This production course is designed to build on and further students’ conceptual and technical skills in video production. Through a combination of in-class workshops and exercises, assigned projects, and close attention to visual, creative motion picture ideation, students will strive to produce thoughtful, personally meaningful, technically proficient videos.
Primary projects include a non-fiction portrait (person, organization, or place) and a final project that you will decide the parameters for in consultation with myself. Throughout the semester, “one-minute videos” with specific formal or conceptual parameters will also be assigned. The goal in this class is to push you to develop your voice, ideas, and proficiency in media making.
This portrait documentary introduces the couple behind the Buffalo-based freelance media company known as Xylograph Films. They tell the origins of where they came from, how they met, and how their media company began. Through this, the curtain is pulled back on their insight as a couple in the film industry, revealing both the benefits and the struggles of their journey so far, as well as what they're aiming for next.
The 1MV exercises consist of a simple prompt-open to interpretation and with few parameters -to which each student was to respond with a....one minute video. The goal for this exercise was not to create a perfect, finished piece (though some responses were incredibly creative and accomplished), but to create a space in which to play, practice, make mistakes, experiment. Prompts this year include: Selfie, Extra/Ordinary, Split/Screen, loud QUIET loud, Off-Screen, and an Exquisite Corpse Video. The one-minute videos have been edited into one compilation video for each prompt.