FMMC0334 – Videographic Film & Media Studies
Fall 2024, M/W 11:15am – 12:30pm, Axinn 105

Professor Jason Mittell (he/him)
208 Axinn Center, 802-443-3435, jmittell@middlebury.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays 10-11:30am, Wednesdays 2-3pm, or request an appointment

Assistant in Instruction: Naomi Clark – contact Naomi with any technical questions, equipment needs, or other support requests

Lab Assistants: see this site for the hours for lab tutors available in the Axinn basement who can help with editing questions.

Digital video technologies now enable film and media critics to “write” with the same materials that constitute their object of study: moving images and sounds. The rise of video essays means rethinking the rhetorical modes traditionally used in critical writing, and incorporating more aesthetic, poetic, and experimental elements alongside explanation and analysis. In this hands-on course (with no previous video editing experience required), we will both study and produce video essays, exploring how such work can produce new knowledge, create an aesthetic impact, and disseminate film & media criticism to a broader audience.

This course is a hybrid of critical studies and video production, requiring students to engage both conceptually and creatively. Assignments will consist of a series of specific weekly videographic exercises, a video created in response to another video, and a final video essay on a topic of the student’s choosing. Additionally, we will view and discuss many examples of video essays, working to both understand the form as it has grown in prominence in the past decade, and envision new possibilities for the future.

Videographic Film & Media Studies is an experimental workshop class. Though we will read some material along the way to help form a historical and theoretical foundation, you will mostly be watching and producing short video essays in rhetorical forms that are likely new to all of you. For this class to succeed, it is important that everyone feels ready to take some chances in your work (sometimes you will not succeed) and provide feedback to others that is constructive and supportive, but also honest. In many ways, this class is a group experiment, and though you will be working and assessed individually, it is best to think of the class in that spirit of collaboration.

There are no required books for the course – readings and videos will be linked to in the daily schedule. Students are required to have an external hard drive to store their video projects – recommended models are available on the Film & Media production website, or students may checkout a drive for the semester from the department’s equipment room. Students should also bring headphones with them to class each day. Access materials through the course Google Drive.

Please join the course Discord server as a place to engage in conversation, ask for help, share interesting examples, or otherwise extend your engagement in the course and our videographic community.