Critical Content

Advanced Film has a three year rotation of content, divided into Years A, B and C. Students are differentiated by skill level in the program for project choices. This way, any student in the class at any time is exposed to new and different material, and faces challenges and opportunities in line with their personal level of expertise in the field.

Year A

Essential Content

Essential Ideas/Topics

Film Noir and its subgenres
The development of the Horror film
The visual and thematic signatures that define a genre
Different science fiction films & how they reflect their times
Stanley Kubrick: Auteur defined by visual style & common themes
Billy Wilder: Auteur defined by theme and tone
Cinematography and the power of individual shots
Editing: What separates film from the other visual arts
Sound: How atmosphere is built for audience involvement
Production problems & planning: Behind the scenes at movie making

The Film Noir formula & Post-War darkness
Offshoots of the genre: The Caper film, The Heist Film, the Retro Noir
German Expressionism & its translation to the screen in early Horror
Actors and actresses associated with the Horror genre
Different subgenres of science fiction & how they reflect their times: Atomic monster, Utopian future, Dystopian future, Cult.
Kubrick's major theme of dehumanization, and repeated use of specific visual signatures such as tracking shots and one point perspective
Wilder's major theme of cynicism, especially in terms of romantic plot, in both comedy and drama
Different types of shots: establishing, long, two, close-up. Deep focus, choice of angles.
Editing transitions - how does the audience interpret what happens in between the cuts?
Uses of sound and music in building the universe within a film
Planning, storyboarding, solving problems with particular goals in shots and production

Year B

Essential Content

Essential Ideas/Topics

How prose stories can be adapted for the screen & what choices are made
Sidney Lumet as a director & his reflections on his work
Edward Dmytryk as a director & his reflections on his work
Remaking a movie & the choices involved in what to keep and what to change
Editing transitions: the different choices and how they are used to enhance thematic elements in the film
Closely examining scene & incident, shot by shot, both for analysis & production purposes
What aesthetic qualities can describe a "cult" film
"Cult" film as a cross-genre genre of sorts, with specific people associated with it

Adaptation and its relation to the creative process
"Duel" as short story, screenplay & film - how it was translated to the screen
Lumet's choices in elements of Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon and Network. Common themes and his way of working with actors
Dmytryk's choices, especially in adaptation and editing, in Murder, My Sweet, Crossfire and The Caine Mutiny
Anatomy of a remake: The Thing (1951) compared to The Thing (1982)
Editing transitions and how they serve theme: dissolves, wipes, cuts, flashback, flash forward, moving transitions. Slaughterhouse-5 and The Fall used as examples.
Dissecting the incident, movement and action in a very short film sequence & producing the same
Cult Films and their qualities: dark humor, quirkiness, science fiction/fantasy, exploitation, outside the mainstream.

Year C

Essential Content

Essential Ideas/Topics

Techniques in documentary filmmaking: The construction of narrative based on reality
Editing choices within documentary form: what are we allowed to see? Is there a point of view? Is there advocacy?
Films based on reality that are partially fictionalized - what are the narrative and structural choices made
Films where reality itself is in question - how does the audience or the characters themselves determine what is real?
Narrative and editing structures designed to fool and surprise an audience - both in documentary and fictional narrative. When would this be appropriate and effective?
Different nations' cinema and how they are associated with a particular style: Sweden, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, Hong Kong
The Action/Adventure genre and its development from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Roots of modern day formula.

The Documentary form and the different stories it can tell
Exposé and revelation of truth using documentary form
First-person experience via cinema
Advocacy in documentaries: how do editing choices push a particular opinion or point of view?
Fictionalized reality in film: how much liberty is taken and for what purpose?
Critically viewing what is presented on screen as truth: why might it not be the whole truth? Using techniques of film analysis to identify advocacy and theme
How do we judge the level of reality in film?
Misdirection and specific story and editing techniques to trick audiences
How commercial Hollywood film compares/contrasts to different styles of foreign cinema: Swedish moralism, Italian neo-realism, French new wave and post new wave, Hollywood-influenced Japanese cinema, modern German cinema, Hong Kong hyper-action
The Action genre formula as established in the 1980s, and the inventions, both thematic and technical, following in the 1990s.

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