Film & Television
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COM FT 500: Writing Film Criticism
This course examines the art of film and television criticism and gives students extensive practice in writing about film and TV in a way that balances informed, insightful analysis and lively writing. Students write several film and TV reviews, each covering a different type of film or TV show, as well as a longer think piece. Students will review films currently playing in local theaters and TV shows currently available on broadcast, cable or other internet platforms, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like. Key critics discussed include James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Emily Nussbaum, Matt Zoller Seitz, Anthony Lane, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking. -
COM FT 502: Sound Design for Film and Television
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT353) - Graduate Prerequisites: (COMFT707) - A comprehensive technical examination of the role of sound as an emotional motivator and major storytelling component in both fiction and nonfiction films. Covers location sound recording, acoustic theory, track building, foley and dialog replacement, and mix preparation, as well as music editing and composition. Introduces a variety of postproduction pathways and technologies, including current digital innovations in the field and in audio postproduction, and provides an ongoing workshop for solving editing and track building problems. -
COM FT 504: Post production FX Editing
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT353) - Graduate Prerequisites: (COMFT707) - This course teaches all aspects of video post production including window dubbing, rough cuts, A/B editing, non-linear editing, digital graphics, digital sound, and the integration of all of these processes and technologies that apply to the postproduction completion of video projects. Familiarity with Macintosh computers is desirable. Experience with video timecode editing is a necessity. -
COM FT 505: Real World Productions
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT353) a 3.0 COM GPA - Graduate Prerequisites: (COMFT707) a 3.2 COM GPA - Undergraduate Prerequisites: COM FT 353; a 3.0 COM GPA Graduate Prerequisites: COM FT 707; a 3.2 COM GPA This is a class that operates as a student-run, client- driven production company. Projects include PSA's and web videos for local, national, and international non- profits. GPA of 3.0 or higher. 4 credits only. Application only. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU HUB area: Teamwork/Collaboration. -
COM FT 507: Television Studio Production
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT201) COM FT 201 or Instructor Consent - Course presents the requisite strategies, processes, technology, and skills training to successfully create live multi-camera productions. Emphasizes the roles and responsibilities of the director and producer. Intended outcome is for students to demonstrate proficiency in the academic, practical, and professional components established for the course. 4 cr, either sem. -
COM FT 508: Line Producing
Undergraduate Prerequisites: FT353 - Any film- even a very short one- requires the making of thousands of decisions. How long do we shoot? How many mouths do we feed? How much will the props cost? This course offers systems for arriving at intelligent answers to these myriad questions. In covering logistics of getting a media production made, the course addressed how to catalog all the practical considerations that go into a production, how to schedule a shoot, how to budget a production and how to plan for distribution of the final product. -
COM FT 509: Broadcasting Horror
This seminar analyzes horror across radio, podcasting, broadcast, cable, and streaming outlets. In addition to studying horror as a genre with recurring anxieties and themes, this class engages with style as a strategy for creating horror in subtle and overdetermined ways. -
COM FT 512: Writing Episodic Drama for Television
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT310) - Deals with the process and techniques of writing a dramatic series for commercial network and cable television. Students will select a current prime-time drama, develop A, B, and (possibly) C stories for an episode, and complete a Writer's Draft and polished First Draft, suitable for a Writer Portfolio. Lectures will include the life of a working television writer, one-hour story, structure, genres, and character development. We will view and analyze TV series from the past and present, and focus on proper drama script format, character development and voice. -
COM FT 513: Global Queer Cinema
The course is an overview of contemporary global queer cinema. We survey a cross-section of films engaging with various aspects of contemporary queer lives around the globe. The course is organized in a sequence of sections relating to diverse facets of queer worldmaking and to the trope of mobility, which is explored in its various bodily, material, philosophical, and metaphorical dimensions. -
COM FT 514: Writing the Television Pilot
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT512 OR COMFT522) - Graduate Prerequisites: (COMFT512 OR COMFT522) - Prereq FT 512 or FT 522. "Writing the TV Drama (or dramedy) Pilot," explores the creation and development of your very own "one-hour" Television Series Pilot. Each student will pitch a concept, write a treatment, outline and pilot script. Also, you'll create a "leave behind" document, which will consist of an overview of your series, complete with character descriptions, future episode ideas and much more. We will closely examine the ingredients of a pilot script through lectures, script analyses of successful pilots, written assignments and group workshops. -
COM FT 516: Writing The Sitcom Pilot
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT522) - Graduate Prerequisites: (COMFT522) - Got a funny idea for a show? Let's see if it has legs. In "Writing the Comedy Pilot," students will develop an original concept for their own half-hour, TV comedy series. This includes pitching their idea, writing a beat sheet, an outline and the pilot script. We will also create a "leave behind" pitching document that will include an overview of your series, character bios, loglines for future episodes and much more. We'll screen pilot episodes, read produced pilot scripts and see why some worked and some didn't. Then we'll do some other things. -
