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Course Number and Title GEN 230 Creative Expression: Theater
Sections 01
CRN 20167 Monday, Wednesday, Friday 8 - 9 AM, ADOWN Lecture Hall
03
CRN 20169 Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:10 - 10:10 AM, ADOWN Lecture Hall
Semester Spring 2010
Number of Credits 3
Prerequisite GEN
110 and ENG 110
Instructor Douglas Anderson
Office 85 Humboldt
upstairs at the end of the hall
Hours before, between and after classes -
Monday, Wednesday 10:15 - 10:45, 3:30-4, 5:30 - 6 Tuesday Thursday 3:45 - 4:30
email anytime at DouglasAnderson13 at gmail.com
Please note: Grading of student papers will reflect standard English usage. The MLA and APA bibliographic styles are generally used at Medaille.
This course explores forms of creative expression in visual, performing, and literary arts. Students will acquire abilities and perspectives about these arts and interrelationships among them. In addition, through exploring, developing, and demonstrating their creativity in multiple art forms, students will enhance their understanding of artistic expression.
After completing this course, you will be better able to:
apply
visual, performing and literary art concepts in the creation of works
of art
demonstrate
an understanding of various forms of artistic expression
recognize
relationships among different forms of creative expression
appreciate
the visual, performing, and literary arts
recognize
the roles of creative expression in society
apply
visual, performing, and literary art concepts in the analysis of works
of art
This course will guide you through the common creative process. Specifically, you will go through the process of making a short scripted video. At various times during the process, you will function as writer, editor, actor, director, producer, camera operator, technician, and film editor. The process will involve pitching your ideas, proposing your project, developing the treatment, and using computer tools to produce and distribute your video.
Your final film will be approximately 5 minutes long and include opening titles and closing credits. In May, we will watch everyone's film in the Lecture Hall with the big screen and powerful speakers. The final film can be a straightforward, traditional production of a scene from Neil Simon's Odd Couple. I encourage you to depart from that as far as you want to, to depart so far, if you want, that no one would know you started with the Odd Couple. What you cannot depart from is the process, which I want you to follow exactly.
You will start to look closely, reflect on, and evaluate your work and that of your peers. This course should make you less fearful of creative projects and more likely to go through the process again.
I try to engage each of you in an ongoing discussion of your learning. If you aren't getting enough feedback from me, ask for more. As you'll see, I'm big on formative feedback and Socratic questioning.
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This course takes you through a process. The process takes time, and we don't have enough in one semester as it is. Thus, it is more important that you do the assignment than that you do it well, or as well as you could have if you had more time. To get full credit for these assignments and presentations, you must do them when they are due and your process must have integrity and cohesion.
As you can see by comparing these tasks to the objectives above, the first objective is the most important: creation.
Note that this course asks for two skills that are not directly taught or evaluated but can make all the difference: file management and time management. You will generate more computer files and more large files for this project than you probably ever have for one project before. You also have a process to follow that must be done in order and that must have time to be done well. If you put it off and get behind, catching up will be very difficult.
You will complete all seven written assignments by sending each to me as an email (not attached to an email). The five during pre-production are the concept, treatment, script, and two pre-production documents. They build on one another, and the most important is the treatment. Without the treatment and the script that accompanies it, you can't go any further. Within certain constraints (copyright, budget, etc.), you will get full credit for just for doing these assignments completely and in good faith. In other words, whether or not I like your concept, etc., you're still going to get full credit. Think risky!! Go for it!!
During post-production, you will write two other documents. One will be the description and tags for YouTube that will help draw viewers to your video.
The final document, you will send to me personally via email. I will not share it with your classmates. This self-assessment will give you a chance to reflect on the process that you go through this semester.
To help you with the challenges of file management, you need to show me your media assets (raw video, still images, music, voice-over, sound, and titling) to pass the first gateway. In addition, to help you make the crucial distinction between project files (the instructions for how to treat the media assets) and rendered (exported) movie files, you need to show me your project files for your pitch vid and your final video as well as your mixed soundtrack. Finally, I need to see the rendered movie files for your title/credits sequence and your final video.
Presentations. You will make at least two oral presentations to the class. The first will pitch your video concept and the second will explain your treatment of it. Other opportunities for oral presentations will involve sharing other parts of the process with your classmates.
Public performances. You will go to four public performances, two stage plays and two author appearances, and write a response to one of each, as explained above. One of the stage plays should be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde presented by Kaleidoscope Theatre in our Lecture Hall/classroom before February 13. The other, I hope, will be an evening of one-act plays written and directed by former students in this course and acted by other students, some of whom took this course and others who are in the Medaille Music and Drama Club. For the two author appearances, I recommend Ted Pelton on January 28 and two others in the Write Thing Reading Series, either Lily Hoang February 11 or Dan Nester on April 8.
