see also
Sophomore/Junior/Senior · 3 weeks (June 21 - July 12) · 3 credits
There's more to seeing than meets the eye.
During this program, offered in cooperation with Cornell's acclaimed John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, you'll develop creative and critical ways of analyzing film.
Through lectures, regular film screenings, discussions, and writing exercises, you'll discover new ways of analyzing film techniques and genres. Questions you'll consider include:
- What is the relation of one scene to another?
- What meanings are created by camera position and distance?
- How does the duration of a shot or the angle of the lighting underline meanings?
- Why does the camera tilt and pan, say, instead of zoom?
- How does a film draw us in, making us collaborators or voyeurs?
You'll study such Hollywood narrative classics as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho; Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise; Director Christopher Nolan's Memento; Director Paul Haggis's Oscar-winning film Crash; highly acclaimed director Roman Polanski's Chinatown and others.
Additionally, two afternoons a week, you'll meet with guests from the film industry who'll share their experiences, answer questions, show film clips, and offer advice for those interested in making films. Visitors may include:
- A film producer who has worked for Michael Moore
- An independent filmmaker, and recent Cornell graduate (she'll screen her newest documentary—recently shown at the Toronto Film Festival—and discuss the challenges of being an "indie")
- An online film reviewer
- A director and creative developer for Miramax Films
- The director of Cornell's nationally celebrated Cornell Cinema
To be eligible for this program, you must have completed your sophomore, junior, or senior year of high school by June 2008.
Course
You'll be enrolled in On Camera: Studies in Film Analysis, a section of "Reading and Writing About . . . ?" (ENGL 1131 109-SEM). This course meets Mondays through Fridays, 9-11:45 and Mondays through Thursdays, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Program leader
Program leader Lynda Bogel says, "My enthusiasm for teaching film and writing comes from one desire: to share what I love. Film language, so different from written language, creates worlds for us to understand and see. Since we each see and love different things in any film, our discussions connect us, to one another, to the imaginative world of the film, and to our own worlds, which we grasp differently after studying characters, stories, camera angles, color schemes, and soundtracks. My gratification as a teacher comes from, as another Cornell professor, Amy Villarejo, says, “enabling each student to watch closely in order to learn how, and for what reasons, we make meaning from the worlds of film.”
Recipient of Cornell's Clark Award for Excellence in Teaching, Lynda Bogel has been a popular and effective teacher at Cornell for more than twenty years. After undergraduate work at Barnard and Yale colleges, and graduate work in English Literature at Yale, Professor Bogel taught at Connecticut College and Wesleyan University before moving to Ithaca.
She joined the English Department at Cornell in 1984. Her many courses in film analysis range from large lectures on Alfred Hitchcock’s films to a multi-sectioned first-year writing seminar called "Writing About Film," as well as many upper-level film seminars on film comedy, film melodrama, and representations of women, such as “Fast-Talking Dames” and “Monsters and Misfits.” She also teaches English poetry courses and creative nonfiction workshops.
Professor Bogel has served the university in numerous capacities. She has been director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and served on the admissions committee for the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as on the Cornell Cinema board, the hearing board for Academic Integrity, and other advisory committees across the university. She recently won a grant to write a book, Elements of Teaching Film.
The teaching assistants participating in this course are advanced and experienced graduate student instructors. They will help with daily discussion groups and with writing tutorials, which meet many afternoons and evenings.
A typical day in On Camera: Studies in Film Analysis
| Time | Event |
| 7:00-8:30 a.m. | Breakfast |
| 9:00-10:15 a.m. | Monday - Friday Lecture with Professor Bogel |
| 10:30 -11:45 a.m. | Monday - Friday Discussion sections with your teaching assistant |
| 12:00-1:00 p.m. | Lunch at Trillium |
| 1:30-3:30 p.m. | Monday and Wednesday - Writing tutorials with your teaching assistant |
| 1:30-3:30 p.m. | Tuesday and Thursday - "Behind the Camera" Discussion sessions with Professor Bogel and Guest Speakers |
| 6:00-7:30 p.m. | Dinner - will be served at North Star Dining in Appel Commons |
| 7:30-9:00 p.m. | Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday Study Hours; Meet with your teaching assistants to confer about any aspects of the course and your summer experiences. |
| 7:30 - 9:15 p.m. | Sunday and Wednesday: watch a film |
| 11:00 p.m. | Nightly Check-In: Sunday - Thursday |
| 12:00 a.m. | Nightly Check-In: Friday and Saturday |
| Don't miss it... | |
| Friday, July 4 | In observance of Independence Day, we will not have class. |
| Friday, July 11 | College Fair 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. |
| Monday, July 7 | College Admissions Workshop 2:30 - 3:45 p.m. |