Below are the classes scheduled for the 2009 Summer institute in Porto and Lisbon. Some information may change as course plans are clarified.
Screenwriting for New Media
Professor Stuart Kelban
June 29-July 10, 4pm-8pm
Whether writing a feature-length screenplay or a 3-minute webisode, a screenwriter’s goal is to tell a good story. In this two-week seminar, students will collaborate on writing their own multi-part webseries. Breaking into small “writing teams”, students will develop characters and storylines as a group, then assign members to write individual webisodes. In addition to the creative work, the class will critically examine several produced webseries and film scripts, exploring how traditional dramatic principles of character, story and structure have changed – and have not changed – when applied to new media.
Advanced Animation
Geoff Marslett
June 15-30,
This intermediate class is an opportunity for beginner level animators to refine their basic skills. Like the introduction course the intermediate class includes instruction in several animation software packages, but the main focus is the underlying animation techniques. During the two week course students would be required to write a short animated piece. They would then be required to animate this piece using three distinct methods (stop motion, hand drawn, and digital puppet). Working on these three projects the students will be asked to refine basic drawing skills, story development, basic animation skills, compositing, chroma keying and character animation. The class will focus on 2D and stop motion animation. The culmination of the class would be the three versions of their short (one minute) animations.
Film Preservation and Historiography
Dr. Caroline Frick
June 15-30, 2:30pm-5:30pm
This course introduces one of the most complicated and under-studied components of the media industries: Preservation. Beginning with a contextualization of the film preservation movement, and of its precedents in European collecting practice, the course will employ both a theoretical and practical approach to archival media product. We will discuss the merits (and drawbacks) of defining media product – from Hollywood features and educational films, to home movies and government propaganda – as “artifact.” The impact of copyright and physical deterioration upon the construction of film history will underscore much of the course discussion, particularly as to how “national cinemas” have been and continue to be constructed. This course is designed for those interested in film history and the role of new technologies (i.e. YouTube and others) on media canons. “Film Preservation and Historiography” is open to all levels, as no prior knowledge of this material is necessary.
Sound for Picture: Production and Post
Andy Garrison
June 22-July 7, 5pm-8pm
Sound sneaks past the prefrontal cortex, directly into the heart and the soul. Film is a warm medium and sound turns up the heat. This course introduces ways of thinking about sound for picture and some basic production and pos-tproduction techniques for applying your ideas. We will digitally record dialog, ambiance, and effects, add music, and then bend, twist, stretch and cut sound. We will edit-to-picture on Pro Tools and make a stereo mix.
Collaborative Documentary
Karen Kocher
June 15-June 30, 10am-6pm
The collaborative documentary course is designed for those who are interested in a hands-on exploration of the ways that film language may be used to create thematic portraits of place, in creative interaction with a group. Participants will be divided into production groups that will gather footage, related to the chosen themes, from a particular geographic location in the City. Using mobile devices and Web 2.0, the group will stay in touch throughout the seminar to guide one another in the gathering of the footage related to each theme. The footage from each group will then be shared to create a series of 2-minute thematic portraits of the City.
Creating and Designing Interactive Music
Bruce Pennycook
July 6-July 17
Objectives: In this intensive two-week course we will examine a variety of techniques for the creation of real-time interactive music. We will explore how to design hybrid electro-acoustic pieces using different kinds of controllers from MIDI and the popular wii-mote to more complex Wifi-based systems. All software will be developed in Max/MSP/Jitter (Max 5) plus some external packages as needed.
Plan: Each day there will be a lecture component then a workshop component. We will also listen to and discuss examples of interactive music to provide a context for the work.
Given the very short time period for this course we may divide the class into small teams to work collectively on their final project.
Outcome: At the end of the two-week period each student and/or team will demonstrate their interactive piece in an informal “concert” setting.
Requirements: Ideally each student should come to class with a Macintosh or PC laptop running Max 5. You can get a 90 day free student trial of Max 5 from Cycling74.com. If you own an interface device such as a wii-mote, iPhone or iPod Touch, joystick or have some interesting MIDI controllers these may be incorporated into your project.
Students should have background in composing electroacoustic music with packages such as Logic or ProTools and be familiar with the basic operations of Max/MSP 5.
Online Journalism
Rosental Alves
June 1-5 (Porto)
Through practical assignments, analysis of successful cases and specialized literature, this workshop will examine the transformations journalism currently faces in order to meet the Digital Revolution, particularly in what concerns the search for a multimedia language.
Film and Digital Formats
(lecture series at Serralves)
Professor Tom Schatz
This series highlights some significant developments in digital and HD, as well as The University of Texas Film Institute’s current project, which should be ready to screen in close to ‘finished’ form by June. The films will include the following.
