History I - 1895-1950 Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Film History is a two semester survey of cinema from its origins in the late 19th century to the present day. The course emphasizes the development of cinema aesthetics through the study of works by...
FAIC421 Film History II - 1950-PRESENT Course available by permission of instructor only. Film History is a two semester survey of cinema from its origins in the late 19th century to the present day. The course emphasizes the development of cinema aesthetics through the study of works by...
FAIC422 History of Film: Women Directors Women have been routinely excluded from filmic participation and from the cinematic canon on multiple levels. BFI's famous "50 best films of all time" list (https://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all -time) includes only one female director. T...
FAIC424 Sexuality, Gender, Destruction in Cinema This course will provide a forum to view and discuss films and readings which problematize traditional constructions of gender and sexuality on multiple levels. The selected works also have a special emphasis on trajectories of violence and destructi...
FAIC425 History of Sound in Animation Animation sound uses a combination of dialogue, effects, and music to complement moving images. A fair amount has been written about the use of music in animation, but very little has been written about the overall role of sound in animation. Or, h...
FAIC426 Cinema of Exile Cinema of Exile: Perspectives on Palestine and Israel The course addresses the experience of exile and displacement understood both as a physical and psychic condition, as expressed in films and texts from Palestine and Israel. Through screening a v...
FAIC428 Prostitution in Film Course available by permission of instructor only. The course will view films and read texts that center on the prostitution, 'the world's oldest profession'. Prostitution has been a subject of singular fascination since biblical times. We will consi...
FAIC430 History of Video Art This course will survey video art and alternative media practice following the introduction of portable video recording equipment in the late 1960s. This term the course will also specifically integrate video art from various Latin American and Carib...
FAIC432 Women in Cinema: Femininity /Performance More spots are available at Course Advising Day. Using feminist film criticism, film and cultural theory, psychoanalytic and post-colonial texts, we will explore how the advent of cinema has changed the symbolic and visual representation of sexual di...
FAIC435 The Room: a Critical Seminar This seminar is an attempt to reflect critically on our past/recent/or current experience of the Covid 19 pandemic, and acquire critical tools to think about life, filmmaking, writing and art making in a situation of confinement or quarantine. Even t...
FAIC439 Fourteen Questions to Jean-Luc Godard Fourteen Questions to Jean-Luc Godard. There will be additional spaces available at Course Advising Day. Since 1960 till his death in 2022, Jean-Luc Godard directed more than 100 features, shorts, series, essay films, television programs, etc. It...
FAIC442 Cinema Against the Grain Now that the cinematic present is dominated by previews for video games and theme park rides, and the cinematic past threatens to congeal into AFI's greatest hits lists, it is particularly important to examine under-appreciated, even disreputable fil...
FAIC444 EA Alumni Network: Building Connections This course focuses on building connections with alumni from the Experimental Animation program. We start by examining the histories and qualities that makes CalArts Experimental Animation the unique place that it is. After they graduate, many studen...
FAIC445 Jean-Luc/Cinema/Godard Course available by permission of instructor only. Jean-Luc Godard once said, "as long as I'm alive, [the cinema] shall live." No other film director has identified himself so intimately and passionately with the cinema and its history. And no other...
FAIC450 Special Topics: Realist Style An investigation into the formal means that narrative filmmakers (from the Italian neo-realists to the LA Rebellion, Renoir to Cassavetes) have used to achieve a heightened sense of "reality" in their work. Topics include the incorporation of documen...
FAIC451 Spec Topic: Curious Art of Autobiography This is a critical examination of first-person films drawn from personal experience, literature and history, as well as a practicum for studentsÈ own autobiographical work. We will be concerned with a wide variety of autobiographical sources includin...
FAIC452 Special Topics: Rock & Roll Movies Rock & Roll & Movies is a history of Popular Music from 1955 to the present, as seen through its representation in cinema. We will see key works in the history of Rock & Roll movies and read a number of the important critical texts on the music. Is...
FAIC453 Special Topics: The Western Course available by Permission of Instructor only. A survey of the richest, most inexhaustible genre in the American cinema. We will approach the Western as genre, as history and as mythology. Particular attention will be paid to questions of authors...
FAIC454 Special Topics:Utopia & Its Shadowlands Course available by Permission of Instructor only. The current age of Trump, Brexit, and climate disaster have brought discourses of the apocalypse into the U.S. and global mainstream. To some, we have entered a dystopic shadowland of alternative fac...
FAIC455 Politics, Paranoia & Porn 'staches: '70 POLITICS, PARANOIA AND PORN 'STACHES: '70s GENRE REVISIONISM Course available by permission of instructor only. The "New Hollywood" of 1967-1975 was an endlessly rich and eccentric period of American filmmaking. A generation of young filmmakers...
FAIC465 Chantal Akerman: An Intimate Passion This course is available for online registration. It will also be open by Permission of Instructor at Advising Day for additional enrollment. When Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) committed suicide, she left behind a prolific and singular oeuvre. A truly...
FAIC475 History of Experimental Animation This course is by Permission of Instructor Only. This thematically organized trip through the history of experimental animation will look at work from pre-cinema to the present day, with an eye towards connecting disparate time periods, traditions, a...
FAIC570 Seminar in Animation History Seminar in Animation History is a course for graduate students focusing on animation history and related research. The course includes related readings and seminar discussions on a range of topics, in-depth research on a topic of the student's choosi...
FAIC572 Women of Animation History From the beginning, women and underrepresented groups have held a strong presence within animation, yet when examining history, minimal emphasis is placed on their contributions. The truth is, throughout most of the 20th century, leading women artist...
FAIC573 Animation, Design and Cultural Identity This is a class where theory meets practice. Animators have to design and create their characters from scratch, and whatever designs they come up with convey social and cultural meaning, whether consciously or not. This class aims to raise awareness...
FAIC574 Commentary Through Cartoons Political cartooning is a vital element of a free press in a democracy and contributes to the critique of the modern political landscape. Through an examination of the history of political cartooning in the United States, as well as specific cartooni...
FAIC580 Survey of CG Art & Animation Historical survey of CG (computer graphic) art and animation from the early introduction of digital technology to current developments. The course will engage in frequent discussions about the theory and practice of CG art and animation. Class sessio...
FAIC585 Seminar in Black Experimental Film/Video Seminar in Black Experimental Film/Video This seminar is designed to facilitate a creative and rigorous conversation around Blackness and the audiovisual, particularly in experimental film/animation, documentary/non-fiction, and video art. Particular...
FAIC590 Screenwriting for Animators Open to MFA students on a limited basis by permission of instructor only. A writing class for animators that avoids traditional gag-oriented animation writing. Screenwriting basics such as format, structure, action, conflict, story and character w...
FAIC592 The Writers' Room This course teaches students the fundamentals of how to collaboratively write screenplays for animated network television. "The Writers' Room" will be modeled from a real-life network television writers' room scenario. The teacher will provide instru...
FAIC594 History of Character Anim This course covers the history of character animaation, mainly focusing on the American studio system. It focuses on studio and individual styles, as well as the influences of technological development, other arts, and historical events (including po...
FAIC595 Character Animation in Disney Features Course available by permission of instructor only (enroll online; a few spots will be available on Course Advising Day as well). Course receives Critical Studies credit in the Arts in Context(AIC) category. In this course, students will learn about...
FAIC600 Film Today A beloved CalArts tradition "Film Today," offered by the Program of Film and Video, is open to the entire Institute, to graduate student and undergraduate students in all programs, for Critical Studies credits. Opening a window into the world as well...
FAIC605 History of Experimental Film A survey of experimental a.k.a. avant garde film from the 1920's to the 1970's. Dominant traditions to be examined include: Dadaist and Surrealist cinema of the 1920's, Trance films and Psychodramas of the 1940's and 50's, the Mythopoetic cinema of t...
FAIC610 History of Documentary Film I This course is available for online registration and also open by Permission of the Instructor at Advising Day. An historical survey of documentary (or non-fiction) tradition in motion pictures and it major genre: the exploration film, the ethnograp...
FAIC611 History of Documentary Film II This course is available for online registration and also open by Permission of the Instructor at Advising Day. An historical survey of documentary (or non-fiction) tradition in motion pictures, with special emphasis on the development of the origin...
FAIC612 Documentary Inquiries This course will investigate a broad range of media art and documentary projects, with attention to the performative act of witnessing, the creative address of media archives by artists, and the aspiration to negotiate new social relations with colla...
FAIC613 Documenting Conflict: Palestine, Israel This is a course in documentary theory / studies through the lens of films made in or about Palestine and Israel. We may also include works from other zones of conflict chosen by the students. Issues of politics and form, ethics and aesthetics are ce...
FAIC615 Questions of Third Cinema The concept of 'Third Cinema', coined in Latin America by filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, implies a critical reappraisal of the national or cultural specificity, post-colonial identity, the dialectical connection between domination/su...
FAIC616 Cinema and Media: East Central Europe This course will also have spaces available to enroll at Course Advising Day. This course will examine narrative films from Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic and Slovakia] and Hungary from post-WWII to the present, including the remarkably inventive...
FAIC620 Film History I - 1895-1950 Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Film History is a two semester survey of cinema from its origins in the late 19th century to the present day. The course emphasizes the development of cinema aesthetics through the study of works by...
FAIC621 Film History II - 1950-PRESENT Course available by permission of instructor only. Film History is a two semester survey of cinema from its origins in the late 19th century to the present day. The course emphasizes the development of cinema aesthetics through the study of works by...
FAIC622 History of Film: Women Directors Women have been routinely excluded from filmic participation and from the cinematic canon on multiple levels. BFI's famous "50 best films of all time" list (https://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all -time) includes only one female director. T...
FAIC624 Sexuality, Gender, Destruction in Cinema This course will provide a forum to view and discuss films and readings which problematize traditional constructions of gender and sexuality on multiple levels. The selected works also have a special emphasis on trajectories of violence and destructi...
FAIC625 History of Sound in Animation Animation sound uses a combination of dialogue, effects, and music to complement moving images. A fair amount has been written about the use of music in animation, but very little has been written about the overall role of sound in animation. Or, h...
FAIC626 Cinema of Exile Cinema of Exile: Perspectives on Palestine and Israel The course addresses the experience of exile and displacement understood both as a physical and psychic condition, as expressed in films and texts from Palestine and Israel. Through screening a v...
FAIC628 Prostitution in Film Course available by permission of instructor only. The course will view films and read texts that center on the prostitution, 'the world's oldest profession'. Prostitution has been a subject of singular fascination since biblical times. We will consi...
FAIC630 History of Video Art This course will survey video art and alternative media practice following the introduction of portable video recording equipment in the late 1960s. This term the course will also specifically integrate video art from various Latin American and Carib...
FAIC632 Women in Cinema: Femininity/Performance More spots are available at Course Advising Day. Using feminist film criticism, film and cultural theory, psychoanalytic and post-colonial texts, we will explore how the advent of cinema has changed the symbolic and visual representation of sexual di...
FAIC635 The Room: a Critical Seminar This seminar is an attempt to reflect critically on our past/recent/or current experience of the Covid 19 pandemic, and acquire critical tools to think about life, filmmaking, writing and art making in a situation of confinement or quarantine. Even t...
FAIC639 Fourteen Questions to Jean-Luc Godard Fourteen Questions to Jean-Luc Godard. There will be additional spaces available at Course Advising Day. Since 1960 till his death in 2022, Jean-Luc Godard directed more than 100 features, shorts, series, essay films, television programs, etc. It...
FAIC642 Cinema Against the Grain Now that the cinematic present is dominated by previews for video games and theme park rides, and the cinematic past threatens to congeal into AFI's greatest hits lists, it is particularly important to examine under-appreciated, even disreputable fil...
FAIC644 EA Alumni Network: Building Connections This course focuses on building connections with alumni from the Experimental Animation program. We start by examining the histories and qualities that makes CalArts Experimental Animation the unique place that it is. After they graduate, many studen...
FAIC650 Special Topics: Realist Style An investigation into the formal means that narrative filmmakers (from the Italian neo-realists to the LA Rebellion, Renoir to Cassavetes) have used to achieve a heightened sense of "reality" in their work. Topics include the incorporation of documen...
FAIC651 Spc Topics: Curious Art of Autobiography This is a critical examination of first-person films drawn from personal experience, literature and history, as well as a practicum for studentsÈ own autobiographical work. We will be concerned with a wide variety of autobiographical sources includin...
FAIC652 Special Topics: Rock & Roll Movies Rock & Roll & Movies is a history of Popular Music from 1955 to the present, as seen through its representation in cinema. We will see key works in the history of Rock & Roll movies and read a number of the important critical texts on the music. Is...
FAIC653 Special Topics: The Western Course available by Permission of Instructor only. A survey of the richest, most inexhaustible genre in the American cinema. We will approach the Western as genre, as history and as mythology. Particular attention will be paid to questions of authors...
FAIC654 Special Topics:Utopia & Its Shadowlands Course available by Permission of Instructor only. The current age of Trump, Brexit, and climate disaster have brought discourses of the apocalypse into the U.S. and global mainstream. To some, we have entered a dystopic shadowland of alternative fac...
FAIC655 Politics, Paranoia & Porn 'staches: '70s POLITICS, PARANOIA AND PORN 'STACHES: '70s GENRE REVISIONISM Course available by permission of instructor only. The "New Hollywood" of 1967-1975 was an endlessly rich and eccentric period of American filmmaking. A generation of young filmmakers...
FAIC665 Chantal Akerman: An Intimate Passion This course is available for online registration. It will also be open by Permission of Instructor at Advising Day for additional enrollment. When Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) committed suicide, she left behind a prolific and singular oeuvre. A truly...
FAIC675 History of Experimental Animation This thematically organized trip through the history of experimental animation will look at work from pre-cinema to the present day, with an eye towards connecting disparate time periods, traditions, and techniques by finding and exploring some commo...
FCOM364 Adobe Animate (Flash) Course receives Critical Studies credit in the Computing and Research Skills category. Fundamentals of Adobe Animate (Flash), for digital art and animation, as well as the study of digital art-making online. Adapted for students of varying experience...
FCOM564 Adobe Animate (Flash) Course receives Critical Studies credit in the Computing and Research Skills category. Fundamentals of Adobe Animate (Flash), for digital art and animation, as well as the study of digital art-making online. Adapted for students of varying experience...
FFDP345 FDP Narrative Methodologies A course taught in rotation by core faculty and visiting artists that focuses on specific methodologies and practices of Narrative in Film and time based making.
FFDP399 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FFDP404 Acting Workshop Acting Workshop: The focus is on the craft of acting and the examination of multiple methodologies. Character development is arrived at through script analysis, exercises, monologues, writing and scene work. This class works to create true & credib...
FFDP405 Advanced Acting Workshop Course available by permission of instructor only. An in-depth investigation of the acting process through exercises using improvisation, prepared scene work. This class takes an in-depth approach to the creation of a true and credible performance. W...
FFDP406 Cinematheque Course available by Permission of instructor only A student curated screening course; a student teacher is selected each year from proposals submitted by students and selected by the FDP faculty. Precise topics and concentrations vary by year. Re...
FFDP407 Rehearsal Crews & Performance Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will rehearse and otherwise prepare and present, in other classes or labs, scenes for Stage and Screen. Required of FDP MFA1s and MFA2s.