COM FT 518: Media Money Trail
This course examines the critical financial and strategic challenges that businesses face whether they are in start-up, expansion, or exit mode. Students will use case studies to delve into the lives of the founders and CEOs of some of the world's most innovative and enduring brands and industry game-changers. We'll delve into each company's business model(s) and learn why some evolve to become industry gold standards while others fail. -
COM FT 519: Storyboarding
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT353) - Storyboards are essentially ʻdirecting on paper.ʼ They are the blueprint for live action or animation projects. This fun yet in-depth course teaches the fundamental skills needed to create dynamic storyboards and animatics (moving storyboards), skills that are crucial for filmmakers 2D & 3D animators and motion graphic designers. Storyboard Artists must think like a director, cinematographer storyteller and artist, yet you donʼt need to be any of those to take this course. Through progressive lessons youʼll learn visual storytelling, scene composition, timing, and transitions, camera angles, and cinema-graphic language. We cover basic drawing with Adobe Animate CC, color, perspective, character design, acting, and action poses. Youʼll complete numerous projects for your portfolio and demo reel. -
COM FT 520: Television Studies
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT303) - As an omnipresent site of entertainment and information, "reality" and fantasy, "quality" and "trash," and commerce and the public interest, television requires an active, critical analysis of its texts, uses, and production of meaning. Students in this class will engage in such analysis, confronting television as a rich and contradictory site of entertainment, culture, politics, ideology, and signs. This discussion driven seminar sets aside evaluative considerations of TV in favor of theoretical and critical approaches that challenge widespread assumptions about the medium and expand our understanding of its role in our lives. These approaches, which constitute some of the dominant frameworks in Television Studies, include analyses of culture, industry, narrative, genre, images and sounds, liveness, and the television schedule. This course fulfills the additional TV Studies course requirement. Pre-req: FT303. -
COM FT 521: Promoting Your Content Online
The course teaches students how to market their creative content online. Students will learn how to identify targeted marketing and distribution platforms for new websites, pilots, video channels and series, blogs, etc. and how to use social media to find an audience, generate buzz and identify potential funding sources. Students will also learn practical entrepreneurial tools needed to organize their creative work as a business venture. -
COM FT 522: Writing Television Situation Comedy Scripts
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT310) - Intense writing workshop learning how to write professional sitcom scripts. Elements of character, dramatic story structure, how comedy is created, how scenes build and progress a story, formal story outlines, dialogue, the business of sitcom writing, pitching, arc, comedic premise are analyzed. The class becomes a sitcom writing team for a current hit series and writes an original class spec script to understand the process of group writing employed on most sitcoms. Also, students write their own personal spec scripts with individual conferences with the professor. -
COM FT 523: American Cinema to 1960
This course offers a survey of American film history from the beginnings to 1960. The course is intended to help students familiarize themselves with key works of American film history from the beginnings to 1960. As it is impossible to cover this period comprehensively, the course represents a selection of major topics and artists that is supposed to provide students with a basic framework for future studies in American film. *Undergrad pre-req: FT250 -
COM FT 524: International Cinema
This course exposes students to a wide range of narrative, stylistic, and representational approaches in the film medium across the globe. Its broad, transnational, and transhistorical scope invites explorations of films and filmmakers seldom studied in traditional film history and offers students an opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the many levels on which film creation and film reception operate. This course is designed to help emerging filmmakers locate their own craft and creative impulses among historical and stylistic cinematic traditions and to guide emerging film scholars to challenge gaps and silences produced in traditional film history. As such, it encourages students to contemplate their own responsibilities as storytellers, directors, producers, critics, and scholars of cinema. The course material aims to raise the question of what can be gained and learned from appreciating, analyzing, and discussing a diverse group of films from distinct cultures and time periods and to destabilize traditional canons of World Cinema. *Undergrad pre-req: FT250 -
COM FT 526: Directing
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT353) - Students learn all aspects of directing, with particular emphasis given to script analysis and working with actors. The director's involvement in blocking action, composing shots, managing the production process and editing are also covered. Acting experience is helpful but not required. -
COM FT 527: Crowdfunding and Distribution
Undergraduate Prerequisites: FT201 - Whether you're producing web series, long or short format fiction, documentaries or video games, media makers are expected to build and develop their own audience, as well as raise the funds necessary to produce and get their work out in the world. In other words, a media maker must be more than just a creator. To be truly successful, you must also become a creative entrepreneur. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Oral and/or Signed Communication.
