MDST 100 Intro to Media Studies
This course provides an introduction to media studies, including film, television, radio, video games, social media, and other forms of digital media. The course offers a set of basic terms for understanding film and media forms; it also functions as a gateway for thinking about the ways in which media forms, styles, genres, and industrial contexts construct meaning in different historical moments. The course emphasizes the study of film form - the building block for all kinds of moving image media - exploring topics such as camerawork, mise-en-scene, sound editing, narrative, and film's representation of reality. The course also addresses questions of medium specificity and media convergence in the digital era. The goal of this course is to provide students with a systemic understanding of moving image media in its basic forms, and to introduce students to some of the tools for analyzing media. Lecture.