About CCAcademicsAdmission & Financial AidAthleticsDirectoryNews & EventsSupport CCTutt Library Colorado College
 
The English Department
 
 

Film Track

An Overview of Film Track
Students in the English Department’s film track develop their interests in film with a strong foundation in literary studies. Film study and filmmaking benefit deeply from reading stories, novels, poems, plays, and critical theory. Understanding what makes plots and characters tick in Shakespeare and Dickens, for example, helps students understand plots and characters in Citizen Kane and create them in their own films if a student wants to make films. The department’s primary interest lies in narrative film and narrative filmmaking. The department program moves from Introduction to Film Studies and Basic Filmmaking through film genre classes (Film Noir, Hitchcock, the Western) and an advanced film theory/history class, to either a senior seminar / writing project, or a senior filmmaking project. Screenwriting and filmmaking classes are a special strength of our program. Students learn in deep and serious ways how to think about writing for film, and about how to design, shoot, and edit a story in film.

Requirements

Aims of the Film Track

a. The film track in the English Department offers students the opportunity to develop their interests in film with a strong foundation in literary studies. The Department believes that film study and filmmaking benefit deeply from reading stories, novels, poems, plays, and critical theory. Understanding what makes plots and characters tick in Shakespeare and Dickens, for example, helps students understand plots and characters in Citizen Kane and create them in their own films that a student may make. The primary interest in the department’s program lies in narrative film and filmmaking.

b. Film track majors also benefit from a thorough introduction to film studies as an intellectual discipline and a history. A background in film history and theory prepares students to benefit from courses in specific topics like the Western, Hitchcock, Film Noir, Melodrama, and Shakespeare on Film. Students who decide to make a film also benefit from an extended preparation in film studies and the valuable introduction to film practice in our filmmaking courses.

c. The culminating experience in the film track is either a writing project or making a senior film. Seniors making a film need Basic and Advanced Filmmaking as prerequisites, and follow a careful schedule during their senior year for writing the screenplay, planning production, shooting and editing the film. Seniors choosing to write a screenplay or a critical essay for their culminating project will take a Senior Seminar, and write their film project either with permission of their two-block seminar professor, or as an independent one-block Senior Project. Because of the work required to make a film, students choosing that option are not required to take a Senior Seminar.

ENGLISH REQUIREMENTS:
1. Period courses: four 300- or 400-level courses filling the categories below, but any one of these requirements may be fulfilled with a 200-level course:

Shakespeare (required)

Then, choose three out of these four:

  1. Middle Ages and Renaissance, excluding Shakespeare
  2. 18th Century and English Romantics, 1660-1830
  3. 19th Century, 1830-1914
  4. 20th Century, 1914-present
2. English 221: Introduction to Poetry
3 English 250: Introduction to Literary Theory or Comparative Literature 210
4. Prose Fiction
5. Alternative Literature (minority, non-western, or women’s literature)

FILM STUDIES REQUIREMENTS:
1. FS 115: Introduction to Film
2. FS 315: Film History and Theory
3. FS 112: Basic Filmmaking (optional except for students making a senior film)

Two other college film classes:
    a. film-making classes (screenwriting, advanced filmmaking)
    b. film genre/period classes (e.g., the Western, Hitchcock)

SENIOR OPTIONS:
a. Make a film: Sign up for EN 485: Senior Project/Filmmaking. Students making a film are not required to take a seminar. Prerequisites: FS 112: Basic Filmmaking and FS312: Advanced Filmmaking.
b. EN 480: Senior Seminar. Either the two-block Seminar, in which the long seminar paper will be about film; or the one-block Seminar, followed by EN 485: Senior Project, whose focus will be film.

Students may count no more than two units of summer independent reading toward their major requirements.

Distinction in English is awarded at graduation to senior majors who have done outstanding academic work in the department.