FFDP412 Scene Study The collaborative work between an actor and director is critical to dramatic narrative storytelling. Many essential fundamentals are shared between the two disciplines including, but not limited to, basic story/text analysis, research skills, the art...
FFDP413 Advanced Scene Study Advanced Scene Study:   Available by permission of instructor only This course advances principles addressed in Scene Study 1: text analysis, working with actors, staging and dramatic construction.  Exercises apply a variety of methodologies to the...
FFDP415 16MM Production for Directors Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will learn the basics of 16mm film production and gain access to Bolex and Arriflex film cameras and learn the basics of 16mm cinematography., film stocks and characteristics. The class will...
FFDP416 Narrative Collaboration Workshop Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This workshop will foster cinema-making collaborations in the Zoom space with artists from diverse disciplines including actors, puppeteers, production designers, musicians, and dancers. Each studen...
FFDP422 Looking At The Sky This course is available by Permission of Instructor only on Advising Day. The entire sky is a grand narrative filled with stories enacted by protagonists and antagonists portraying legendary tropes and mythologies. This course explores story struct...
FFDP423 FDP Screenwriting Workshop: Long Form Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Prerequisite: Screenwriting Workshop Short Forms FFDP-425. Advanced work in screenwriting, focusing on the creation of long form narrative scripts. Operates as both a lecture on narrative and dramati...
FFDP424 Cinematic Storytelling Course available by permission of instructor only. Fashioning cinematic stories from the artistÈs developing ideas while exploring the storytelling strategies of influential cinema artists. The use of film clips,screenplays and other tools are used...
FFDP425 FDP Screenwriting Workshop: Short Form Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Operates as both a discussion on dramatic narrative form and a workshop to create and critique short form narrative work. Screenwriting tools such as story beats, scene cards and treatments support w...
FFDP427 Screenwriting: NarrativeRumble Screenwriting: NarrativeRumble-Eclectic Approaches to Storytelling This course is a series of eclectic, short term (maximum 2 to 3 weeks) writing workshops taught by a rotation of different artists. The instructors use a variety of themes and prompt...
FFDP430 Cinematography for Directors This is a course aimed to deepen filmmakers' knowledge on the concepts and uses of the various elements of cinematography; both technical and conceptual. The class will focus on directorial decisions regarding framing, camera movement, depth of field...
FFDP432 Advanced Staging Course available by permission of instructor only. This workshop explores the aesthetics and methodologies of complex and non-traditional approaches to narrative staging. The class consists of in-class shoots that should expand the student's recent d...
FFDP433 Real World Survival Skills Course available by permission of instructor only. The goals of this class are to give the student practical knowledge and skills to succeed at sustaining their art practice post CALARTS. The art of making films continually evolves with different t...
FFDP435 Visual Design This directing workshop draws on ideas and investigations about filmmaking that were introduced in first year, asking you to consider how concept relates to image and meaning. Our main task will be a hands-on investigation of visual strategies for na...
FFDP440 Guest Artist Workshop This course brings students into conversation with visiting filmmakers and artists from a variety of disciplines including film, performance, installation, music, photography, etc. in order to access and engage with a variety of professional and aest...
FFDP445 Editing Aesthetics Editing Aesthetics looks at the post-production process as an aesthetic practice. We examine different examples of picture and sound editing strategies and discuss their potential to produce meaning in film. Through analyzing different films and read...
FFDP454 Aesthetic Moral and Political Dimensions What's So Funny? Film Comedy: Aesthetic, Moral, and Political Dimensions. Since the early days of cinema, comedy has been a constant shaping presence of the art form. Harnessing the prowess of jokes, and always in search of humorous outcomes, filmm...
FFDP457 Special Topics: Love Stories This class will focus on stories of love as told on film; love is a word that means everything and nothing at all. Love is politic, desire, obsession, belief; it is a paradox, one that continually contradicts its expectations. The class will examin...
FFDP458 Special Topics: Coming of Age Stories Course available by permission of instructor only. This course proposes a broad reading of the coming of age story, framing it not just as a specific moment of adolescent development, but as a narrative of personal transformation most often concerned...
FFDP472 Fictions of Completion This class explores alternative, non-linear methodologies of cinema production-from filming and editing as a path to writing a script to shooting dramatic scenes without a screenplay to constructing characters throughout the entire production process...
FFDP473 Directorizing! This is a hybrid studio/discussion class focusing on experimental improvisation and non-traditional directing methods to create persona based performance. Some questions we will be asking: How does a performer create a persona out of their personal...
FFDP475 Thesis Workshop This seminar is a creative and practical environment designed to facilitate the completion of the student's thesis project. While much of the work will center around group critiques and discussions of the editing of each student's individual film, th...
FFDP477 Narrative Editing A practical workshop in editing the narrative film, emphasizing post-production strategies, narrative structure, editing rhythms, and cutting for performance. Students must be in post-production on a substantial narrative project in order to take the...
FFDP482 Project Development Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An advanced theoretical and practical workshop to generate advanced projects, and foster a critical and creative community amongst second and third year students. This will be a development class, t...
FFDP490 Film School to Film World: Pitching Wksp This 2-semester course aims to provide students with a deep understanding of the Film & TV industry, both in terms of career and creative opportunities. It is strongly suggested that students take both semesters of the sequence; additional students w...
FFDP499 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FFDP504 Acting Workshop I Acting Workshop: The focus is on the craft of acting and the examination of multiple methodologies. Character development is arrived at through script analysis, exercises, monologues, writing and scene work. This class works to create true & credib...
FFDP506 Cinematheque Course available by Permission of instructor only A student curated screening course; a student teacher is selected each year from proposals submitted by students and selected by the FDP faculty. Precise topics and concentrations vary by year. Rec...
FFDP507 Rehearsal Crews & Performance Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will rehearse and otherwise prepare and present, in other classes or labs, scenes for Stage and Screen. Required of FDP MFA1s and MFA2s.
FFDP512 Scene Study The collaborative work between an actor and director is critical to dramatic narrative storytelling. Many essential fundamentals are shared between the two disciplines including, but not limited to, basic story/text analysis, research skills, the art...
FFDP513 Advanced Scene Study Advanced Scene Study:   Pre-Requisite: FDP Scene Study 1 or comparable course. Available by permission of instructor only. This course advances principles addressed in Scene Study 1: text analysis, working with actors, staging and dramatic construct...
FFDP515 16MM Production for Directors Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will learn the basics of 16mm film production and gain access to Bolex and Arriflex film cameras and learn the basics of 16mm cinematography., film stocks and characteristics. The class will...
FFDP520 Narrative Fundamentals Course open to MFA1 Film Directing students only, by Permission of Instructor only. This course is taught by core FDP faculty as a hands-on, exploratory introduction to narrative filmmaking. Over the semester, students move through five modular b...
FFDP521 Narrative Structure and Form Narrative Structure and Form Course open to MFA1 Film Directing students only, by Permission of Instructor only. This course is an examination of narrative film structure and form. The course examines the construction of narrative works ranging fr...
FFDP522 Looking At The Sky This course is available by Permission of Instructor only on Advising Day. The entire sky is a grand narrative filled with stories enacted by protagonists and antagonists portraying legendary tropes and mythologies. This course explores story struct...
FFDP523 FDP Screenwriting Workshop: Long Form Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Prerequisite: Screenwriting Workshop Short Forms FFDP-625. Advanced work in screenwriting, focusing on the creation of long form narrative scripts. Operates as both a lecture on narrative and dramati...
FFDP524 Cinematic Storytelling Course available by permission of instructor only. Fashioning cinematic stories from the artistÈs developing ideas while exploring the storytelling strategies of influential cinema artists. The use of film clips,screenplays and other tools are used...
FFDP529 Post-Production Cinema Workshop Course available by permission of instructor only. Students will learn fundamental technical concerns of video production including video cameras and signal flow information. In conjunction with FD 579A Production Workshop, students will complete sev...
FFDP530 Cinematography for Directors This is a course aimed to deepen filmmakers' knowledge on the concepts and uses of the various elements of cinematography; both technical and conceptual. The class will focus on directorial decisions regarding framing, camera movement, depth of field...
FFDP534 Digital Editing & Workflows Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course will provide a foundation for working in a digital environment applied to filmmaking. The fundamentals of non-linear editing will be practiced, and editing theory will be discussed. Stud...
FFDP535 Visual Design This directing workshop draws on ideas and investigations about filmmaking that were introduced in first year, asking you to consider how concept relates to image and meaning. Our main task will be a hands-on investigation of visual strategies for na...
FFDP540 Guest Artist Workshop This course brings students into conversation with visiting filmmakers and artists from a variety of disciplines including film, performance, installation, music, photography, etc. in order to access and engage with a variety of professional and aest...
FFDP545 FDP Narrative Methodologies A course taught in rotation by core faculty and visiting artists that focuses on specific methodologies and practices of Narrative in Film and time based making.
FFDP578 Cinema Production Workshop An introduction to film and video techniques, this is a practical course on the concepts and uses of the various elements of filmmaking; both technical and conceptual. These include the use of cameras, lens and perspective, concepts of cinematography...
FFDP580 Production Sound Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course covers field and studio recording and mic techniques. If students can achieve good production sound, they have beaten the toughest part of post-production sound. Gives access to field rec...
FFDP599 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FFDP600 Symposium: Film Directing Program Symposium is designed for all levels of the FDP program; it is a common place for the entire student and faculty community to discuss the shifting landscape of making and thinking about narrative practice in film. It contemplates the breadth of metho...
FFDP601 A Taste of Film: or Filmmaker's Table In this special topics course, students will have the opportunity to present, cook, and share their personal recipes with their peers in class. Although, this is not a traditional cooking class or a seminar focused on food in film. Rather, this explo...
FFDP604 Advanced Acting Workshop Course available by permission of instructor only. An in-depth investigation of the acting process through exercises using improvisation, prepared scene work. This class takes an in-depth approach to the creation of a true and credible performance. W...
FFDP616 Narrative Collaboration Workshop Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This workshop will foster cinema-making collaborations in the Zoom space with artists from diverse disciplines including actors, puppeteers, production designers, musicians, and dancers. Each studen...
FFDP625 FDP Screenwriting Workshop: Short Form Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Operates as both a discussion on dramatic narrative form and a workshop to create and critique short form narrative work. Screenwriting tools such as story beats, scene cards and treatments support w...
FFDP627 Screenwriting: NarrativeRumble Screenwriting: NarrativeRumble-Eclectic Approaches to Storytelling This course is a series of eclectic, short term (maximum 2 to 3 weeks) writing workshops taught by a rotation of different artists. The instructors use a variety of themes and prompt...
FFDP632 Advanced Staging Course available by permission of instructor only. This workshop explores the aesthetics and methodologies of complex and non-traditional approaches to narrative staging. The class consists of in-class shoots that should expand the student's recent d...
FFDP633 Real World Survival Skills Course available by permission of instructor only. The goals of this class are to give the student practical knowledge and skills to succeed at sustaining their art practice post CALARTS. The art of making films continually evolves with different t...
FFDP645 Editing Aesthetics Editing Aesthetics looks at the post-production process as an aesthetic practice. We examine different examples of picture and sound editing strategies and discuss their potential to produce meaning in film. Through analyzing different films and read...
FFDP654 Aesthetic Moral and Political Dimensions What's So Funny? Film Comedy: Aesthetic, Moral, and Political Dimensions. Since the early days of cinema, comedy has been a constant shaping presence of the art form. Harnessing the prowess of jokes, and always in search of humorous outcomes, filmm...
FFDP655 Heroes and Villains Heroics and Villainy: The Majesty of Good vs. Evil This is a course that explores heroics & villainy in storytelling as filtered through cinematic tropes. It is a journey into the origins and creation of mythic archetypes that have populated narrat...
FFDP657 Special Topics: Love Stories This class will focus on stories of love as told on film; love is a word that means everything and nothing at all. Love is politic, desire, obsession, belief; it is a paradox, one that continually contradicts its expectations. The class will examin...
FFDP658 Special Topics: Coming of Age Stories Course available by permission of instructor only. This course proposes a broad reading of the coming of age story, framing it not just as a specific moment of adolescent development, but as a narrative of personal transformation most often concerned...
FFDP672 Fictions of Completion This class explores alternative, non-linear methodologies of cinema production-from filming and editing as a path to writing a script to shooting dramatic scenes without a screenplay to constructing characters throughout the entire production process...
FFDP673 Directorizing! This is a hybrid studio/discussion class focusing on experimental improvisation and non-traditional directing methods to create persona based performance. Some questions we will be asking: How does a performer create a persona out of their personal...
FFDP675 Thesis Workshop This seminar is a creative and practical environment designed to facilitate the completion of the student's thesis project. While much of the work will center around group critiques and discussions of the editing of each student's individual film, th...
FFDP677 Narrative Editing Course available by permission of instructor only. A practical workshop in editing the narrative film, emphasizing post-production strategies, narrative structure, editing rhythms, and cutting for performance. Students must be in post-production on a...
FFDP680 Post Production Sound This course is by Permission of Instructor. It is required of MFA1 Film Directing students. Covers all aspects of post-production and basic sound design, editing and mixing concepts. Gives access to individual Pro Tools rooms and E 105 basic studio.
FFDP682 Project Development Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An advanced theoretical and practical workshop to generate advanced projects, and foster a critical and creative community amongst second and third year students. This will be a development class, t...
FFDP690 Film School to Film World: Pitching Wksp This 2-semester course aims to provide students with a deep understanding of the Film & TV industry, both in terms of career and creative opportunities. It is strongly suggested that students take both semesters of the sequence; additional students w...
FFDP699 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FFDP799 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FINT199 Film/Video - Internship No Description Set
FINT299 Film/Video - Internship No Description Set
FPFV101 Filmmaking Fundamentals I Course open to Film/Video Program only, by Permission of Instructor only. An investigation of the aesthetics and language of film and video Students will be encouraged to make personal works. Class will include analysis and the beginning of a critica...
FPFV102 Filmmaking Fundamentals II Course open to Film/Video Program only, by Permission of Instructor only. An examination of contemporary visual culture and production techniques. Participants are expected to finish several short projects. Required of all PFV BFA1s and incoming tra...
FPFV134 Digital Editing A comprehensive introduction to digital editing strategies, aesthetics and techniques using post-production workflows in Davinci software. Adobe CC and related software will be overviewed also . Topics will include media management, transcoding, pict...
FPFV153 Cinematic Voices: Film & Video In-Person Course available by permission of instructor only. A screening and analysis class in which members of the Film/Video faculty and visiting artists show and discuss their work. The class is intended to acquaint students with the faculty as well as diff...
FPFV199 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FPFV203 Creative Cinematography This course is designed for students to explore cinematic language and the artistic possibilities of the moving image. Students will be evaluated on their mastery of core concepts of camera functions and image construction - including lighting, compo...
FPFV204 Film Production Workshop I Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will learn the basics of 16mm film production and will gain access to Bolex and Arriflex film cameras as well They will also learn the basics of light readings, exposure, and will be intr...
FPFV206 Finishing on 16MM Film In this course, you will learn the 16mm editorial process from cutting on a flatbed viewer to finishing an answer print. You will shoot a two minute film or expand on your one-minute film from the fall semester. The course will be taken concurrent...