Breakthrough digital films:
- The Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998) [launched the ‘Dogme’ movement; shot on DV]
- InDigEnt [company founded by UT’s Gary Winick dedicated to low-budget ‘digital films’]
- Personal Velocity (Rebecca Miller, 2002)
- Tadpole (Gary Winick, 2002)
- The Hire [BMW Films, 2001-02]
- Collateral (M Mann, 2004)
- RocknRolla (Guy Ritchie, 2008)
- Rachel Getting Married (Demme, 2008)
Texas / Austin / digital films:
- Once Upon a Time in Mexico (RR, 2003)
- Sin City (RR, 2005)
- A Scanner Darkly (Rick L., 2006)
- Dance with the One (UTFI, 2008)
Technology and Culture
Professor Craig Watkins
June 8-19, 2pm-6pm
The course is designed to explore the growing role and social consequences of digital media in everyday life. What does it mean to be digital? How are humans and the world we build evolving along with digital technologies? Drawing from both critical studies perspectives and empirical-based examinations of specific communication technologies the course seeks to illuminate some of the theoretical, social, and political issues central in the rise of digital media. The course critically investigates the rise and consequences of “virtual identities” and “virtual publics”, the social and behavioral aspects of mobile technology, as well as the increasingly social role of the web. The second week of the class is devoted to students working in small groups and conducting field experiments-in-depth interviews, participant observations, and virtual ethnographies. Students will present the results of their research to the class. This course is for students who are interested in understanding the social aspects of digital media.
Convergent Hollywood
Bryan Sebok
May 25-June 5, 2pm-6pm
“Convergent Hollywood” is designed to introduce you to a variety of digital technologies and their impacts on Hollywood’s business model and product output, as Hollywood has shifted from what might be called “Conglomerate Hollywood” to “Convergent Hollywood.” We will examine both practical and theoretical aspects of digitalization, including the various industrial, cultural, economic, political, and technological contexts into which digital technologies are introduced and diffuse. In so doing, we will work to analyze and contextualize recent and dramatic shifts in the nature of Hollywood business practices. Our concentration for the first half of the workshop will be on digital technologies shifting the nature of business practices and structural organizations of media companies. We will identify strategies for success and key players in the field.
The second half of the workshop will focus on digital distribution, digital exhibition, and the commercialization of DVD. This section of the course will examine DVD as a case study in digital distribution, industrial formation and technological diffusion in the post-internet age. We’ll investigate the past, present, and future of ancillary markets and explore how the DVD story demonstrates the collective power of the Big Six media conglomerates and their counterparts in the consumer electronics and IT industries. The course will conclude with discussion of the future of digital entertainment in television, film, and in advertising.
Finally, the debates we have in class should highlight the continuing cultural relevancy of the entertainment industries as well as the role played by digital technology in shifting “Conglomerate Hollywood” to “Convergent Hollywood.”
Online Journalism
Professor Rosental Alves
May25-29 , 2pm-6pm
Through practical assignments, analysis of successful cases and specialized literature, this workshop will examine the transformations journalism currently faces in order to meet the Digital Revolution, particularly in what concerns the search for a multimedia language.
Intro to Digital Documentary Production
Nancy Schiesari
June 8-19, 9am-1pm
This course is aimed at increasing a student’s proficiency in documentary production concepts and skills. In class we will examine current documentary forms to become familiar with the language of cinema verite, personal first person narration, and reality TV, as well as the more traditionally made documentary films seen on PBS and the BBC.
Specific instruction in technical areas of shooting, lighting and sound recording, will be offered in workshops and through practical application on class assignments. Students must develop a story synopsis, proposal and/or shooting script before shooting begins. Students will work in small groups to complete a 5-6 minute documentary film in two weeks.
Through practical assignments, analysis of successful cases and specialized literature, this workshop will examine the transformations journalism currently faces in order to meet the Digital Revolution, particularly in what concerns the search for a multimedia language.
Screenwriting
Richard Lewis
May 25-June 5, 9am-1pm
What follows below is a draft of a potential two-week screenwriting curriculum for the students in Lisbon. I have attempted to combine the more crucial aspects of an introductory course in order to get students with little screenwriting experience up to speed, along with what are hopefully fun & enlightening creative writing assignments that were drawn from my advanced summer “brainstorming” class from 2004. (That brainstorming & collaboration class was actually adapted from a similar fiction-writing workshop that Ken Kesey did at the University of Oregon where he and the class collectively wrote a novel together under the pseudonym “O. U. Levon,” which is “Novel O(regon) U(niv) spelled backwards. See the book on Amazon.com.
Note that assignments would not have to be restricted to features and could accommodate any format that the students were interested in. Also note that this schedule was drawn up assuming 1) a class size similar to UT screenwriting workshops (12-14), 2) that students are willing to do some work prior to the class commencing, and 3) that students are able and willing to do two – three hours work outside of class per day.
Over the course of the two weeks, the class will treat its members as a writing staff and, collectively, we will outline and work on writing the first act of multiple projects. We will brainstorm the ideas together, and writers will be assigned particular scenes or acts to write. So, for instance, “Joe Writingstudent” might be assigned to write the first 5 pages of comedy script A that the class has outlined together, then the following day be assigned the second 5 pages of horror script B, then the following day be assigned to re-write the first ten pages of action script C in collaboration with Mary Writingstudent.
This process enables screenwriters to look at writing from a completely different perspective. One of the things I’ve noticed in all of my writing classes is that, regardless of how talented and participatory a student may be, they do tend to tune out to a certain extent when it’s not their pages being discussed. In this scenario, every page of every project will be theirs, and good writing will have to be negotiated until we are satisfied, if not excited. Additionally, for beginning (but smart & mature) screenwriters like those I would expect to find in Portugal, the collaboration process can prove to be very supportive as writers wade tentatively into this new work. Lastly, this process will be instructive in that in the ‘real world,’ screenwriters rarely work on spec scripts as we do here at UT (and, indeed, as is done at all writing programs) — they work on assignments for people with whom they have to collaborate — producers, directors, development execs, etc.