You will also act a role or roles and help with the crew for your classmates' productions.
You will write, produce and edit a short video (4 to 5 minutes), with opening titles and closing credits. You will upload it to YouTube, which will re-format it into a .flv file. For viewing in the Lecture Hall, you may want to provide a hi-res file.
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assignments |
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concept |
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presentation of concept |
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treatment |
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presentation of treatment |
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script |
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production lists |
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shot list |
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scene performance |
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scene taping |
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media assets collected |
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project file for pitch vid |
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pitch vid on YT |
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title / credits sequence |
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project file for first cut |
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soundtrack |
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youtube description and tags |
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| final cut | |
| final video on YouTube | |
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reflections on process (self-assessment) |
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arts community participation - attendance at 4 performances |
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timely completion of assignments |
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attendance, especially during Showtime in December |
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Course grades. The course grading system emphasizes process, not product. It is designed to reward behavior that is professional and responsible in order to better prepare you for participation in group creative processes whether at work or in the community. It discourages behavior that is random, late, and hasty, that is, amateurish. A careful, thoughtful process is more likely to produce an attractive, engaging video.
I have not assigned point totals to the above assignments because they are sequential and contingent -- you must do them in order and you must do them all.
If you are sufficiently engaged, come to almost every class, do everything on this assignment list on or before its due date, pass through both gateways, and follow the process exactly, you will get an A or A- for the course. An A- will have a helpfully tagged and described video on YouTube that is the result of a unified process: concept, script, treatment, shot list, video production with attention to light and sound, and a final video with opening titles, closing credits and a listenable audio mix as a soundtrack. Also, you did at least some acting or crew work for other students' projects. An A wil do all that with flair and enthusiasm. If you have a concept, script, treatment, and shot list for one video and then switch at the end to another video for which you did not go through the process (or went through it "in your head" quickly on the fly), you will not be able to get more than a B.
If you are sufficiently engaged, come to most of the classes, and don't do one or more assignments or don't do them in a timely manner, you will get a B or lower. A B- will have unproduced documents and undocumented final video or a unified production missing one or more documents. Also, you did at least some acting or crew work for other students' projects.
If you aren't sufficiently engaged, even if you do everything else, you can't get an A or probably even a B. A C- will be missing two or more documents. Also, you did at least some acting and crew work. If you see yourself headed in that direction, the two of us should discuss your situation to see how we can optimize your learning.
If you end up with a final video but missed a lot of classes and had few documents finished when due, or conversely, did everything except the final video on YouTube, you will get a D.
There will be two gateways in this course, one at the end of February to look at your script and the other at the end of March to look at your media assets. If you do not pass a gateway, that is, if you do not have a script to show me in February and media assets in March, I will send an official Academic Warning report to your advisor because I will be having serious doubts about whether you will be able to successfully complete the course at an A or B level. Depending on how far behind you are, I may recommend that you drop the course.
I may at my discrection award extra credit for extraordinary participation in acting in other students' videos.
Showtime, the final classes / final exam period when we view the final videos, is mandatory attendance. If you miss one or more of those, your course grade will suffer.
For the regular MWF class sessions:
0 absences, add 2 points to final grade
1 absence for any reason, add 1 point to final grade
2 or 3 absences for any reason, no change
4 or more absences for any reason, subtract points from final grade for each absence
1 or 2 assignments late, no change
3 or more late, subtract one point from final grade for each late assignment and one more for each late week
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Did I emphasize that enough? Let me try again. Careful and effective people are, at times, very self-conscious. I highly recommend that starting now you write about your work in some form of journal or file. After you have done everything else for the course, answer three questions:
what did you learn?
how did you learn it?
what could you have done better?
Go through all the hats you wore: actor, writer, director, producer, editor. Reflect on the experiences of the past three months:
choices
you made; lessons you learned
difficulties you encountered and
the conclusions you reached as a result
successes you achieved and the
new insights you gained from achieving them
things to do differently next
time and why
interesting ways the course
relates to previous work, especially unexpected or conflicting results
strong emotions you experienced
and why
This reflection should be more than simple lists of activities, reactions without explaining the reason for them, or complaints about external conditions that kept you from doing your best.
You must email this self-assessment to me. It's your way of telling me that you have finished the course. When I have the self-assessment, I will turn in your course grade based on everything you did before that date.
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