FPFV210 Together At Last TOGETHER AT LAST is designed for students who took FPFV203/503 Cinematography, FPFV134/534 Digital Editing and FPFV285/585 Production Sound remotely during the pandemic. The course will go over essential hands-on skills and introduce students to cam...
FPFV220 Color Correction and Grading This is a practice based workshop class designed to introduce students to the manipulation of color in digital video. We will approach color correction and grading in through hands on experience with the understanding that the concepts behind the th...
FPFV234 Intermediate Digital Editing This course is Permission of Instructor only. This is an intermediate editing course that will expand on topics covered in FPFV 134/534: Digital Editing. Through lecture, demonstration, and work on individual projects, students will learn intermedia...
FPFV246 Composing in Space This cinematography class is focused on solidifying the knowledge of students who have a foundation in cinematography by looking at and working with specific aspect ratios, textures and camera movements. The students will analyze and practice differ...
FPFV285 Production Sound Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course covers field and studio recording and mic techniques. If students can achieve good production sound, they have beaten the toughest part of post-production sound. Gives access to field rec...
FPFV286 Post Production Sound Course available by permission of instructor only. Covers all aspects of post-production and basic sound design, editing and mixing concepts. Gives access to individual Pro Tools rooms and E105 basic studio. Required of all PFV BFA 2 students.
FPFV299 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FPFV302 Cinematic Lighting A workshop that will look at essential working elements of lighting for motion pictures. Starting by analyzing different lighting styles in film history, this course will then cover a range of lighting practices in original locations and in studio, l...
FPFV303 Looking at the Sky Urbanization and its overabundance of artificial light has left us blind to the wonders of the night sky, something our ancestors both took for granted and were profoundly influenced by. This course aims at regaining that awareness. The entire sky...
FPFV306 Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways to Create Sounds for Images Erasing notions of hi-fidelity sound, this class acknowledges that the right sound for a film might be the result of an aleatory accident, ill-conceived experiment or unpolished performance...
FPFV307 Adv Creative Cinematography In this workshop class we expand your knowledge from the fundamentals of cinematography, toward harnessing the technical tools of the craft for creating impactful images in advanced productions, while strengthening your unique voice as an artist. You...
FPFV311 Screen Action: Curation in Practice In this course, students will work in small groups to curate and produce screening programs to be presented during Winter Session. They will develop a curatorial direction and select work, communicate with distributors and filmmakers, secure screenin...
FPFV320 Opening the Film & Video Vault This is an intensive film and video viewing course focusing on major works from the history of avant-garde, or experimental, film. The majority of titles will be selected from CalArts' film and video archive, including special film prints that have n...
FPFV330 Moving Image and Creative Curating This is a course on curating film, video, performance and installation; how creative programming can integrate and amplify individual works within larger contexts and help build communities for the experience and appreciation of this kind of art. T...
FPFV340 Undergraduate Critique Course available by Permission of Instructor only. A forum for undergraduates to produce and present work. Students working on projects outside of class will show their work in various stages of pre- and post-production for group discussion and crit...
FPFV399 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FPFV401 Intermediate Digital Production/Post Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will be exposed to video production and post-production methodologies necessary for becoming self-sufficient video makers within the CalArts environment. Various methods of digital producti...
FPFV402 Light and Lighting Course available by permission of instructor only. A practical and aesthetic introduction to light in all its forms, from natural radiations to darkness and the many worlds of artificial light, including its use in moving image works, still works and...
FPFV405 Writing About Film Course available by Permission of Instructor only. The class will teach students how to write about film (as well as video and other media using the moving image) in a variety of forms, genres, and contexts: writing about one's work, about the work o...
FPFV409 Optical Printing Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This class offers an introduction to the method, magic and madness of optical printing: the wonderful possibilities of re-filming film. Students will learn how to perform time manipulations, multiple...
FPFV410 Documentary Production Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course explores the documentary form through theory and practice. Students will look at different documentary approaches and methods. Viewing and analysis of various films will be a vital part...
FPFV410A Documentary Prod: The Virtual Field Documentary Production: Fieldwork in the Virtual Field This project-based class will investigate a wide range of themes and possibilities suggested by the particularities of networked media in relation to documentary production, including, but not l...
FPFV411 Memories, Dreamscapes, and the Archive This course will explore the intimate use of memories and dreamscapes within the art of moving images to employradical re-examinations of identity, culture, and history. We will analyze experimental methods used to decolonizethe archive within film a...
FPFV412 Shadowlands Shadowlands: Haunted Media, Spectral images From the beginning, film and photography have been characterized by their ability to record the world as it appears - and yet coincidentally spurred a fascination with unseen worlds, even seeming to offer...
FPFV413 Devices of Illusion Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This is a hands-on course in which students adapt, modify, reconfigure and boulderise optical and mechanical devices, creating mysterious machines for recording the ephemeral. Projects include but ar...
FPFV414 Editing With Avid Intermediate Editing:avid Media Composer In this course, students will learn editing techniques and methodology using Avid Media Composer through lectures and hands on exercises. Topics will include: media organization, ingesting, transcoding, three point editing, trimming, sound editing, w...
FPFV415 Production Crews Hands-on experience for students serving on production crews of projects initiated by fellow students. Credit can be received for substantial contributions in areas such as: cinematography, sound recroding and production design. Must be supervised...
FPFV416 Post Production Crews Hands-on experience for students serving on production crews of projects initiated by fellow students. Credit can be received for substantial contributions in areas such as: editing, sound editing and sound design. Must be supervised by appropriate...
FPFV417 Videographics Course available by permission of instructor only. Electronic image acquisition, generation and manipulation are the focus of this class aimed at experimentation. Combining the image processing and production power of the video studio and the videog...
FPFV418 Film and Family Archives Family portraits, letters, home-videos, notes, diaries, and small objects and accessories are often key to tracing hidden secrets and desires within one’s own family. Beyond this, by examining family archives we can gain a deeper understanding of reg...
FPFV419 Experimental Visions: Women & Others This course examines influential women and non-binary filmmakers who advocate for experimental forms in their moving image work and writing. We will focus primarily on a non-narrative avant-garde and on artists that argue for the importance of form,...
FPFV420 Teaching, Research & ... Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course is to provide Graduate Students with an opportunity to gain valuable teaching experience. Each student will prepare a two-hour teaching presentation and each week a different student wil...
FPFV421 Babelisms: Multilingual Film Aesthetics This class will explore the aesthetic and political openings provided by incorporating multiple languages in film and moving image media. While the use of different spoken languages and dialects will be the starting point, the class will also encompa...
FPFV422 The You-Tube Class Films will be taken from YouTube and reworked using a digital editing system.
FPFV423 Composing in Space This class is an in-depth study of movement and composition through both sound and image. The potential for movement is one of the main distinguishing features of time-based practices, perhaps most of all in filmmaking. Toexplore this we will conside...
FPFV424 Aesthetics of Sound and Image Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An exploration of the aesthetic concerns when combining sound with the image. This class will explore the aural dimension and its profoundly psychological role in cinematic work. Sound is a vital com...
FPFV425 Graduate Critique Course available by Permission of Instructor only. A practical theory course providing a working environment for Program in Film and Video Graduate students to develop, discuss, theorize, and complete their work. Students will be required to spend at...
FPFV427 'i'-Sight: First-Person Cinema The 'I' is the moment of failure in every narrative effort to give an account of oneself. - Judith Butler We now see subjectivities and truths as plural not only among subjects, but within a given subject, the self that is divided, and even in part...
FPFV429 Installation Design for Film and Art A course on site specific film and art installation design. Students will be encouraged to design site specific installations without financial limitations, that is, from CalArts room D301 to the Guggenheim. These designs will include architectural...
FPFV430 Multi-Ch. & Video Installation Course available by permission of instructor only. The objectives of this course are to learn how to work with the moving image and sound in the form of video installation. We will focus on creating understanding through intentional relations betwee...
FPFV431 "Autrice" Studies: Women Film Directors Of course, the politique des auteurs is the application to the cinema of a notion that is widely accepted in the individual arts. -André Bazin, 1957 Coined as an expression in English by critic Andrew Sarris in the 1960s, "Auteur Theory" and auteur...
FPFV436 Experimental Film Techniques I Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Advanced explorations into various aspects of the 16mm filmmaking process. Topics will include thorough examinations of different film stocks and image manipulation techniques. Students will learn an...
FPFV438 Color Grading & Adv Workflows Course available by permission of instructor only. Filmmakers will get an introduction to the color correction/grading of digital footage. Our primary tool will be Davinci Resolve, but also grading within the primary NLE's. A foundation of color scie...
FPFV440 Finding Money Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Wonder where and how to look for funding, prepare and present your work and yourself when applying for grants or pitching a project for industry consideration? You will learn this, as well as how to...
FPFV441 Pre-Production/Visualization Pre-Production/Pre-Visualization explores concept development through story analysis, and the conceptual and visceral intent of your vision, as it is affected by camera choice, film grammar techniques, environmental considerations such as the control...
FPFV442 Radicalizing Sound & Image Course available by permission of instructor only. This class will present a survey of recent and historical avant-garde films that stretch the limits of cinematic expression. Equal time will be dedicated to innovative works of sound, music and the...
FPFV446 The Essay Film Permission of Instructor required. "We spend a long time thinking about how to create an image where the image refuses the expectations or refuses the pleasures of what an image is. And I think that's partly the essayistic. To me, the essayistic i...
FPFV447 Under 15 Min. Workshop Course available by permission of instructor only. The class will provide a structure and a workshop for students who wish to create a short work (under fifteen minutes) of their choosing. We will work on each stage of the production process, includ...
FPFV448 Advanced Production Experimental, Narrative and Documentary work, this is the place to do it. You will direct your own chosen genre script the time and location of your production. Class meets on Friday, production weekends. *Pre-requisite: by permission of instructor.
FPFV449 On the Edge of Narrative This is a production workshop for students creating film/video projects of any length or format with an experimental approach to narrative. We will focus on creative interpretations of the traditional facets of narrative filmmaking (character develop...
FPFV450 Visiting Filmmaker Workshop Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Intensive small workshops with visiting filmmakers. There will be individual sign-ups per Visiting Artist.
FPFV451 The Feminist Moving Image The Feminist Moving Image Across Discipline is a new course that will consider work across disciplines of several women and feminist filmmakers and moving-image practitioners, covering a wide range of practices and forms-film-editing, diary-writing,...
FPFV452 Cinema of Transformation The course will view films that are, in very different ways, centrally concerned with inner life, faith/lack of faith, and various forms of transformation. Although film is a visual medium, and these films are without exception beautiful and powerful...
FPFV454 Radicalizing Vision Workshop This class is a workshop extension of FPFV-442-01/642-01, Radicalizing Sound and Image. In a smaller workshop setting and with the aim of making a radically innovative final film project, students will explore and research experimental work made in m...
FPFV456 Listening/Seeing Each week a different location (either urban, rural, or wilderness) will be visited for the purposes of listening and seeing. At the end of the visit the class will meet within the location to discuss what each has individually experienced. Attention...
FPFV457 Adaptations Adaptation is the process of change by which an organism becomes better suited to its environment. It is coincidentally, the term used to describe the process by which one art form - traditionally the written word - is modified and transformed into a...
FPFV458 A Practical Theory of Art Making A discussion course that will end with a manifesto on art making written by the class. Topics will include finding and developing ideas, structuring work, choosing the right medium, the personal becoming universal, integrity, and political and social...
FPFV459 Participatory Filmmaking This course will explore filmmaking practices which rely upon and are motivated by long-term community involvement and activism. Students will watch films and engage with contemporary fiction and non-fiction filmmakers in conversations around social...
FPFV460 Shooting Landscapes Students will visit and film six different landscapes in Southern California. Emphasis will be given on capturing the unique essence of place. The class will meet for a full day each week. Each student is required to complete one landscape film.
FPFV461 Metacinema From 1960S to the Present Metacinematic gestures have been present since the earliest years of film. Like metafiction in literature, metacinema refers to films that make the audience aware of the filmmaking or viewing processes. Such films interrogate the medium and its hist...
FPFV462 Advanced Narrative Production Advanced Narrative Production and directing the Camera Workshop Advanced Narrative Production (producing the 4 minute film, one day shoot) students will be placed into 2 teams of 6 and rotate production roles: director, assistant director, cinematog...
FPFV463 Where Does Grief Go? WHERE DOES GRIEF GO? A brief glimpse of beauty, / A daydream of wayward lives and / extraordinary experiments / A taste of memory in the flesh. The voice of Andre 3000 will be our guide as he sings a mournful dirge for his parents and we consider th...
FPFV464 Aliens on Screen Aliens On Screen: Cosmopolitics and Extraterrestrials in Sci-Fi Cinema. Aliens loom large on the horizon of our imagination. In culture, aliens manifest in multimedial forms: TV shows, video games, comic books, literature, and of course films. Altho...
FPFV465 Media Sketchbook: Light, Space and Time "Media are our infrastructures of being, the habitats and materials through which we act and are...at some level, expression and existence merge." (John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds) In this course students will plumb the reaches of their ow...
FPFV468 Constructing Alternative Realities Constructing Alternative Realities is a class that will begin by studying composition and characteristics of the film frame. How do time, space, rhythm, movement and sound contribute as key constituents? In this regard, the class will be a study in...
FPFV470 Screenwriting FPFV- The starting point of this discipline is the intention to create a working screenwriting practice dictated by the needs of each story being told and that rejects the "one size fits all" formulaic school of screenwriting. There is no magic bull...
FPFV472 Alternative Screenwriting Alternative Screenwriting for Short Films and Documentaries In the first part of the course we will analyze different short films ("An Andalusian Dog", "Blackrider", "At Land", "The Street and the Ball") and their original screenplays discovering ho...
FPFV473 Acting Bad A course to de-construct acting and narration. The main goal will be to define performance in new, non-traditional ways. Students will develop dialogues and/or narrations taken from real life (court transcripts, overheard conversations) to fictiona...
FPFV474 Benning on Benning This intensive course is a screening series of a selection of 12 films, both analog and digital, from a 50 year career. Students will produce art works (films, paintings, drawing, etc.) inspired by the discussions and screenings in class. The final s...
FPFV476 New Directions for Feminist Film History This seminar takes a transnational approach to exploring the history of cinema, video, documentary, and experimental film by examining the contributions of women, queer, and trans* filmmakers, directors, actors, and film collectives in a global conte...
FPFV477 Prepro: Creative Approaches to Pre-Prod. PrePro: Creative Approaches to Pre-Production Pre-production is an essential step in the creation of a film. Whether it is a fictional narrative with crew and actors, a non fiction project, or a more poetic or structural experimental film, video or...
FPFV478 Cinema of Resistance Cinema of Resistance: Political Filmmaking, Revolutionary Movements, Art, and Social Change "(W)hat we call the political is society itself, it is the form of history itself. film and revolution, or film and arts, or politics and arts, are inseparab...
FPFV479 Site Specific Site Specific: Moving Images in the Cinema, the White Cube, and Online The present moment for exhibiting moving images is a fluid one. Artists who may have traditionally exhibited in a gallery are finding their way into cinemas, while filmmakers are...
FPFV480 Archives and The Archive Archives and the Archive The word "archive/s" holds a strange power these days. It is at once the title of organizations that preserve, arrange and provide access to historical materials, those collections of materials themselves, a synonym for memo...
