Urban Arts Workshop–New York is composed of lectures, presentations, screenings, readings, field trips, field assignments, walks, written reactions, discussions and blogs, as well as visits from guest speakers and artists designed to expose students to the key concepts and fundamental theories of urban studies, public art and the urban-inspired works of many great artists and writers based in New York City. Each class another “form” of urban art will be investigated, including discussions about and encounters with street photography, graffiti, sculpture, installation art, dance, performance art, parkour (freestyle street gymnastics), gorilla theater, art vandalism and underground art, urban sound projects, large-scale projections, poetry, essays and short stories with an aim to understand how such art forms came into being and how they express a distinctly urban message to the inhabitants and visitors of New York. The instructor seeks to combine the critical and theoretical with the experiential and personal in order to lead students to a deeper and more fruitful relationship with New York City, the arts and themselves.
Urban Arts Workshop–Paris is composed of lectures, presentations, screenings, readings, field trips, field assignments, walks, written reactions, discussions and blogs, as well as visits from guest speakers and artists designed to expose students to the key concepts and fundamental theories of urban studies, public art and the urban-inspired works of many great artists and writers based in Paris. Each class another “form” of urban art will be investigated, including discussions about and encounters with street photography, graffiti, sculpture, installation art, fashion and design, culinary arts, dance, performance art, parkour (freestyle street gymnastics), gorilla theater, art vandalism and underground art, urban sound projects, large-scale projections, poetry, essays and short stories with an aim to understand how such art forms came into being and how they express a distinctly urban message to the inhabitants and visitors of Paris. The instructor seeks to combine the critical and theoretical with the experiential and personal in order to lead students to a deeper and more fruitful relationship with Paris, the arts and themselves.
Documenting Culture–Paris is a documentary production course in which students will, with cameras rolling, penetrate Paris, la capitale de culture, from the many captivating points of entry the city offers, including: art, architecture, music, fashion, philosophy, technology, gastronomy and such practices of everyday life as laboring, strolling, conversing, loving, protesting, resting and leisuring. Students will be trained on the essentials of high definition video production and editing in order to create not only thoughtful works, but also the highest quality films, which will be screened in class and posted to the class website. Assignments include a series of group exercises designed to focus students on the core craft principles of documentary filmmaking and electronic field production as well as individual projects that encourage each student to explore the fingerprint of his or her own creative curiosity.
Digital Theory is an introductory-level course that draws upon theoretical inquiries into and hands on practical encounters with digital video technology, practices and protocols. Digital Theory intends to introduce students to the core concepts and essential techniques required to successfully understand, control and manipulate the quality and fidelity of both image and sound in digital video production and post production. The course focuses closely on the journey our images take from the camera, to the computer, to the screen; through careful analyses of these processes, students will acquire a thorough understanding of how light becomes a digital image and then how that image turns into data as it makes its way through the editing process and ultimately onto a screen, where it turns back into light before our eyes. Extensive time will also be dedicated to developing a discriminating eye toward technology, identifying its attendant benefits and pitfalls for visual storytellers. The course covers such vital topics as file-based, digital image acquisition, digital video signal processing and control, digital crew configurations and workflows, as well as industry standard, digital production and post production practices. Course equipment and software includes digital video cameras, broadcast monitors, Mac laptops, Avid edit stations, Scratch, DaVinci, FireWire hard drives, Waveform Monitors, Vectorscopes, Histograms, VLC, QuickTime and Disk Utility.
Fundamentals of Filmmaking This practical workshop is designed to introduce students to the techniques and theory of developing and producing short film ideas that are shot on digital video and edited digitally on computer using AVID software. The course centers on learning elements of visual storytelling through a spectrum of aesthetic approaches. Working in crews of four, students learn directing, shooting, and editing skills as they each direct three short videos (three to five minutes in length). Lecture topics include Basic Film Terms, Traditional Narrative Structure & Storytelling Strategies, Storyboarding, Framing/Composition, Directing the Actor, Image Control and Editing concepts such as Montage, Jump Cut, Match Cut, Rhythm & Pacing, Coverage and Continuity.