This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

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Calendar

SES # TOPICs ASSIGNMENTS AND READINGS
1

Lecture: Introduction to Seeing and Expression

 Posted: Visual Self Portrait or Portrait
2

Guest Lecture: Prof. Richard Kearney, "The Embodied Imagination & Story."

  
3

Lab: Approaches to Portrait Assignment

 Buy at Amazon Kearney, Richard. On Stories: Thinking in Action. New York, NY: Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780415247979.
4 Lecture: Visualizing the Other and the Self Posted: Personal Experience and the Visual Imagination
5

Museum Visit: Boston Museum of Fine Arts or Isabella Stuart Gardiner Museum

 Due: Report on museum visit
6

Lab: Present Portrait Assignment

Buy at Amazon Szarkowski, John. Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1984. ISBN: 9780870704765.

Buy at Amazon Antonioni, Michelangelo. "Toward the Frontier." In That Bowling Alley on the Tiber: Tales of a Director. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780195042245.

Due: Visual Self Portrait or Portrait
7

Guest Lecture: Dr. Barbara Barry, "Story Generation: Exercises and Systems."

 Buy at Amazon Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, Chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780674003613.
8

Guest Lecture: Brian Bradley, introduction to Richard Leacock's memoir, A Sense of Being There.

  
9 Video Editing Lab I, MIT New Media Center  
10

Guest Lecture: Prof. William Uricchio, "The Evolution of German Expressionism."

 Due: Personal Experience and the Visual Imagination
11

Lab: Life As It Happens

 Posted: A Sense of Being There/Making a Sequence
12

Video Editing Lab II, MIT New Media Center

  
13

Documentary I

Sharing a Sense of Being There: First Films

  
14

Guest Artist: Zanele Muholi

 Press release
15

Guest Artist: Bill Viola, "Video and One Artist's Expression."

 Please review the artist's web site in detail, including his writings.
16

Documentary II

The Art and The Technology: Story, Miniaturization, and Culture

Leacock, Richard. A Sense of Being There.

Richard Leacock's unpublished memoir detailing seventy years of shaping the documentary form contains many movie sequences which take time to watch and understand in the context of the art and the changing technologies. See Leacock's web site for other material.

Posted: Cinematic Narrative Written Treatment & Story Board

Due: Rewrite of Personal Experience and the Visual Imagination
17 Lab: Edit and polish your video sequence.  
18 Class critique: show video event sequence. Due: A Sense of Being There/Making a Sequence
19

Guest Artist: Ryan Evans, "Pacing and Closure in Comics, Graphic Novels and Storyboards."

Buy at Amazon McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1994, Chapters 3 and 4. ISBN: 9780060976255.

Ware, Chris. "Building Stories." New York Times Sunday Magazine, Parts 5, 6, 9, 12, 15, 20, and 25, September 2005-April 2006.

Building Stories was a 30 installment comics series that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine from September of 2005 through April of 2006. One page appeared each week. It follows the lives of four residents of a brownstone apartment building in Chicago over the course of 24 hours. This assignment includes 7 of the original 30 strips, following two of the four primary characters.

You can view and download the original 30 installments of Building Stories here. Chris Ware has subsequently reformatted portions of these stories and reworked them into his ACME Novelty Library series of graphic novels.
20

Cinematic Aesthetics: Imagination and Reflection

  
21 Cinematic Aesthetics: Visual Storytelling  
22 Guest Artist: Dorothy Cross Images of some of Dorothy's work can be found here. Articles that introduce some ideas in her work can be found on the following web sites: McMullen Museum of Art, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Circa Art Magazine, and Wikipedia.
23 Lab: Students pitch cinematic narrative treatment with storyboards. Due: Cinematic Narrative Written Treatment & Story Board
24

Introduction to Surrealism

Guest Lecture: Gabriel Montua, "Salvador Dali: Strategies for Self-Enactment."

 Buy at Amazon Friedberg, Anne. Introduction and Chapter 1 in The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 1-48. ISBN: 9780262512503.
25

Guest Lecture: Jan Egleson, "The Role of the Director."

 Please make sure you watch Kazan's "On the Waterfront" before class.
26 Lab: Work on final project proposals.  
27

Lecture: The Changing Role of Visual Representation in Society

  
28 Lecture: View and critique the opening of Antonioni's "Blow Up"; discuss Antonioni's sketches from That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.

Davenport, G., et al. "Media Fabric: a process-oriented approach to media creation and exchange." BT Technology Journal 22 (October 2004): 160-170

Davenport, Glorianna. "Cinema in Transition: From Media Artifact to Media Fabric." (PDF)

Read 3-4 other sketches from Buy at Amazon Antonioni, Michelangelo. That Bowling Alley on the Tiber: Tales of a Director. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780195042245.
29 Students pitch final project proposals in class.

Buy at Amazon Babha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York, NY: Routledge, 1994. ISBN: 9780415054065.

Phillips, Melanie Anne, and Chris Huntley. Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. Screenplay Systems, 2001.

Due: Final Project Proposal
30

During this portion of the class, we work together on refining the student projects. In each class, one or two students present their projects. The projects are refined through active critique. As part of this process, we may work with the student building the world they are trying to present, or exploring how they can better direct a scene.

  
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33 Due: Final Project Related Image
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37 Due: Final Project
38 Final projects are screened. The screening is open to the community.