FPFV484 Cinema and Representation: Latin America This class centers on the ways in which the idea of Latin America has been constructed through cinema, from the first productions that took place in the region (ca. 1930s) to our days. Looking at a wide range of cinematic practices from both "Latin A...
FPFV485 Dangerous Filmmaking: A Production Wksh A production workshop. The course is called "dangerous" because we will be delving deep within ourselves to look at our maybe not-so-comfortable family relationships and ourselves from a deeply interior perspective. Each student will produce a work o...
FPFV486 Surveying the Black Futurist Movement Surveying the Black Futurist Movement is positioned at the intersection of various African American traditions including music, performance, poetry, and filmmaking. The course will vacillate between sound and cinema as we investigate the language and...
FPFV488 Post-Production A practical course designed to take the student through the post-production process toward the completion of a finished work. This class is designed for students in the process of finishing their thesis or senior projects and will include group as we...
FPFV497 Alchemical Cinema Course available by permission of instructor only. This course offers an introduction to the mysteries of photographic film-its properties, processes, and potentials. Technique is introduced as an organic component of the expressive arsenal. Everyth...
FPFV499 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FPFV501 Filmmaking Fundamentals Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An investigation of the aesthetics inherent to low cost production equipment. Students will be encouraged to make personal, experimental works from the point of view of the individual. Class analys...
FPFV502 Cinematic Lighting A workshop that will look at essential working elements of lighting for motion pictures. Starting by analyzing different lighting styles in film history, this course will then cover a range of lighting practices in original locations and in studio, l...
FPFV503 Cinematography This course is designed for students to explore cinematic language and the artistic possibilities of the moving image. Students will be evaluated on their mastery of core concepts of camera functions and image construction - including lighting, compo...
FPFV504 Film Production Workshop Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will learn the basics of 16mm film production and will gain access to Bolex and Arriflex film cameras. They will also learn the basics of light readings, exposure, and will be introduced t...
FPFV506 Finishing on 16MM Film In this course, you will learn the 16mm editorial process from cutting on a flatbed viewer to finishing an answer print. You will shoot a two minute film or expand on your one-minute film from the fall semester. The course will be taken concurrent...
FPFV510 Together At Last TOGETHER AT LAST is designed for students who took FPFV203/503 Cinematography, FPFV134/534 Digital Editing and FPFV285/585 Production Sound remotely during the pandemic. The course will go over essential hands-on skills and introduce students to cam...
FPFV511 Screen Action: Curation in Practice In this course, students will work in small groups to curate and produce screening programs to be presented during Winter Session. They will develop a curatorial direction and select work, communicate with distributors and filmmakers, secure screenin...
FPFV514 Editing With Avid In this course, students will learn editing techniques and methodology using Avid Media Composer through lectures and hands on exercises. Topics will include: media organization, ingesting, transcoding, three point editing, trimming, sound editing, w...
FPFV520 Opening the Film & Video Vault This is an intensive film and video viewing course focusing on major works from the history of avant-garde, or experimental, film. The majority of titles will be selected from CalArts' film and video archive, including special film prints that have n...
FPFV521 Color Correction and Grading This is a practice based workshop class designed to introduce students to the manipulation of color in digital video. We will approach color correction and grading in through hands on experience with the understanding that the concepts behind the th...
FPFV530 Moving Image and Creative Curating This is a course on curating film, video, performance and installation; how creative programming can integrate and amplify individual works within larger contexts and help build communities for the experience and appreciation of this kind of art. T...
FPFV534 Digital Editing A comprehensive introduction to digital editing strategies, aesthetics and techniques using post-production workflows in Davinci software. Adobe CC and related software will be overviewed also . Topics will include media management, transcoding, pict...
FPFV546 Composing in Space This cinematography class is focused on solidifying the knowledge of students who have a foundation in cinematography by looking at and working with specific aspect ratios, textures and camera movements. The students will analyze and practice differ...
FPFV553 Cinematic Voices: Film & Video In-Person A screening and analysis class in which members of the Film/Video faculty and visiting artists show and discuss their work. The class is intended to acquaint students with the faculty as well as different kinds of independent film and video. Students...
FPFV585 Production Sound Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Through discussion, critique, technical workshops, we will develop an understanding of the rich meaning-potential of sound, made even more powerful in its relationship to moving images. We will analy...
FPFV586 Post Production Sound Course available by permission of instructor only. Covers all aspects of post-production and basic sound design, editing and mixing concepts. Gives access to individual Pro Tools rooms and E105 basic studio. Required of all PFV incoming students.
FPFV599 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FPFV601 Intermediate Digital Production/Post Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Students will be exposed to video production and post-production methodologies necessary for becoming self-sufficient video makers within the CalArts environment. Various methods of digital producti...
FPFV602 Light and Lighting Course available by permission of instructor only. A practical and aesthetic introduction to light in all its forms, from natural radiations to darkness and the many worlds of artificial light, including its use in moving image works, still works and...
FPFV605 Writing About Film Course available by Permission of Instructor only. The class will teach students how to write about film (as well as video and other media using the moving image) in a variety of forms, genres, and contexts: writing about one's work, about the work o...
FPFV606 Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways to Create Sounds for Images Erasing notions of hi-fidelity sound, this class acknowledges that the right sound for a film might be the result of an aleatory accident, ill-conceived experiment or unpolished performance...
FPFV607 Adv Creative Cinematography In this workshop class we expand your knowledge from the fundamentals of cinematography, toward harnessing the technical tools of the craft for creating impactful images in advanced productions, while strengthening your unique voice as an artist. You...
FPFV609 Optical Printing Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This class offers an introduction to the method, magic and madness of optical printing: the wonderful possibilities of re-filming film. Students will learn how to perform time manipulations, multiple...
FPFV610 Documentary Production Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course explores the documentary form through theory and practice. Students will look at different documentary approaches and methods. Viewing and analysis of various films will be a vital part...
FPFV610A Documentary Prod: The Virtual Field Documentary Production: Fieldwork in the Virtual Field This project-based class will investigate a wide range of themes and possibilities suggested by the particularities of networked media in relation to documentary production, including, but not l...
FPFV612 Shadowlands Shadowlands: Haunted Media, Spectral images From the beginning, film and photography have been characterized by their ability to record the world as it appears - and yet coincidentally spurred a fascination with unseen worlds, even seeming to offer...
FPFV613 Devices of Illusion Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This is a hands-on course in which students adapt, modify, reconfigure and boulderise optical and mechanical devices, creating mysterious machines for recording the ephemeral. Projects include but ar...
FPFV615 Production Crews Hands-on experience for students serving on production crews of projects initiated by fellow students. Credit can be received for substantial contributions in areas such as: cinematography, sound recroding and production design. Must be supervised...
FPFV616 Post Production Crews Hands-on experience for students serving on production crews of projects initiated by fellow students. Credit can be received for substantial contributions in areas such as: editing, sound editing and sound design. Must be supervised by appropriate...
FPFV617 Videographics Course available by permission of instructor only. Electronic image acquisition, generation and manipulation are the focus of this class aimed at experimentation. Combining the image processing and production power of the video studio and the videog...
FPFV618 Film and Family Archives Family portraits, letters, home-videos, notes, diaries, and small objects and accessories are often key to tracing hidden secrets and desires within one's own family. Beyond this, by examining family archives we can gain a deeper understanding of reg...
FPFV619 Experimental Visions: Women & Others This course examines influential women and non-binary filmmakers who advocate for experimental forms in their moving image work and writing. We will focus primarily on a non-narrative avant-garde and on artists that argue for the importance of form,...
FPFV620 Teaching, Research & ... Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course is to provide Graduate Students with an opportunity to gain valuable teaching experience. Each student will prepare a two-hour teaching presentation and each week a different student wil...
FPFV621 Babelisms: Multilingual Film Aesthetics This class will explore the aesthetic and political openings provided by incorporating multiple languages in film and moving image media. While the use of different spoken languages and dialects will be the starting point, the class will also encompa...
FPFV622 The You-Tube Class Films will be taken from YouTube and reworked using a digital editing system.
FPFV623 Composing in Space This class is an in-depth study of movement and composition through both sound and image. The potential for movement is one of the main distinguishing features of time-based practices, perhaps most of all in filmmaking. To explore this we will consid...
FPFV624 Aesthetics of Sound and Image Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An exploration of the aesthetic concerns when combining sound with the image. This class will explore the aural dimension and its profoundly psychological role in cinematic work. Sound is a vital com...
FPFV625 Graduate Critique Course available by Permission of Instructor only. A practical theory course providing a working environment for Program in Film and Video Graduate students to develop, discuss, theorize, and complete their work. Students will be required to spend at...
FPFV627 'i'-Sight: First-Person Cinema The 'I' is the moment of failure in every narrative effort to give an account of oneself. - Judith Butler We now see subjectivities and truths as plural not only among subjects, but within a given subject, the self that is divided, and even in part...
FPFV629 Installation Design for Film and Art A course on site specific film and art installation design. Students will be encouraged to design site specific installations without financial limitations, that is, from CalArts room D301 to the Guggenheim. These designs will include architectural...
FPFV630 Multi-Ch. & Video Installation Course available by permission of instructor only. The objectives of this course are to learn how to work with the moving image and sound in the form of video installation. We will focus on creating understanding through intentional relations betwee...
FPFV631 "Autrice" Studies: Women Film Directors Of course, the politique des auteurs is the application to the cinema of a notion that is widely accepted in the individual arts. -André Bazin, 1957 Coined as an expression in English by critic Andrew Sarris in the 1960s, "Auteur Theory" and auteur...
FPFV634 Intermediate Digital Editing This course is Permission of Instructor only. This is an intermediate editing course that will expand on topics covered in FPFV 134/534: Digital Editing. Through lecture, demonstration, and work on individual projects, students will learn intermediat...
FPFV636 Experimental Film Techniques I Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Advanced explorations into various aspects of the 16mm filmmaking process. Topics will include thorough examinations of different film stocks and image manipulation techniques. Students will learn an...
FPFV638 Color Grading & Adv Workflows Course available by permission of instructor only. Filmmakers will get an introduction to the color correction/grading of digital footage. Our primary tool will be Davinci Resolve, but also grading within the primary NLE's. A foundation of color scie...
FPFV640 Finding Money Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Wonder where and how to look for funding, prepare and present your work and yourself when applying for grants or pitching a project for industry consideration? You'll learn this, as well as how to p...
FPFV641 Pre-Production/Visualization Pre-Production/Pre-Visualization explores concept development through story analysis, and the conceptual and visceral intent of your vision, as it is affected by camera choice, film grammar techniques, environmental considerations such as the control...
FPFV642 Radicalizing Sound & Image Course available by permission of instructor only. This class will present a survey of recent and historical avant-garde films that stretch the limits of cinematic expression. Equal time will be dedicated to innovative works of sound, music and the...
FPFV646 The Essay Film Permission of Instructor required. This production class will explore the essay-film. Film critic Alexandre Astruc created the term camera-stylo in 1948 to suggest a new means of writing through cinema, in which the camera would serve as a pen, crea...
FPFV647 Under 15 Minutes: A Short Film Workshop Course available by permission of instructor only. The class will provide a structure and a workshop for students who wish to create a short work (under fifteen minutes) of their choosing. We will work on each stage of the production process, includ...
FPFV648 Advanced Production Experimental, Narrative and Documentary work, this is the place to do it. You will direct your own chosen genre script the time and location of your production. Class meets on Friday, production weekends. *Pre-requisite: by permission of instructor.
FPFV649 On the Edge of Narrative This is a production workshop for students creating film/video projects of any length or format with an experimental approach to narrative. We will focus on creative interpretations of the traditional facets of narrative filmmaking (character develop...
FPFV650 Visiting Filmmaker Workshop Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Intensive small workshops with visiting filmmakers. There will be individual sign-ups per Visiting Artist.
FPFV651 The Feminist Moving Image The Feminist Moving Image Across Discipline is a new course that will consider work across disciplines of several women and feminist filmmakers and moving-image practitioners, covering a wide range of practices and forms-film-editing, diary-writing,...
FPFV652 Cinema of Transformation The course will view films that are, in very different ways, centrally concerned with inner life, faith/lack of faith, and various forms of transformation. Although film is a visual medium, and these films are without exception beautiful and powerful...
FPFV654 Radicalizing Vision Workshop This class is a workshop extension of FPFV-442-01/642-01, Radicalizing Sound and Image. In a smaller workshop setting and with the aim of making a radically innovative final film project, students will explore and research experimental work made in m...
FPFV656 Listening/Seeing Each week a different location (either urban, rural, or wilderness) will be visited for the purposes of listening and seeing. At the end of the visit the class will meet within the location to discuss what each has individually experienced. Attention...
FPFV657 Adaptations Adaptation is the process of change by which an organism becomes better suited to its environment. It is coincidentally, the term used to describe the process by which one art form - traditionally the written word - is modified and transformed into a...
FPFV658 A Practical Theory of Art Making A discussion course that will end with a manifesto on art making written by the class. Topics will include finding and developing ideas, structuring work, choosing the right medium, the personal becoming universal, integrity, and political and social...
FPFV659 Participatory Filmmaking This course will explore filmmaking practices which rely upon and are motivated by long-term community involvement and activism. Students will watch films and engage with contemporary fiction and non-fiction filmmakers in conversations around social...
FPFV660 Shooting Landscapes Students will visit and film six different landscapes in Southern California. Emphasis will be given on capturing the unique essence of place. The class will meet for a full day each week. Each student is required to complete one landscape film.
FPFV661 Metacinema From 1960S to the Present Metacinematic gestures have been present since the earliest years of film. Like metafiction in literature, metacinema refers to films that make the audience aware of the filmmaking or viewing processes. Such films interrogate the medium and its hist...
FPFV662 Advanced Narrative Production Advanced Narrative Production and directing the Camera Workshop Advanced Narrative Production (producing the 4 minute film, one day shoot) students will be placed into 2 teams of 6 and rotate production roles: director, assistant director, cinematog...
FPFV663 Where Does Grief Go? WHERE DOES GRIEF GO? A brief glimpse of beauty, / A daydream of wayward lives and / extraordinary experiments / A taste of memory in the flesh. The voice of Andre 3000 will be our guide as he sings a mournful dirge for his parents and we consider th...
FPFV664 Aliens on Screen Aliens On Screen: Cosmopolitics and Extraterrestrials in Sci-Fi Cinema. Aliens loom large on the horizon of our imagination. In culture, aliens manifest in multimedial forms: TV shows, video games, comic books, literature, and of course films. Altho...
FPFV665 Media Sketchbook: Light, Space and Time "Media are our infrastructures of being, the habitats and materials through which we act and are...at some level, expression and existence merge." (John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds) In this course students will plumb the reaches of their ow...
FPFV668 Constructing Alternative Realities Constructing Alternative Realities is a class that will begin by studying composition and characteristics of the film frame. How do time, space, rhythm, movement and sound contribute as key constituents? In this regard, the class will be a study in...
FPFV670 Screenwriting FPFV- The starting point of this discipline is the intention to create a working screenwriting practice dictated by the needs of each story being told and that rejects the "one size fits all" formulaic school of screenwriting. There is no magic bull...
FPFV672 Alternative Screenwriting Alternative Screenwriting for Short Films and Documentaries In the first part of the course we will analyze different short films ("An Andalusian Dog", "Blackrider", "At Land", "The Street and the Ball") and their original screenplays discovering ho...
