Filmmaking enables us to observe, notice, listen to, and see environments and buildings in new ways, bridging the gap between the real and the imagined through a combination of theory, history, and real footage. Using visual storytelling formats, students will learn to engage discursively with architecture and the city via narrative and a short film.
This course is a survey of contemporary film, with a focus on New York and Philadelphia. It will offer students a look at different ways to portray architecture and urbanism through the medium of the moving image. Particular attention is paid on the genres of: low-budget, high-concept fiction; avant-garde documentaries, digital media and worldbuilding, and the ways in which architects portray their own work using film. The structure of the course is based on connecting written texts with film screenings in order to illuminate these strategies. The goal is to instill in students the confidence to make their own movies, as well as to understand some of the ways that others have done so in the context of New York, Philadelphia and beyond. The class culminates in a short film project that blends the different approaches listed above into a 2-3 minute film. We also consider contemporary digital broadcasting including media theory about networks such as Instagram, Twitch, Letterboxd, Discord, and Vimeo.
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