Courses are open to enrolled MIT students. Non-degree candidates may be able to enroll as special students. For more information, visit the MIT Office of Graduate Admissions.
Civic Media Collaborative Design Studio
Sasha Costanza-Chock
Project-based studio focusing on collaborative design of civic media provides a service-learning opportunity for students interested in working with community organizations. Multidisciplinary teams create civic media projects based on real-world community needs. Covers co-design methods and best practices to include the user community in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation.
Communicating with Web-Based Media
Ed Barrett
Analysis, design, implementation, and testing of various forms of digital communication based on group collaboration. Students are encouraged to think about the Web and other new digital interactive media not just in terms of technology but also broader issues such as language (verbal and visual), design, information architecture, communication and community.
Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: Still Images of a World in Motion
B.D. Colen
Designed to increase students’ understanding of, appreciation for, and ability to do documentary photography and photojournalism. Each three-hour class is divided between a discussion of issues and readings, and a group critique of students’ projects. Students must have their own photographic equipment and be responsible for processing and printing: either by student or commercial lab. Students must show basic proficiency with their equipment. Readings include Susan Sontag, Robert Coles, Ken Light, Eugene Richards, and others.
Documenting Science through Video and New Media
Christine Walley and Chris Boebel
Advanced exploration of documentary film theory and production that offers a social scientific perspective on documentaries about science, engineering, and related fields. Student work focuses on final digital video projects. Discussion and readings tailored to the questions and issues raised by specific student projects; labs focus on the technical skills required to complete more advanced work.
The Future of Imaging
Ramesh Raskar and Gordon Wetzstein
This course surveys the landscape of imaging techniques and learn how to conduct research in imaging. With more than a billion people with networked, mobile cameras in their hands, we are seeing a rapid evolution in activities based on visual exchange. People’s daily activities are increasingly based on pervasive recording and eager consumption of images and video. In this seminar course, we will look at the technical as well the social aspects of this rapidly evolving camera culture.
Innovation in Documentary: Technologies and Techniques
William Uricchio
Discusses emerging technologies and techniques available to media-makers (e.g., location-based technologies, transmedia storytelling, crowdsourcing, and interactivity) and their implications for film and television documentary. Studies the development of these tools and considers the many new directions in which they may take the genre. Includes screenings, meetings with documentary makers, and an experimental component in which students can explore new approaches to documentary production. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative: Theory & Practice
Ed Barrett
Techniques of creating narratives that take advantage of the flexibility of form offered by the computer. Study of the structural properties of book-based narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time and of storyline. Analysis of the structure and evaluation of the literary qualities of computer-based narratives including hypertexts, adventure games, and classic artificial intelligence programs like Eliza. With this base, students use authoring systems to model a variety of narrative techniques and to create their own fictions. Knowledge of programming helpful but not necessary.
Making Documentary: Audio, Video, and More
Tom Levenson
Focuses on the technical demands of long-form storytelling in sound and picture. Students build practical writing and production skills through a series of assignments: still photo-text works, audio-only documentaries, short video projects (4-6 minutes), and a semester-long, team-produced video science documentary (12-15 minutes). Readings, screenings and written work hone students’ analytical capacity. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments. Students from the Graduate Program in Science Writing center their work on topics in science, technology, engineering, and/or medicine.
Science and the Cinema: Experiments on Film
Hanna Rose Shell
Examines the linked histories of science and cinema starting from 1895. Introduces themes from the fields of STS and media studies. Mandatory weekly screening sessions alternate among feature-length films, series of short films and direct engagement with technologies of filmic production, screening and visual analysis. Some screening materials available for out-of-class viewing. Assignments include short papers, a collaborative media project, midterm and final. Evaluation includes attendance at screenings and participation in collaborative assignments and classroom discussion. Limited to 40.
Short Attention Span Documentary
Vivek Bald
Focuses on the production of short (1- to 5-minute) digital video documentaries: a form of non-fiction filmmaking that has proliferated in recent years due to the ubiquity of palm-sized and mobile phone cameras and the rise of web-based platforms, such as YouTube. Students shoot, edit, workshop and revise a series of short videos meant to engage audiences in a topic, introduce them to new ideas, and/or persuade them. Screenings and discussions cover key principles of documentary film – narrative, style, pace, point of view, argument, character development – examining how they function and change in short format. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
The Social Documentary: Analysis and Production
Vivek Bald
An introduction to the history of the social documentary from the 1960s through the 1980s. Explores how social upheaval and the shift to smaller, more portable film cameras, and ultimately hand-held video, converged to bring about an upsurge of socially engaged documentary film production. Students screen and analyze a series of key films from the period and work in groups to produce their own short documentary using digital video and computer-based editing.