FPFV673 Acting Bad A course to de-construct acting and narration. The main goal will be to define performance in new, non-traditional ways. Students will develop dialogues and/or narrations taken from real life (court transcripts, overheard conversations) to fictiona...
FPFV674 Benning on Benning This intensive course is a screening series of a selection of 12 films, both analog and digital, from a 50 year career. Students will produce art works (films, paintings, drawing, etc.) inspired by the discussions and screenings in class. The final s...
FPFV676 New Directions for Feminist Film History This seminar takes a transnational approach to exploring the history of cinema, video, documentary, and experimental film by examining the contributions of women, queer, and trans* filmmakers, directors, actors, and film collectives in a global conte...
FPFV677 Prepro: Creative Approaches to Pre-Prod. PrePro: Creative Approaches to Pre-Production Pre-production is an essential step in the creation of a film. Whether it is a fictional narrative with crew and actors, a non fiction project, or a more poetic or structural experimental film, video or...
FPFV678 Cinema of Resistance Cinema of Resistance: Political Filmmaking, Revolutionary Movements, Art, and Social Change "(W)hat we call the political is society itself, it is the form of history itself. film and revolution, or film and arts, or politics and arts, are inseparab...
FPFV679 Site Specific Site Specific: Moving Images in the Cinema, the White Cube, and Online The present moment for exhibiting moving images is a fluid one. Artists who may have traditionally exhibited in a gallery are finding their way into cinemas, while filmmakers are...
FPFV680 Archives and The Archive Archives and the Archive The word "archive/s" holds a strange power these days. It is at once the title of organizations that preserve, arrange and provide access to historical materials, those collections of materials themselves, a synonym for memo...
FPFV682 Project Development Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An advanced theoretical and practical workshop to generate advanced projects, and foster a critical and creative community amongst second and third year students. This will be a development class, t...
FPFV684 Cinema and Representation: Latin America This class centers on the ways in which the idea of Latin America has been constructed through cinema, from the first productions that took place in the region (ca. 1930s) to our days. Looking at a wide range of cinematic practices from both "Latin A...
FPFV685 Dangerous Filmmaking: a Production Wkshp A production workshop. The course is called "dangerous" because we will be delving deep within ourselves to look at our maybe not-so-comfortable family relationships and ourselves from a deeply interior perspective. Each student will produce a work o...
FPFV686 Surveying the Black Futurist Movement Surveying the Black Futurist Movement is positioned at the intersection of various African American traditions including music, performance, poetry, and filmmaking. The course will vacillate between sound and cinema as we investigate the language and...
FPFV688 Post-Production A practical course designed to take the student through the post-production process toward the completion of a finished work. This class is designed for students in the process of finishing their thesis or senior projects and will include group as we...
FPFV697 Alchemical Cinema Course available by permission of instructor only. This course offers an introduction to the mysteries of photographic film-its properties, processes, and potentials. Technique is introduced as an organic component of the expressive arsenal. Everyth...
FPFV699 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FPFV703 Looking at the Sky Urbanization and its overabundance of artificial light has left us blind to the wonders of the night sky, something our ancestors both took for granted and were profoundly influenced by. This course aims at regaining that awareness. The entire sky...
FPFV799 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FSFV112 Institute Life Drawing This course will introduce students from across the Institute to the basic principles of observational life drawing. We will focus on drawing many forms of animate and inanimate subject matter, including human models. There are no prerequisites, and...
FSFV315 This Is Not a Sound Class Close your eyes. Listen. Imagine a dark room, great acoustics and the best world wide sound art sounding around you. Let's feel how sound floods the room and guide us into an unexpected journey. In this setup, how do you feel? What images come to yo...
FSFV321 Writing Through Filmmaking Practice NOTE additional seats will be available for this course at course advising day. Where do film ideas come from? How can we write and make short films that are not simply didactic, explanatory, or formulaic and instead start these projects from sens...
FSFV391 CG Mini-Course: Maya for All CG Mini-Course: Introduction to CG - Maya for All This 7-week mini-course focuses on introducing students to the CG program Maya, and becoming familiar with its workflow and possibilties.
FSFV399 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FSFV420B World Building The term "world building" has often been used to describe the art direction decisions of video game designers or large studio film productions in the science-fiction/fantasy genres, but more recently this term is being used by individual artists maki...
FSFV420J Color Correction and Grading This is a practice based workshop class designed to introduce students to the manipulation of color in digital video. We will approach color correction and grading in through hands on experience with the understanding that the concepts behind the th...
FSFV421C Decolonial Impressions The word 'decolonization' has found various definitions and meanings in the film world today-but what does the word really entail, and can cinema truly be decolonized? Can we successfully break away from the systems and structures that govern the mov...
FSFV421D Hold the Line : Straight Ahead Animation Hold the Line is a workshop designed to explore the practice of straight-ahead animation as a powerful conceptual tool. This class encourages students to engage in prolonged improvisation, embrace spontaneity, intuition, and a sense of flow. Students...
FSFV433 Production Student Technician Course The Production Technician Course - formerly Video Studio TA Class - is taught in conjunction with the Post Production Student Technician Course and Sound Student Technician Course. An objective of these courses is to expand the knowledge-base of the...
FSFV434 Post Prod Student Technician Course The Post Production Student Technician Course is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and the Sound Student Technician Course. An objective of these courses is to expand the knowledge-base of the student body in the mor...
FSFV435 Sound Student Technician Course The Sound Student Technician Course - formerly Sound TA Course - is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and Post Production Student Technician Course. An objective of these courses is to expand the knowledge-base of th...
FSFV435A Sound Student Technician Course This is a 7 week two-sequence course (remote in the Fall; in person in the Spring) The Sound Student Technician Course - formerly Sound TA Course - is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and Post Production Student Te...
FSFV435B Sound Student Technician Course This is a 7 week two-sequence course (remote in the Fall; in person in the Spring) The Sound Student Technician Course - formerly Sound TA Course - is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and Post Production Student Te...
FSFV440 Cinedance Only students from the School of Dance and the School of Film/Video are eligible to enroll. CineDance is a production-oriented course that motivates the creative collaboration between choreographers and filmmakers. Dance and Film/Video students will...
FSFV444 Hot Sad White Guys: Race, Sexuality,Film Sad Hot White Guys is a screening/discussion course exploring gender, race, and sexuality through archetypal media representations of white men. From military propaganda to the politics of pretty, Beau Travail to the white guy of the month on Tiktok;...
FSFV445 Making Music Videos Students in this class will complete a number of collaborative music video production projects in groups that include students from the schools of music, dance, film/video and experimental animation. Music videos can be a wonderful tool for filmmake...
FSFV475 Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways to Create Sounds for Images Erasing notions of hi-delity sound, this class acknowledges that the right sound for a lm might be the result of an aleatory accident, ill-conceived experiment or unpolished performance. As...
FSFV479 Sound Design Lab for Project Development Are you graduating and finishing a project? Do you want to do the sound design of your film / installation but it's been too long since you used Pro Tools the last time? Do you have a significant project that is awaiting you to finally do the sound d...
FSFV481 Sound Editing & Mixing Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course covers practical and aesthetic surround sound design and technical issues. Students will be able to see how their edits translate to a mixing facility. Covers intermediate sound design an...
FSFV483 This Machine Kills Fascists In this class students will build an analog voltage controlled sound synthesizer from scratch using a do-it-yourself kit. Over the course of the semester, we will collaboratively construct the 9 modules that constitute this system employing standard...
FSFV499 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FSFV512 Institute Life Drawing This course will introduce students from across the Institute to the basic principles of observational life drawing. We will focus on drawing many forms of animate and inanimate subject matter, including human models. There are no prerequisites, and...
FSFV515 This Is Not a Sound Class Close your eyes. Listen. Imagine a dark room, great acoustics and the best world wide sound art sounding around you. Let's feel how sound floods the room and guide us into an unexpected journey. In this setup, how do you feel? What images come to yo...
FSFV521 Writing Through Filmmaking Practice NOTE additional seats will be available for this course at course advising day. Where do film ideas come from? How can we write and make short films that are not simply didactic, explanatory, or formulaic and instead start these projects from sens...
FSFV522 Course Design: Teaching As Learning For graduate students with an interest in developing their own courses/curricula in an experimental laboratory context for a possible career or side-hustle in education. This course takes an expansive view toward adaptive and innovative learning envi...
FSFV591 CG Mini-Course: Maya for All CG Mini-Course: Introduction to CG - Maya for All This 7-week mini-course focuses on introducing students to the CG program Maya, and becoming familiar with its workflow and possibilties.
FSFV599 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FSFV620B World Building The term "world building" has often been used to describe the art direction decisions of video game designers or large studio film productions in the science-fiction/fantasy genres, but more recently this term is being used by individual artists maki...
FSFV620J Color Correction and Grading This is a practice based workshop class designed to introduce students to the manipulation of color in digital video. We will approach color correction and grading in through hands on experience with the understanding that the concepts behind the th...
FSFV621C Decolonial Impressions The word 'decolonization' has found various definitions and meanings in the film world today-but what does the word really entail, and can cinema truly be decolonized? Can we successfully break away from the systems and structures that govern the mov...
FSFV621D Hold the Line : Straight Ahead Animation Hold the Line is a workshop designed to explore the practice of straight-ahead animation as a powerful conceptual tool. This class encourages students to engage in prolonged improvisation, embrace spontaneity, intuition, and a sense of flow. Students...
FSFV633 Production Student Technician Course The Production Technician Course - formerly Video Studio TA Class - is taught in conjunction with the Post Production Student Technician Course and Sound Student Technician Course. An objective of these courses is to expand the knowledge-base of the...
FSFV634 Post Prod Student Technician Course The Post Production Student Technician Course is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and the Sound Student Technician Course. An objective of these courses is to expand the knowledge-base of the student body in the mor...
FSFV635 Sound Student Technician Course The Sound Student Technician Course - formerly Sound TA Course - is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and Post Production Student Technician Course. An objective of these courses is to expand the knowledge-base of th...
FSFV635A Sound Student Technician Course This is a 7 week two-sequence course (remote in the Fall; in person in the Spring) The Sound Student Technician Course - formerly Sound TA Course - is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and Post Production Student Te...
FSFV635B Sound Student Technician Course This is a 7 week two-sequence course (remote in the Fall; in person in the Spring) The Sound Student Technician Course - formerly Sound TA Course - is taught in conjunction with the Production Student Technician Course and Post Production Student Te...
FSFV640 Cinedance Only students from the School of Dance and the School of Film/Video are eligible to enroll. CineDance is a production-oriented course that motivates the creative collaboration between choreographers and filmmakers. Dance and Film/Video students will...
FSFV644 Hot Sad White Guys: Race, Sexuality,Film Sad Hot White Guys is a screening/discussion course exploring gender, race, and sexuality through archetypal media representations of white men. From military propaganda to the politics of pretty, Beau Travail to the white guy of the month on Tiktok;...
FSFV645 Making Music Videos Students in this class will complete a number of collaborative music video production projects in groups that include students from the schools of music, dance, film/video and experimental animation. Music videos can be a wonderful tool for filmmake...
FSFV675 Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways Bad Sound: Non-Traditional Ways to Create Sounds for Images Erasing notions of hi-delity sound, this class acknowledges that the right sound for a lm might be the result of an aleatory accident, ill-conceived experiment or unpolished performance. As...
FSFV679 A Sound Lab for Project Development Are you graduating and finishing a project? Do you want to do the sound design of your film / installation but it's been too long since you used Pro Tools the last time? Do you have a significant project that is awaiting you to finally do the sound d...
FSFV681 Sound Editing & Mixing Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course covers practical and aesthetic surround sound design and technical issues. Students will be able to see how their edits translate to a mixing facility. Covers intermediate sound design an...
FSFV683 This Machine Kills Fascists In this class students will build an analog voltage controlled sound synthesizer from scratch using a do-it-yourself kit. Over the course of the semester, we will collaboratively construct the 9 modules that constitute this system employing standard...
FSFV699 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FSFV799 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVCA100 2D Character Animation I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to hand-drawn Character Animation techniques.
FVCA101 2D Character Animation I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to hand-drawn Character Animation techniques.
FVCA110 Life Drawing I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Fundamental concepts of figure drawing, with emphasis on application to character animation. Analysis of the physical structures of the human body, focusing on anatomy, mechanics, thre...
FVCA111 Life Drawing I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Fundamental concepts of figure drawing, with emphasis on application to character animation. Analysis of the physical structures of the human body, focusing on anatomy, mechanics, thre...
FVCA130 Character Design I Open to BFA1 Character Animation students only; Introduction to character design for animation, including the study of gesture, shape, construction, drapery, texture, composition / staging, rhythm, and design.
FVCA132 Design I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Examination of various design elements that exemplify core artistic principles applicable in a variety of artistic endeavors, including shape, proportion, line, movement and counter-mov...
FVCA140 Perspective I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Basic rendering and perspective drawing.
FVCA150 Story I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to story development, storyboarding, visual storytelling and scripting.
FVCA151 Story I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to story development, storyboarding, visual storytelling and scripting.
FVCA151W Story I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Continuation of introduction to story development, storyboarding, visual storytelling and scripting.
FVCA160 Digital Methods I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to digital methods for painting, compositing, and editing.
FVCA161 Digital Methods I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to digital methods for painting, compositing, and editing.
FVCA180 CG Foundation I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to CG software, concepts, and tools.
FVCA181 CG Foundation I Required course; open to BFA1 Character Animation students only. Introduction to CG software, concepts, and tools.
FVCA199 Independent Project Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, including frequency of meetings and unit value,...
FVCA200 2D Character Animation II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Study of hand-drawn animation techniques, with assignments involving scenes animated in continuity, recorded dialogue, and an emphasis on performance.
FVCA201 2D Character Animation II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Study of hand-drawn animation techniques, with assignments involving scenes animated in continuity, recorded dialogue, and an emphasis on performance.
FVCA210 Life Drawing II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Life drawing with an emphasis on gesture, observation, fluidity, rhythm, tempo, and emotion. In-depth study of drawing concepts, anatomy, costume, character and lighting.
FVCA211 Life Drawing II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Life drawing with an emphasis on gesture, observation, fluidity, rhythm, tempo, and emotion. In-depth study of drawing concepts, anatomy, costume, character and lighting.
FVCA212 Introduction to Sculpture This course will introduce students to figurative sculpture, as well as imaginative sculpture. We will work in a variety of materials. Students are required to produce 2-3 finished camera-ready finished pieces. Enrollment limited to BFA1 and BFA2 stu...
FVCA220 Film Workshop II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA221 Film Workshop II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA221W Film Workshop II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Continuation of instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived andd executed animated short film.
FVCA225 Color As Storytelling Color as Storytelling explores how to use color as a story telling element in filmmaking. Through in-class assignments, students will gain a solid understanding of color problem solving, as well as how to enhance the storytelling of their individual...
FVCA230 Character Design II Intermediate study of drawing and character design, focused on innovative approaches to gesture, construction, lines, composition and staging.
FVCA240 Animation Layout Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Basic composition and design of layout animation techniques.
FVCA252 Story II: Storyboarding Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Study of the theory and structure behind storytelling and its application towards the short form animated film.
