T1 Introduction to Filmmaking: This course is a hands-on course that focuses on group work in which students take on roles such as cinematographer, director, writer, sound engineer, and editor. It introduces the basics of filmmaking practice with an overall focus on terminology, skill development, and creative problem solving. It also covers a selection of fundamental concepts of creating meaning through the use of sound and image. Emphasis will be placed on the process, and will involve the production of a collection of short exercises with the option at the end of the year for students to work in core production groups in order to create a work with a beginning, middle, and end as a culminating project. These production activities combine the creative skills and conceptual understandings developed throughout the year; these involve specific process-based milestones, and will incorporate group discussions and peer critique of exercises. By the end of this course, students will have created a portfolio of film-related exercises and original short scenes.
T2 Film Analysis: The course builds on any existing student understanding of film technique, concept, history, and vocabulary, and focuses on specific elements of analysis and technical production. However, the student does not need to have any prior film experience in order to enroll in this course. Each unit matches a film (to be screened partially or fully in class) with an film textual analysis exercise. For example: a specific part of film history (e.g. the Hollywood silent era coupled with Modern Times (Chaplin)), an auteur study (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock coupled with Vertigo (Hitchcock)), a genre study (e.g. horror coupled with Let the Right One In (Alfredson)), a movement study (e.g. film noir coupled with Chinatown (Polanski)), or a study in dreams, time and space (Atlantique, (Diop)). One choice of film text will accompany each of these concepts, and will serve as the basis for analysis as well as inspire short production exercises. Sample exercises for study will include exercises in storyboarding, script-writing, hands-on camera workshops. These kinds of short exercises in production will supplement the analysis-based curriculum, in which assessment will comprise individual scene analyses and presentations on established filmmakers. Also, T2 Film Analysis students have been invited to work as crew for T3 and T4 IB Film students. The progression of T1 and T2 film program electives give students the foundation required for the rigorous work involved in the IBDP Film program.
