Online Class: Film Appreciation

If you love film, then this course will help you learn more about film analysis, film reviews and discussions, period genres and movements in film style, and more. It will provide you an informed opinion that will hopefully make your enjoyment of the film medium deeper.

This course may be useful for professionals who need to be informed and conversant about the film-industry; for the layman who wants to know as much as he/she can about the world of film for personal enjoyment; or for the student, hoping to become familiar with the 'lay-of-the-land' for film-criticism.

Lessons include discussions on the following:

• How you can get real enjoyment from the films you watch, and why you should care
  
• Early film-history
  
• The process of film-making and how it relates to understanding the films you watch
  
• A look at 100 years of film-styles, genres and movements
  
• A discussion of film-psychology, and some fascinating aspects of the perception of films
  
• A review of 'films to watch', taken in 20-year periods starting in 1900, and moving through 2019, featuring all the classics from each era
  
• General ideas about film and art-theory as a consumer habit
  
• Film composers to know
  
• Film directors to know
  
• How to get your twenty-dollar's worth at the movie-theater
  
• New ways to enjoy film and new audience technologies
  
• And much more

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

Creative Writing 101

Greek Mythology

Novel Writing 101

Course Motivation

If you can answer the riddle about why people go to see films, as they have for about 100 years, you're indeed informed about the human condition. The vast popularity of cinema indicates the reason must be compelling, common, and durable. Is it because we want to feel connected to one another? Is cinema a kind of psychic circus where all souls meet concerning the issues that bind together Mankind? Or is it the thrill of some new adventure, some mighty battle, some piercing new insight we long for, thirsty for a truth to set us free of our own dull lives?

More sophisticated thinkers might call this modern ritual of movies a collective, tribal, and social passage that invites the individual to be a part of the whole. You can't enjoy conversations around the water cooler at work if you missed the latest blockbuster film, which may have reached almost a billion people. If you're out of the loop where the new Spider-Man film is concerned, when the joy and grist of friendships and socializing is working its way in your life -- at the dinner table, in the market, at school, on TV and radio, or in magazines -- you may find you just can't connect, you don't feel a part of things, or you're lost on the topic. Because even if it's not always the films, themselves, we really enjoy (and of course we do), a big part of the sauce you get from your cinema experience is feeling the buzz, talking about it, being a part of something new.

Depending on your walk of life, you can take this a bit further. Even if the films are 60 years old, and the director has long since passed into eternity. "Alfred Hitchcock? I love his stuff!" Or at the dentist's office, does it feel right to impress the hygienist with your knowledge of Spaghetti Westerns, just for something to talk about between cleanings? What about your budding career as a fine arts painter -- do your watercolor treatments of Marilyn Monroe and Bette Davis stack up well with Andy Warhol, or not?

This is cultural reference stuff for a reason -- because it's true: We measure our understanding of ourselves and different areas of life in the language and psychic coinage of shared film stories. These stories have become so well known, they're virtual bywords for status, morality, judgment, and even -- sometimes -- our entire world view. This doesn't even include actual careers in the entertainment industry, where "speaking the language" can mean the difference between working or not working.

So, if films have touched your life (and it would be rare if they have not), this syllabus is intended simply to help you enjoy films more than you do now, In the same way you might enjoy wine and food more by knowing something about the ingredients, how they're prepared, or how they compare with similar menu items,this course is your introduction to, and a quick trip throughout, the cinematic bliss of viewing films with more understanding.

How many times have you seen a film and the experience was a tiresome burden? Or did you pay your $20 to see a film and then almost instantly forgot what you had seen, as if it had passed before your eyes with no more depth for you than watching an aquarium full of fancy tropical fish? Have you ever walked out of a film? Why does that happen, or in what way could you have chosen a film to attend more carefully, so as to have avoided disappointment? Do you always go to see romance films or family films -- but not horror or action films? Do you remember films from your childhood and even have dreams about those experiences, like old friends? Will you attend a new film with very high box office numbers, even if you're unfamiliar with it -- but not a very small film that is only on a few hundred screens around the country? When you go to the video store, or the video section of your local library, does the term "classic films" scare you off, even though you may have heard about Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy? Or what about film reviews -- do you read them or trust them?

It can be argued that the real value of film viewing is minor. It can be argued that many films, or all films, do more harm than good. But in the best case, knowledge here is not power, it's enjoyment. No one can tell you how to watch a film -- you just do it -- you take a seat, you're awake with your eyes and ears open, you expose yourself to the material, and you laugh, cry, or wail----then it ends and you can go home. If you crossed your legs during the film, fell asleep, or talked on your cell phone, it's mostly your own business. But to assess the experience, to consider it all mindfully, to make your film audience consumer choices as a more informed participant, and to relate the acquired cultural checkpoint material around the water cooler as someone who actually knows a little of what he's talking about -- this is appreciation, this is criticism, this is film enjoyment. No matter how much you learn about films, that little childlike thrill, deep inside, when the hero slays the dragon, or gets the girl, or jumps out of the airplane will always be there.