FVCA253 Story II: Storyboarding Study of the theory and structure behind storytelling and its application towards the short form animated film.
FVCA260 Digital Methods II: Sound Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. Introduction to digital methods for sound design in animated films, including recording, gathering audio, editing, mixing, and audio design principles.
FVCA280 CG Foundation II Required course; open to BFA2 Character Animation students only. CG modeling, focusing on concepts and techniques for designing blended surface humans, animals, or other expressive characters for animation.
FVCA290 Acting for Animators Beginning acting class for animators, offering a detailed understanding of behavior and emotion as applied to storytelling. Character Animation students are required to take this course once during their BFA degree.
FVCA299 Independent Project Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, including frequency of meetings and unit value,...
FVCA300 2D Character Animation III Required course; open to BFA3 Character Animation students only. Intermediate character animation techniques, with emphasis on performance, story construction, character development and dramatic structure.
FVCA301 2D Character Animation III Required course; open to BFA3 Character Animation students only. Intermediate character animation techniques, with emphasis on performance, story construction, character development and dramatic structure.
FVCA311 Advanced Painting Painting techniques with acrylic, gauche, watercolor, glazing, texture, and mixed media. Study of models, landscape, and still life. Color theory, color relationships, examination of warm and cool, dark and light.
FVCA312 Advanced Life Drawing: Sculpture Armature, realistic and fantasy sculpting, mold making.
FVCA313 Advanced Life Drawing: Illlustration Single image storytelling methods for graphic novels, book covers, children's books, posters, comics, and movie design presentations. Costume models will be used for reference in most classes.
FVCA314 Advanced Life Drawing: Form, Structure Three-dimensional analysis of form, design, and the structure of the human figure as it translates from careful observation to the language of drawing. Investigation of human anatomical structures, movement, distortions, composition, natural rhythm a...
FVCA315 Life Drawing for Animation Life drawing techniques for animation, focusing on gesture and story.
FVCA316 Advanced Portrait Drawing and Painting Students will learn to accurately paint a portrait from life, with an emphasis on interpreting tonal values and shapes to accurately create an image with fidelity to the model.
FVCA320 Film Workshop III Required course; open to BFA3 Character Animation students only. Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA321 Film Workshop III Required course; open to BFA3 Character Animation students only. Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA321W Film Workshop III Required course; open to BFA3 Character Animation students only. Continued instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA323 CG Film Workshop Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film that contains CG.
FVCA334 Professional Preparation III Required course; open to BFA3 Character Animation students only. Designing a professional portfolio suitable for presentation to various audiences, including potential employers, clients and gallery owners.
FVCA335 Professional Prep: Industry Skills The goal of this course is to help Character Animation students prepare for a career in animation, with a focus on events like CalArts Animation Portfolio Day, and other similar industry-focused career fairs. We'll discuss best practices for portfoli...
FVCA340 Visual Development Instruction in the use of visual communication to tell and support story, breaking down line value, color and composition along with subject.
FVCA342 Cinematography This course will address composition with an emphasis on visual storytelling. Together, cinematography and composition deliver vital subtext to every shot and scene. Placement, scale, shape, movement, tonal value and contrast are some of the factors...
FVCA346 Illustration for Animators In this class, we will take everything you already know (and are currently learning) about animation and apply it to the creation of children's books. Knowledge of story, character, composition, acting and design are all necessary to make a children'...
FVCA350 Advanced Story Intermediate / advanced story development, storyboard preparation, scripting and story essentials.
FVCA370 CG Character Animation Introduction to CG animation techniques, with a focus on performance in animation.
FVCA383 CG Look Development This course focuses on developing individual workflows to take character and/or environment designs from concept to completion using CG rendering. Looks may focus on the photoreal to the highly stylized, as per the student's individual goals. Using e...
FVCA384 Introduction to ZBrush This course teaches ZBrush software and CG modeling concepts. The class will be a direct resource for producing material that the studios are looking for, such as video game characters, prop design, and styles that cannot be created by traditional ma...
FVCA388 Integrating CG & Live Action This course focuses on incorporating CG and live-action filming to achieve special effects and animations. From scripts to storyboards, students will practice pre-production techniques to properly plan for and direct digital/live action workflows in...
FVCA393 CG Mini-Course: Toon Shading This 7-week mini-course focuses on a few CG techniques tot output scenes that look like and/or integrate with traditional animation. From outline rendering to flat shaded output to applying hand drawn textures on CG assets, students will practice CG...
FVCA394 CG Mini-Course: Mapping BGs CG Mini-Course: Mapping Techniques for Backgrounds This 7-week mini-course focuses on a few CG techniques to create backgrounds and environments for CG or traditional animations. Students will be presented with, and heavily practice techniques to ef...
FVCA395 CG Mini-Course: Camera Projections This 7-week mini-course focuses on a few CG techniques to allow animators to previsualize their traditional films for layout and camera movement. Students will create traditional artwork to be projected onto simple geometry in CG scenes to allow for...
FVCA397 Entrepreneurial Studies Understanding copyright laws, contracts, principles of law and practice for distributing your animation work to the public. Additional topics include developing a career in animation, and/or running your film, video, television or new media business.
FVCA399 Independent Project Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, including frequency of meetings and unit value,...
FVCA400 Character Animation IV Required course; open to BFA4 Character Animation students only. Advanced character animation techniques, with emphasis on performance, story construction, character development and dramatic structure.
FVCA401 Character Animation IV Required course; open to BFA4 Character Animation students only. Advanced character animation techniques, with emphasis on performance, story construction, character development and dramatic structure.
FVCA420 Film Workshop IV Required course; open to BFA4 Character Animation students only. Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA421 Film Workshop IV Required course; open to BFA4 Character Animation students only. Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA421W Film Workshop IV Required course; open to BFA4 Character Animation students only. Continued instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed animated short film.
FVCA430 Advanced Character Design Intermediate / advanced character design; techniques for producing top-notch character designs.
FVCA436 CG Character Modeling This course provides a focused exploration of CG character modeling in Maya. Production techniques and aesthetic considerations are examined in detail. Students learn the finer points of constructing clean, deformable surfaces, which can be rigged f...
FVCA446 CG Character Rigging This course provides a focused exploration of 3D character rigging and animation setup techniques in Maya. Building on the previous CG work in modeling or foundation classes, students learn how to rig a model as an appealing, animatable character wit...
FVCA486 CG Special Effects for Animated Films This course focuses on using advanced digital tools to create special effects for CG as well as traditional animation. Special effects include lightning, rain, snow, smoke, water, fire, etc.
FVCA499 Independent Project Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, including frequency of meetings and unit value,...
FVCA511 Advanced Painting Painting techniques with acrylic, gauche, watercolor, glazing, texture, and mixed media. Study of models, landscape, and still life. Color theory, color relationships, examination of warm and cool, dark and light.
FVCA513 Advanced Life Drawing: Illustration Single image storytelling methods for graphic novels, book covers, children's books, posters, comics, and movie design presentations. Costume models will be used for reference in most classes.
FVCA514 Advanced Life Drawing: Form, Structure Three-dimensional analysis of form, design, and the structure of the human figure as it translates from careful observation to the language of drawing. Investigation of human anatomical structures, movement, distortions, composition, natural rhythm a...
FVCA522 CG Film Workshop CG Film Workshop Instruction and guidance in the process of developing an individually conceived and executed CG animated short film. Enrollment limited; instructor approval required.
FVCA525 Color As Storytelling Color as Storytelling explores how to use color as a story telling element in filmmaking. Through in-class assignments, students will gain a solid understanding of color problem solving, as well as how to enhance the storytelling of their individual...
FVCA526 Advanced Portrait Drawing and Painting Students will learn to accurately paint a portrait from life, with an emphasis on interpreting tonal values and shapes to accurately create an image with fidelity to the model.
FVCA541 Visual Development Instruction in the use of visual communication to tell and support story, breaking down line value, color and composition along with subject.
FVCA546 Illustration for Animators In this class, we will take everything you already know (and are currently learning) about animation and apply it to the creation of children's books. Knowledge of story, character, composition, acting and design are all necessary to make a children'...
FVCA583 CG Look Development This course focuses on developing individual workflows to take character and/or environment designs from concept to completion using CG rendering. Looks may focus on the photoreal to the highly stylized, as per the student's individual goals. Using e...
FVCA584 Introduction to ZBrush Optional course; open to MFA students by permission of instructor only. This course teaches ZBrush software and CG modeling concepts. The class will be a direct resource for producing material that the studios are looking for, such as video game char...
FVCA588 Integrating CG & Live Action This course focuses on incorporating CG and live-action filming to achieve special effects and animations. From scripts to storyboards, students will practice pre-production techniques to properly plan for and direct digital/live action workflows in...
FVCA593 CG Mini-Course: Toon Shading This 7-week mini-course focuses on a few CG techniques tot output scenes that look like and/or integrate with traditional animation. From outline rendering to flat shaded output to applying hand drawn textures on CG assets, students will practice CG...
FVCA594 CG Mini-Course: Mapping BGs CG Mini-Course: Mapping Techniques for Backgrounds This 7-week mini-course focuses on a few CG techniques to create backgrounds and environments for CG or traditional animations. Students will be presented with, and heavily practice techniques to ef...
FVCA595 CG Mini-Course: Camera Proj. This 7-week mini-course focuses on a few CG techniques to allow animators to previsualize their traditional films for layout and camera movement. Students will create traditional artwork to be projected onto simple geometry in CG scenes to allow for...
FVCA597 Entrepreneurial Studies Understanding copyright laws, contracts, principles of law and practice for distributing your animation work to the public. Additional topics include developing a career in animation, and/or running your film, video, television or new media business.
FVCA599 Independent Project Available by Permission of Instructor Only. Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, in...
FVCA636 CG Character Modeling This course provides a focused exploration of CG character modeling in Maya. Production techniques and aesthetic considerations are examined in detail. Students learn the finer points of constructing clean, deformable surfaces, which can be rigged f...
FVCA646 CG Character Rigging This course provides a focused exploration of 3D character rigging and animation setup techniques in Maya. Building on the previous CG work in modeling or foundation classes, students learn how to rig a model as an appealing, animatable character wit...
FVCA670 CG Character Animation Intermediate CG animation techniques, with a focus on performance in animation.
FVCA699 Independent Project Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, including frequency of meetings and unit value,...
FVCA799 Independent Project Individual intensive project or study, with scheduled meetings to be arranged between faculty member and student. Tangible evidence of project or mastery of subject matter required. This agreement, including frequency of meetings and unit value,...
FVEA107 BFA Animation Workshop Course open to BFA1 Experimental Animation students only. The Program in Experimental Animation embraces the practice of educating students in a broad animation aesthetic. Beginning in the first year students are encouraged to expand and evolve their...
FVEA108 BFA Animation Production Open to Experimental Animation students only. This is a follow-up to the fall semester's BFA ANIMATION WORKSHOP. Students are required to see a short project through from concept to completion, culminating in a screening of the final piece in the Bi...
FVEA145 Motion and Meaning Moving beyond basic navigation in After Effects, students will create a range of projects that explore video processing, creating animation references, scene layout, color styling, live-action footage and 3D graphics integration, keying, masking, lig...
FVEA199 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVEA202 BFA2 Concept Development The first semester of a two-semester course required of BFA2s in Experimental Animation. In this section, students develop and begin production of a short project involving animation. Emphasis is on conceptual development and increasing mastery of th...
FVEA203 BFA2 Production The second semester of a two-semester course required of BFA2s in Experimental Animation. In this section, students complete production of the short project involving animation that reflects the student's personal aesthetic.
FVEA207 Motion Control Animated Camera Achieving camera moves in stop-motion animated films requires motion control. In this class, students will be taught how to use both Dragonframe and Kuper to program and shoot animated camera moves on the two rigs located in Butler Building #4. Advan...
FVEA213 Animal Anima This course studies the essence of animal movement and character. Students will present studies of their own choosing, selecting a myth or short story to analyze the function, personality, and appeal of one type of animal/non-human, including mammals...
FVEA225 Experimental Characters Experimental Characters explores animation techniques that utilize drawn figures to push aesthetic boundaries and express deeper emotional truths. Weekly readings, screenings, and lectures will provide the framework for in-depth discussions of the fo...
FVEA240 Sound for Experimental Animation I Through discussion, critique, technical workshops, and labs, in this course we will develop an understanding of the rich meaning-potential of sound, made even more powerful in its relationship to moving images. We will analyze the nature of sound per...
FVEA241 Sound for Experimental Animation II Second part of a two semester required sequence. Using Pro Tools for sound editing and mix preparation. Opportunity to build on and expand recordings from the fall semester. Planning and coordination of post-production sound paths, including format/f...
FVEA255 Hybrid Imaging Course open to BFA1 Experimental Animation students only. This class provides students with a robust knowledge of contemporary software for 2D animation production, enhancing creative and technical activity at every stage of creation.
FVEA299 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVEA301 Intro to CG for Experimental Animation This course introduces foundational principles of modeling, animating, and rendering with CG. Through lectures, demonstrations, workshops, and assignments, students will gain an understanding of CG tools and explore ways they can be utilized. Student...
FVEA305 Exp Animation: Direct Techniques This class is Open to the Institute. Students will explore a variety of animation techniques in which media are directly manipulated, such as paint on glass, sand animation, and direct filmmaking (drawing or scratching on film, for example). The cour...
FVEA308 Loop Loop Loop Loop is a course focused on looping and repetition in art, film, and animation. Each week, students will watch, discuss, and create animated work that is either thematically structured through repeating actions, words, and objects, or is the res...
FVEA309 Clay for Animators This course will explore the processes for constructing three dimensional sculptures and objects in clay. We will undertake the standard methods for building such as slab and coil and traditional surface treatments including glazing and firing. Stu...
FVEA310 Production Design for Stop Motion This course is Permission of Instructor only. The Production Design for Stop Motion course will explore the full production process of stop motion filmmaking. Through a series of practical workshops in prop design, fabrication, storyboarding, locati...
FVEA316 Location Animation There are an infinite number of objects that can be brought to life through stop motion. Anywhere a camera is set up, images can be captured one frame at a time transforming familiar settings into something fantastic. By capturing the world around th...
FVEA318 Animating Virtual Worlds in Real-Time This 7-week workshop explores real-time computer graphics in Blender through unconventional processes of viewport mechanics. Through experimentation between cinema, animation, and games, we will learn how to imagine, construct, manipulate, and animat...
FVEA333 Formlessness This class is a place to explore the rethinking of boundaries, unforming set notions of the way a body, film, or artistic idea can exist, and pushing one’s practice into new territories. The course is an interdisciplinary place for experimental anima...
FVEA338 Intro to Cinema4D Permission of instructor required. Animators and artists can find a rapid entree into CG animation for a range of personal work using Cinema 4D. In this course, students will develop CG animation skills with this particular software. They will be...
FVEA348 Intermediate Cinema4D This course expands on the foundational knowledge developed in FVEA338/538 by providing more in-depth instruction in the areas of animation, modeling, and rendering. This includes character rigging and animation, advanced motion graphics techniques,...
FVEA363 Storyboarding, Layout & Timing Course available by permission of instructor only. A workshop that explores, in detail, storyboard, layout and timing for Experimental Animators.
FVEA370 Imagining Reality "When you try to show reality in cinema, most of the time it's totally false. But when you show what's going on in people's minds that's very cinematic." (Chantal Akerman) This course will investigate a broad range of non-fiction applications within...
FVEA399 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVEA404 Structure Map This course aims to give concrete form to abstract ideas through the use of image map and structure map (the form of a physical book), facilitating the identification of a project's core and structure. It can be challenging to assess the strengths an...
FVEA407 Experimental Animation Writing This course uses writing to generate and refine ideas for short films. Students will use creative prompts and challenges that encourage play with forms of language, sound, and experimental narrative. Building on ideas and modes explored in these exer...
FVEA409 Experimental Animation Installation A project-based course where students experiment on a continuous basis notions of installation practice today and how it relates to the Experimental Animation artist. Lectures and presentations of installation artists are an important component of th...
FVEA410 Interactive Media Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An interactive boot camp, this course provides a foundation for interactive media installation, creation of art-games, and performance. Students will gain experience using Unity3D, a game engine, fo...
FVEA412 The Animator's Hand: Physical & Virtual The Animator's Hand: The Physical and the Virtual. In our hyper-virtualized world, work with physical materials and mark-making on physical surfaces provides a welcome complement to digital means of production. In this course, pulling from the histo...
FVEA414 Feral Game Building Games can be fresh, contributing to the political genre. In this course, we will create politically oriented digital games without code. Given freedom from programming, and a well-structured gaming environment, we can leverage both usual and atypic...
FVEA415 Drawn Techniques for Exp Animation I Drawn Techniques is a semester-long workshop course exploring the practice of drawn animation. In this course we will survey various hand drawn techniques through a series of weekly topics and methods. The course is designed to deconstruct and expand...
FVEA417 Lighting and Camera for Exp Animation Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course will cover the equipment available for lighting and shooting stop motion animation and animation techniques that use a DSLR Lighting techniques that will help with your story and concept...
FVEA419 Motion Capture for Artists This course will take the form of a series of lectures, screenings, and demonstrations in support of a production workshop centered on using our eight camera PhaseSpace Impulse 3D motion capture system in concert with Autodesk's MotionBuilder and May...
FVEA420 Stop Motion Animation Basics Course available by Permission of Instructor only. The Stop Motion Animation Basics course will explore the art of Stop motion through a series of workshops exploring choreography, timing, lighting and photography. Throughout the semester students w...
FVEA423 Intuitive Animation Workshop INTUITIVE ANIMATION WORKSHOP Lip sync and working with sync; character design; layout; working with screen space; walk cycles; anticipation; stretch and squash; basic film language; use of loops, keys and in-betweens; ramping; cleaning up; handing o...
FVEA426 Dimensions of Dialogue DIMENSIONS OF DIALOGUE: POLITICS & PROTEST IN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION This screening-based course will survey experimental animation approaches to politics and protest from a radically diverse array of traditions, regions, historical periods, techniqu...
FVEA428 Stop Motion Puppet Design & Fabrication Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Unlike live action filmmaking the "puppet" actors in a stop motion film need to be designed and constructed by the filmmaker. This class will introduce students to a variety of fabrication techniques...
FVEA430A Interactive Projects This course, open to the institute, is for those wanting to make media works, including installations, performative animated video-based AR, VR, etc. In this course, students will create proposals for work that will be completed in the spring. Option...
FVEA432 Augmented Reality and Metamedia Interruptions happen - augmented realty - &@!#. Like this. Like that. We have become a culture of interruption, where ruptures in the flow of time-based experience have become the norm. Our social media can interrupt daily endeavors, while augmented...
FVEA433 Comics Workshop In the Comics Workshop, students will develop a narrative piece in comics form, culminating in a self-published comic at the end of the semester. This course will be similar in style to a creative writing workshop, where individual work is shared wee...
FVEA439 2.5D Stop Motion This course will explore the art of limited cut-out animation through a series of workshops investigating concept development, storyboarding, character and landscape design, and post-production techniques. Combining digital processes with hand-made t...
FVEA444 Worlding Strategies and Making Work Worlding has become a rapidly developing concept and process for assisting us in the creation of work for arts: including written, performative, media-based, and other diverse forms. Worlding, simply stated is what each of us do day to day as we nego...
FVEA449 Experimental Animation Colloquium This is a class that will be rotated among Experimental Animation Faculty and is intended to be a flexible space where faculty can engage with students in a diverse range of topics and activities in a variety of formats. It may take the form of a sem...
FVEA450 Experimental Animation: Visiting Artists This course is comprised of presentations given by visiting artists in the form of lecture, workshop, and/or critique. These visitors, selected by student organizers, will be established independent artists and creative commercial leaders. Within the...
FVEA451 AI for Experimental Animation AI for Animators allows students to develop a working relationship to AI tools in their animation practice. This course introduces ways of thinking about AI that will produce a durable and critical philosophy of what these tools can be for artists. T...
FVEA452 Animation Aesthetics in Practice When creating an animated narrative, how does the filmmaker tell the story? How can the art design and language of the scenes push the story forward? How can the filmmaker let the audience into the emotion of the animated characters, and allow them t...
FVEA454 Talking Sketchbook: Silhouetted Image Course overview: This course is designed to harness the bold and captivating power of the silhouetted image. Short areas of playful animatic investigations along with self-generated audio bites, that attempt to loosely document the spontaneous work...
FVEA459 Memory Clash In this course, students will use some old photographs from their family as a starting point. They will proceed to add collages and hand-colored and build up stories based on their personal memories. Afterwards, students could try to get images from...
FVEA463 Previsualization Techniques The desire to maintain autonomous development in the increasingly diffuse world of animation and the experimental film is rigorously explored. How ideas are shaped through processes between content, text and image are regularly developed while lookin...
FVEA465 Direction & Performance in Stop Motion This course is by Permission of Instructor Only. A key component of a stop motion film is the quality of the animation. The success of a character's performance is not merely defined by its smoothness. The movement must communicate the physical and t...
FVEA467 Permutations Process is at the heart of animation practice, and the decisions artists make about tools, methods, and techniques are often a fundamental, defining aspect of their individual works or overall style. This screening-based course will survey the extens...
FVEA468 Primary Stimulus Named Primary Stimulus after a film by animator and historian Robert Russett, this class meets once a week, focusing on a single experimental animator or artist working with animation in each session. In class we will look at several films and relat...
FVEA473 Puzzling A puzzle is something puzzling - it expects deduction and solution, while at the same time describes a condition of open confusion. The Puzzling class uses screenings, readings, and group discussion to examine the idea of film as a puzzle. The course...
FVEA478 Rules "Rules" focuses on creative experimentation using constraints, permissions, and structures. The course will explore different ways in which setting, following, and breaking rules can allow for creative possibilities. Drawing inspiration from examples...
FVEA479 Cartoon Logic Cartoon Logic is a seminar course that presents a critical and theoretical framework for experimental animation. Through weekly readings and discussions, the course will address foundational questions about what animation is and what it can do. These...
FVEA480 The Professional World Course available by permission of instructor. This intensive workshop will focus on preparing students for life in the professional working world. We'll examine various career paths such as the studio system, freelance, and an independent artist path...
FVEA482 Exp Animation Undergrad Critique A Special Permission from Instructor required (interested students must email Leighton Pierce, lpierce@calarts.edu by Sept 4th 2020). This is a required course open to BFA4 and select BFA3 Experimental Animation students. This course supports 3rd and...
FVEA483 Exp Animation Undergraduate Critique Special Permission from Instructor required (interested students must email Leighton Pierce, lpierce@calarts.edu by Sept 4th 2020). This is a required course open to BFA4 and select BFA3 Experimental Animation students. This course supports 3rd and...
FVEA499 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVEA501 Intro to CG for Experimental Animation This course introduces foundational principles of modeling, animating, and rendering with CG. Through lectures, demonstrations, workshops, and assignments, students will gain an understanding of CG tools and explore ways they can be utilized. Student...
FVEA502 The Digital Path for Animation Course will prepare students for making work using digital tools. This class will focus on the technical aspects of the pre-production, production and post-production processes. Covering animation and live action production workflows. Topics inc...
FVEA504 Digtial Workflow for Animators Digital Workflow for Animators is a three-week workshop that introduces students to technical image and video format concepts, as well as workflow techniques that will aid animators in their productions.
FVEA507 Motion Control Animated Camera Achieving camera moves in stop-motion animated films requires motion control. In this class, students will be taught how to use both Dragonframe and Kuper to program and shoot animated camera moves on the two rigs located in Butler Building #4. Advan...
FVEA508 Loop Loop Loop Loop is a course focused on looping and repetition in art, film, and animation. Each week, students will watch, discuss, and create animated work that is either thematically structured through repeating actions, words, and objects, or is the res...
FVEA509 Clay for Animators This course will explore the processes for constructing three dimensional sculptures and objects in clay. We will undertake the standard methods for building such as slab and coil and traditional surface treatments including glazing and firing. Stu...
FVEA510 Production Design for Stop Motion This course is Permission of Instructor only. The Production Design for Stop Motion course will explore the full production process of stop motion filmmaking. Through a series of practical workshops in prop design, fabrication, storyboarding, locati...
FVEA513 Animal Anima This course studies the essence of animal movement and character. Students will present studies of their own choosing, selecting a myth or short story to analyze the function, personality, and appeal of one type of animal/non-human, including mammals...
FVEA515 Drawn Techniques for Exp Animation I Drawn Techniques is a semester-long workshop course exploring the practice of drawn animation. In this course we will survey various hand drawn techniques through a series of weekly topics and methods. The course is designed to deconstruct and expand...
FVEA518 Animating Virtual Worlds in Real-Time This 7-week workshop explores real-time computer graphics in Blender through unconventional processes of viewport mechanics. Through experimentation between cinema, animation, and games, we will learn how to imagine, construct, manipulate, and animat...
FVEA520 EA Thesis Concept Seminar A The Thesis Concept Seminar analyzes and supports the student's thesis project while it goes through preliminary phases to prepare for the thesis review. The MFA student spends a fair amount of time preparing this project with at least two presentatio...
FVEA521 EA Thesis Concept Seminar B The Thesis Concept Seminar in the spring semester is designed to support the MFA 2 student while beginning the production of the approved theses. Students design a contract that describes the goals they are committed to completing by the end of the s...
FVEA522 Experimental Characters Experimental Characters explores animation techniques that utilize drawn figures to push aesthetic boundaries and express deeper emotional truths. Weekly readings, screenings, and lectures will provide the framework for in-depth discussions of the fo...
FVEA525 First Year Shorts A Course available by Permission of Instructor only. A two-semester class exploring the process of developing an idea to completion. The course will emphasize the process of development and production, starting with initial ideas, continuing through pr...
FVEA526 First Year Shorts B Course available by permission of instructor only. A two-semester class exploring the process of developing an idea to completion. The course will emphasize the process of development and production, starting with initial ideas, continuing through pr...
FVEA530 EA Thesis Production Seminar A Course open to MFA3 Experimental Animation students only. MFA thesis students will present their projects for discussion and analysis. A course designed to guide each student through development, production, and post-production. Students learn to de...
FVEA531 EA Thesis Production Seminar B Open to Experimental Animation students only. MFA thesis students will present their projects for discussion and analysis. A course designed to guide each student through development, production, and post-production. Students learn to develop critic...
FVEA533 Formlessness This class is a place to explore the rethinking of boundaries, unforming set notions of the way a body, film, or artistic idea can exist, and pushing one's practice into new territories. The course is an interdisciplinary place for experimental anima...
FVEA538 Intro to Cinema4D Permission of instructor required. Animators and artists can find a rapid entree into CG animation for a range of personal work using Cinema 4D. In this course, students will develop CG animation skills with this particular software. They will be...
FVEA540 Sound for Experimental Animation I Through discussion, critique, technical workshops, and labs, in this course we will develop an understanding of the rich meaning-potential of sound, made even more powerful in its relationship to moving images. We will analyze the nature of sound per...
FVEA541 Sound for Experimental Animation II Second part of a two semester required sequence. Using Pro Tools for sound editing and mix preparation. Opportunity to build on and expand recordings from the fall semester. Planning and coordination of post-production sound paths, including format/f...
FVEA542 Advanced Cinema 4D Workshop In this six-week workshop, students will further develop their CG animation skills, learning advanced techniques in Cinema 4D and Z Brush. They'll practice diverse applications of the software while exploring the landscape of CGI in contemporary art...
FVEA544 Creating Augmented Reality Experiences Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience in which 2D and/or 3D graphics appear in the real-world when the user views the world through a mobile device or headset. In this course, students will conceptualize and create augmented reality exp...
FVEA548 Intermediate Cinema4D This course expands on the foundational knowledge developed in FVEA338/538 by providing more in-depth instruction in the areas of animation, modeling, and rendering. This includes character rigging and animation, advanced motion graphics techniques,...
FVEA555 Hybrid Imaging MFA students know animation is a blend of creative and technical activities. From the choice of what pencil lead we use, to selecting the right "codec" to render with, technical knowledge is an important factor in successfully expressing your ideas...
FVEA560 Observation & Play Observation & Play. Additional enrollment will take place at Course Advising Day. How can we engage our exterior surroundings through our animation practice? How can observation inform our filmmaking? When does making become play? This process-driv...
FVEA563 Storyboarding, Layout & Timing Course available by permission of instructor only. A workshop that explores, in detail, storyboard, layout and timing for Experimental Animators.
FVEA570 Imagining Reality "When you try to show reality in cinema, most of the time it's totally false. But when you show what's going on in people's minds that's very cinematic." (Chantal Akerman) This course will investigate a broad range of non-fiction applications within...
FVEA599 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVEA604 Structure Map This course aims to give concrete form to abstract ideas through the use of image map and structure map (the form of a physical book), facilitating the identification of a project's core and structure. It can be challenging to assess the strengths an...
FVEA605 Exp Animation: Direct Techniques This class is Open to the Institute. Students will explore a variety of animationtechniques in which media are directly manipulated, such as paint on glass, sand animation, and direct filmmaking (drawing or scratching on film, for example). The cours...
FVEA606 Negotiating Animation & Digital Footage This class, a lab and seminar, fosters a critical and research environment where students investigate emerging forms and media technologies to discover new relationships with animation and digital timed footage. Working with cinematic tropes and vari...
FVEA607 Experimental Animation Writing This course uses writing to generate and refine ideas for short films. Students will use creative prompts and challenges that encourage play with forms of language, sound, and experimental narrative. Building on ideas and modes explored in these exer...
FVEA609 Experimental Animation Installation A project-based course where students experiment on a continuous basis notions of installation practice today and how it relates to the Experimental Animation artist. Lectures and presentations of installation artists are an important component of th...
FVEA610 Interactive Media Course available by Permission of Instructor only. An interactive boot camp, this course provides a foundation for interactive media installation, creation of art-games, and performance. Students will gain experience using Unity3D, a game engine, fo...
FVEA612 The Animator's Hand: Physical & Virtual The Animator's Hand: The Physical and the Virtual. In our hyper-virtualized world, work with physical materials and mark-making on physical surfaces provides a welcome complement to digital means of production. In this course, pulling from the histo...
FVEA614 Feral Game Building Games can be fresh, contributing to the political genre. In this course, we will create politically oriented digital games without code. Given freedom from programming, and a well-structured gaming environment, we can leverage both usual and atypic...
FVEA616 Location Animation There are an infinite number of objects that can be brought to life through stop motion. Anywhere a camera is set up, images can be captured one frame at a time transforming familiar settings into something fantastic. By capturing the world around th...
FVEA617 Lighting & Camera for Exp Animation Course available by Permission of Instructor only. This course will cover the equipment available for lighting and shooting stop motion animation and animation techniques that use a DSLR Lighting techniques that will help with your story and concept...
FVEA618 Adv Cinematography for Stop Motion This class will focus on advanced lighting techniques for stop-motion. In addition there will be classes dedicated to camera movement choregraphy, forced perspective sets/puppets, dmx lighting, and final color correction. Students should expect to s...
FVEA619 Motion Capture for Artists This course will take the form of a series of lectures, screenings, and demonstrations in support of a production workshop centered on using our eight camera PhaseSpace Impulse 3D motion capture system in concert with Autodesk's MotionBuilder and May...
FVEA620 Stop Motion Animation Basics Course available by Permission of Instructor only. The Stop Motion Animation Basics course will explore the art of Stop motion through a series of workshops exploring choreography, timing, lighting and photography. Throughout the semester students w...
FVEA623 Intuitive Animation Workshop INTUITIVE ANIMATION WORKSHOP Lip sync and working with sync; character design; layout; working with screen space; walk cycles; anticipation; stretch and squash; basic film language; use of loops, keys and in-betweens; ramping; cleaning up; handing o...
FVEA626 Dimensions of Dialogue DIMENSIONS OF DIALOGUE: POLITICS & PROTEST IN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION This screening-based course will survey experimental animation approaches to politics and protest from a radically diverse array of traditions, regions, historical periods, techniqu...
FVEA627 Unity Fundamentals Unity Engine - Fundamentals to create games and interactive experiences. Students will learn how to use the video game engine software Unity in a workshop environment. In the last 10 years Unity became a leading creative and innovative platform acr...
FVEA628 Stop Motion Puppet Desig and Fabrication Course available by Permission of Instructor only. Unlike live action filmmaking the "puppet" actors in a stop motion film need to be designed and constructed by the filmmaker. This class will introduce students to a variety of fabrication techniques...
FVEA629 Symbiotic Puppet Fabrication In the corporate studio setting puppets are designed and fabricated from the conscious part of the brain. Designs are often limited because of mass production or its ability to stay within the realms of the approved style guide. But what if there wer...
FVEA630 Advanced Interactive Production Workshop This course, open to the institute, is for those wanting to make cinematic work for the Vortex Dome, a fifty foot diameter hemispheric dome located near downtown Los Angeles. In this course, students will create proposals for work that will be compl...
FVEA630A Interactive Projects This course, open to the institute, is for those wanting to make media works, including installations, performative animated video-based AR, VR, etc. In this course, students will create proposals for work that will be completed in the spring. Option...
FVEA632 Augmented Reality and Metamedia Interruptions happen - augmented realty - &@!#. Like this. Like that. We have become a culture of interruption, where ruptures in the flow of time-based experience have become the norm. Our social media can interrupt daily endeavors, while augmented...
FVEA633 Comics Workshop In the Comics Workshop, students will develop a narrative piece in comics form, culminating in a self-published comic at the end of the semester. This course will be similar in style to a creative writing workshop, where individual work is shared wee...
FVEA639 2.5D Stop Motion This course will explore the art of limited cut-out animation through a series of workshops investigating concept development, storyboarding, character and landscape design, and post-production techniques. Combining digital processes with hand-made t...
FVEA641 Animation Improv A project-oriented animation class designed to be taught online, this class uses improvisational techniques as a vehicle to investigate the art and practice of animation. Working in TVPaint and After Effects, in this workshop class students share dra...
FVEA642 Stereoscopy: Wheatstone to VR "Explorations in Stereoscopic Imaging: from Wheatstone to VR". Since 1838 when Charles Wheatstone first formulated a theory of the role of binocular vision in stereopsis, numerous techniques for the creation and display of three dimensional images...
FVEA643 CalArts Animation: The Early Years This course will take the form of a screening and discussion seminar designed to provide an overview of animation at CalArts during the formative decades of the institute. Having been a member of the CalArts community during that period, current facu...
FVEA644 Worlding Strategies and Making Work Worlding has become a rapidly developing concept and process for assisting us in the creation of work for arts: including written, performative, media-based, and other diverse forms. Worlding, simply stated is what each of us do day to day as we nego...
FVEA645 Motion and Meaning Moving beyond basic navigation in After Effects, students will create a range of projects that explore video processing, creating animation references, scene layout, color styling, live-action footage and 3D graphics integration, keying, masking, lig...
FVEA648 Absolute Animation Workshop In the early 20th century the term "absolute" applied to the moving image arose out of an equivalency with the term "absolute" as it is applied to music. It its most direct definition, absolute music is non-representational, providing a direct sensua...
FVEA649 Experimental Animation Colloquium This is a class that will be rotated among Experimental Animation Faculty and is intended to be a flexible space where faculty can engage with students in a diverse range of topics and activities in a variety of formats. It may take the form of a sem...
FVEA650 Exp Animation: Visiting Artists This course is comprised of presentations given by visiting artists in the form of lecture, workshop, and/or critique. These visitors, selected by student organizers, will be established independent artists and creative commercial leaders. Within the...
FVEA651 AI for Experimental Animation AI for Animators allows students to develop a working relationship to AI tools in their animation practice. This course introduces ways of thinking about AI that will produce a durable and critical philosophy of what these tools can be for artists. T...
FVEA652 Animation Aesthetics in Practice When creating an animated narrative, how does the filmmaker tell the story? How can the art design and language of the scenes push the story forward? How can the filmmaker let the audience into the emotion of the animated characters, and allow them t...
FVEA654 Talking Sketchbook: Silhouetted Image Course overview: This course is designed to harness the bold and captivating power of the silhouetted image. Short areas of playful animatic investigations along with self-generated audio bites, that attempt to loosely document the spontaneous work...
FVEA659 Memory Clash In this course, students will use some old photographs from their family as a starting point. They will proceed to add collages and hand-colored and build up stories based on their personal memories. Afterwards, students could try to get images from...
FVEA663 Previsualization Techniques The desire to maintain autonomous development in the increasingly diffuse world of animation and the experimental film is rigorously explored. How ideas are shaped through processes between content, text and image are regularly developed while lookin...
FVEA665 Direction & Performance in Stop Motion This course is by Permission of Instructor Only. A key component of a stop motion film is the quality of the animation. The success of a character's performance is not merely defined by its smoothness. The movement must communicate the physical and t...
FVEA667 Permutations Process is at the heart of animation practice, and the decisions artists make about tools, methods, and techniques are often a fundamental, defining aspect of their individual works or overall style. This screening-based course will survey the extens...
FVEA668 Primary Stimulus Named Primary Stimulus after a film by animator and historian Robert Russett, this class meets once a week, focusing on a single experimental animator or artist working with animation in each session. In class we will look at several films and relat...
FVEA672 Animation, Identity, Authorship A series of three four-week units delving into representation issues related to gender, race, national identity, and other relevant topics. For each unit within the course, students will present a creative project and/or a research presentation. Stud...
FVEA673 Puzzling A puzzle is something puzzling - it expects deduction and solution, while at the same time describes a condition of open confusion. The Puzzling class uses screenings, readings, and group discussion to examine the idea of film as a puzzle. The course...
FVEA678 Rules "Rules" focuses on creative experimentation using constraints, permissions, and structures. The course will explore different ways in which setting, following, and breaking rules can allow for creative possibilities. Drawing inspiration from examples...
FVEA679 Cartoon Logic Cartoon Logic is a seminar course that presents a critical and theoretical framework for experimental animation. Through weekly readings and discussions, the course will address foundational questions about what animation is and what it can do. These...
FVEA680 The Professional World Course available by permission of instructor. This intensive workshop will focus on preparing students for life in the professional working world. We'll examine various career paths such as the studio system, freelance, and an independent artist path...
FVEA699 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FVEA799 Independent Project Available by permission of instructor only. Under the direction of a specific faculty member, students complete projects defined in a contractual agreement drawn at the beginning of each semester. This agreement, including frequency of meetings a...
FWNT126L Intro to Animating With Houdini "Approaching the Near Distance" is a School of Film/Video's Wintersession course that gathers under one umbrella various sections taught by Special faculty or MFA2-3s. This class is an introduction to animating using procedural 3D software SideFX Hou...
FWNT127A Archive Fever In this course, we will look at contemporary moving image works that deal with the use of archive in an expansive way. We will begin with Jacques Derrida's analysis of the word "archive" and its relationship with Freud's notion of death drive in his...
FWNT127B Compositing Claymation Claymation Compositing will commence with an introduction to notable claymation animators like Rich Zim and Fokion Xenos, showcasing their innovative use of compositing techniques. Over the course of five sessions, students will craft a seamless clay...
FWNT127C Proto Now: Reading Macluhan and Berger This course has a simple goal: we will read the 1967 book of memes The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and watch 1972s four part BBC video essay Ways of Seeing produced by John Berger. Despite the age of these texts, they have only gotten m...
FWNT127D TheArt of the Filmed Interview/Testimony This intensive course looks at the history and varied practices of the interview over time, focusing on varied and creative approaches taken by nonfiction and experimental filmmakers. The interview, or the construction of testimony on/for film, is ub...
FWNT127E Rhizomatic Riots:A Mutable Film Workshop The aim of the workshop is to indulge in expansive models of filmmaking that take from the oral traditions; to create work that strives for anti-Western hierarchies of film and opts for an anti-colonial cinema. In a tangible sense this entails a film...
FWNT127F Reel Intelligence: Ethical AI in Film Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are becoming increasingly prevalent in the rapidly evolving world of film production. This Winter Session course aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to leverage these tools effectively and...
FWNT127G Kinetic Kino This course offers a practical and aesthetic introduction to the application of 16mm film projectors in expanded cinema performance and video installation. The workshop-based class encourages students to manipulate film projectors as performing kinet...
FWNT127H Drawing in Blended Space What can drawing look like in 3D space? How can it be combined aesthetically with traditionally-modeled 3D objects? This course explores the Grease Pencil functionality of Blender and how it can be used to create detailed animation. Beginning with an...
FWNT127I Introduction to Strata-cut In this course the students will be introduced to the strata-cut animation technique. The course will have a workshop quality to it, there will be four classes and three assignments in total. The first assignment will cover scaling objects and figure...
FWNT127J Experimental Game Design This course is an intro level exploration of the concepts of "gameplay", focusing on how to make our works "playful" and "playable." Students will embark on their game design journey by uncovering potential gameplay elements and connections from non-...
FWNT127K Build Your Project Using Motion Capture This course will introduce how to utilize motion capture as a reference/base to help with students' 2D/3D/stop motion projects. The course is targeting "quick start motion capture" so only the phone will be used in the motion capture. Basic motion ca...
FWNT127L Voltage Controlled Filmmaking In Voltage Controlled Filmmaking, students will learn: sound synthesis and sound design basics using Film/Video's ARP 2600; video synthesis basics; and how to make the two interact, via both control voltage cross-patching and by manually composing im...
FWNT127M Foley 101 Foley is the art of recording sound effects directly to image (as opposed to using a sound library) for use in post-production sound design. Foley is used mainly to clarify, clean, and accentuate the soundscape of films that sound somewhat realistic,...
FWNT497 Undergrad Independent Project Production In the weeks of Project Production, the student works under the supervision of a grading instructor (generally, the student's mentor) but also quite independently and with great focus on the production, project, or artistic work described in the pr...
FWNT526L Intro to Animating W/ Houdini "Approaching the Near Distance" is a School of Film/Video's Wintersession course that gathers under one umbrella various sections taught by Special faculty or MFA2-3s. This class is an introduction to animating using procedural 3D software SideFX H...
FWNT527A Archive Fever In this course, we will look at contemporary moving image works that deal with the use of archive in an expansive way. We will begin with Jacques Derrida's analysis of the word "archive" and its relationship with Freud's notion of death drive in his...
FWNT527B Compositing Claymation Claymation Compositing will commence with an introduction to notable claymation animators like Rich Zim and Fokion Xenos, showcasing their innovative use of compositing techniques. Over the course of five sessions, students will craft a seamless clay...
FWNT527C Proto Now: Reading Macluhan and Berger This course has a simple goal: we will read the 1967 book of memes The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and watch 1972s four part BBC video essay Ways of Seeing produced by John Berger. Despite the age of these texts, they have only gotten m...
FWNT527D TheArt of the Filmed Interview/Testimony This intensive course looks at the history and varied practices of the interview over time, focusing on varied and creative approaches taken by nonfiction and experimental filmmakers. The interview, or the construction of testimony on/for film, is ub...
FWNT527E Rhizomatic Riots:A Mutable Film Workshop The aim of the workshop is to indulge in expansive models of filmmaking that take from the oral traditions; to create work that strives for anti-Western hierarchies of film and opts for an anti-colonial cinema. In a tangible sense this entails a film...
FWNT527F Reel Intelligence: Ethical AI in Film Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are becoming increasingly prevalent in the rapidly evolving world of film production. This Winter Session course aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to leverage these tools effectively and...
FWNT527G Kinetic Kino This course offers a practical and aesthetic introduction to the application of 16mm film projectors in expanded cinema performance and video installation. The workshop-based class encourages students to manipulate film projectors as performing kinet...
FWNT527H Drawing in Blended Space What can drawing look like in 3D space? How can it be combined aesthetically with traditionally-modeled 3D objects? This course explores the Grease Pencil functionality of Blender and how it can be used to create detailed animation. Beginning with an...
FWNT527I Introduction to Strata-cut In this course the students will be introduced to the strata-cut animation technique. The course will have a workshop quality to it, there will be four classes and three assignments in total. The first assignment will cover scaling objects and figure...
FWNT527J Experimental Game Design This course is an intro level exploration of the concepts of "gameplay", focusing on how to make our works "playful" and "playable." Students will embark on their game design journey by uncovering potential gameplay elements and connections from non-...
FWNT527K Build Your Project Using Motion Capture This course will introduce how to utilize motion capture as a reference/base to help with students' 2D/3D/stop motion projects. The course is targeting "quick start motion capture" so only the phone will be used in the motion capture. Basic motion ca...
FWNT527L Voltage Controlled Filmmaking In Voltage Controlled Filmmaking, students will learn: sound synthesis and sound design basics using Film/Video's ARP 2600; video synthesis basics; and how to make the two interact, via both control voltage cross-patching and by manually composing im...
FWNT527M Foley 101 Foley is the art of recording sound effects directly to image (as opposed to using a sound library) for use in post-production sound design. Foley is used mainly to clarify, clean, and accentuate the soundscape of films that sound somewhat realistic,...
FWNT597 Masters Independent Project Production In the weeks of Master's Project Production, the student works under the supervision of a grading instructor (generally, the student's mentor) but also quite independently and with great focus on the production, project, or artistic work described...
FWNT598 MFA Wintersession Supervised Instruction MFA WS Supervised Instruction supports a Film/Video MFA2 or MFA3 who has developed a short course proposal (reading group or screening/discussion) for Wintersession that has been approved by the Film/Video WS Committee. The student will receive 1 cre...