Film Aesthetics 1: The Director’s Craft 2 Semester Credits
First part of an in depth study of the methodologies used by the great directors to affect their audiences and to trigger emotional responses. In this course, students will learn the language and craft of film aesthetics from a director’s perspective. They will learn to integrate several concepts in the arts, in the behavioral sciences, and in the humanities to measure maximum psychological impact achieved by the Director’s decisions as it relates to camera placement, blocking, staging, and visual image design. This course requires that students challenge themselves to not only become competent directors but also compelling storytellers by utilizing the most effective and expressive visual means to tell their stories. Film Aesthetics 1:Directors Craft exposes students to the unique ways great directors have approached visual storytelling and how they have used the task of staging scenes and moving actors within the frame or mise en scene.
Prerequisite: None

16mm Camera & Lighting 1 Semester Credit
In this course, students undergo intensive training in the use of the 16mm Arriflex-S motion picture camera and its accessories. In lighting class, they learn fundamental lighting techniques through shooting tests on film. As they progress through the workshop they learn how to support the mood of the story with lighting choices and they experiment with expressive lighting styles.
Prerequisite: None

Screenwriting for Silent Film 1 Semester Credit
This class gives students an initiation to the established tools and language used in writing a film project. Students will take a story from initial idea, treatment, and outline to a rough draft, and finally, a shooting script. Instruction focuses on the fundamentals of visual storytelling. The intersection of story structure, theme, character, tension, and conflict is examined through detailed scene analysis. In-class discussion provides students with constructive analysis and support. Students are encouraged to tell their stories visually, rather than relying on dialogue to tell the story. The scripts they write will be the basis of all class work in the first semester.
Prerequisite: None

Budgeting & Scheduling .5 Semester Credits
Using their own film projects as prototypes, students learn to break down film scripts for budgeting and scheduling purposes. Students are challenged to think comprehensively about their film projects in terms of the realities of low budget student production and the physical economic demands of filmmaking.
Prerequisite: None

Principles of Digital Editing 4 Semester Credits
Students are taught multiple aesthetic approaches to editing film and video. They learn how to apply concepts such as temporal continuity and spatial continuity, as well as less traditional discontinuous editing techniques to their work, and study the psychological and emotional effects and ramifications of each on the overall story. Additionally, students learn to operate the Final Cut Pro digital editing system. Each student edits his or her own films. Classes are supplemented with individual consultations at the computer.
Prerequisite: None

Acting For Directors .5 Semester Credits
This course adheres to the philosophy that in order to direct actors one must understand and experience acting as art and methodology. Directing students will become actors. This course prepares them to not only communicate and collaborate with their actors, but it helps them to learn how to actualize the best emotional outcome of a scene. Students learn how to identify a screenplay’s emotional “beats” and “character objectives” in order to improve their actors’ performances. Through exercises, students learn how an actor trains him/herself physically and emotionally. Sensory work, emotional recall, and improvisations are the tools the students will be exposed to in order to understand how an actor is able to live out a character’s reality.
Prerequisite: None

Digital Camera & Lighting .5 Semester Credits
In Digital Camera & Lighting, color is introduced to the curriculum. Students study basic color theory, and learn to control the color palette of their projects. Special attention is given to the emotional attributes that can be assigned to an image by changing the hue, saturation, and contrast of any given image. Students learn to incorporate these theories into their projects, and gain a greater understanding of aesthetic image control. In Digital Camera & Lighting class students master elements of digital video photography including white balance, shutter speed, focus, video latitude, gels, and filters. Through hands-on exercises, students will explore the possibilities of digital video and learn how it differs from film. Students learn how to achieve the best quality sound recording by working with boom-poles and external shotgun microphones.
Prerequisite: 16mm Camera & Lighting

Script Supervision: Efficient Shooting .5 Semester Credits
In this hands-on, interactive seminar, students learn how proper script supervision can help filmmakers effectively tell their stories. Students break down their thesis scripts and learn to take an advanced and efficient approach to the organization and management of the shooting day. Students are challenged to maximize the efficiency of shooting schedules and learn practical techniques for creating and preserving spatial and temporal continuity in their films.
Prerequisite: None

Production Workshop 2 Semester Credits
Production Workshop is a hands-on class in which students stage and shoot complex dramatic exercises under the guidance of the instructor. Students design shots to heighten the emotion of a sequence and shoot it on film or digital video in a supervised environment. Using props and wardrobe, students learn the importance of specificity in mature storytelling, and are challenged to control every aspect of the visual component of each exercise. Students are assigned to craft aesthetically complex images and scenes. Later, students edit the exercises and analyze them with the instructor.
Prerequisite: None

Year One Film Projects 3.5 Semester Credits
While each student in the program writes, directs and edits his or her own films, it is also essential that he or she learn the inherent correlation between collaboration and successful storytelling in the film arts. Crews function as working groups for each film project. Thus, each student not only directs a series of projects, but also works in crew positions on his or her colleagues’ films using the skills derived from other courses. Students edit their own individual projects. Then, under the supervision of the instructor, students screen their films for an audience of fellow students. This allows the instructor and students to have an open forum of commentary and constructive criticism of the work. Fellow students and instructors will provide a careful critique and discussion of the work in addition to allowing the director to defend his or her artistic intent.
Prerequisite: None

Year One Digital Video Projects 4.5 Semester Credits
As a supplement to the Required Classes In Year One, Second Semester, students will each direct three, short (10-15 minutes in length), digitally filmed projects, including the Semester One Final Film. As with film projects, digital projects will be followed with a screening and critique. Students must choose complex dramatic situations and scenes, which will be approved by the instructor in consultation.
Prerequisite: Year One Film Projects

Screenwriting: Writing Dialogue .5 Semester Credits
In addition to providing an in depth study and exploration of dialogue in film, Screenwriting: Writing Dialogue focuses on the writing, rewriting, and polishing of Year One Final Film Scripts. Students will conduct live readings of their screenplays and engage in instructor led round table discussions of the work. The goal of this seminar is to increase the writer’s mastery of those aspects of screenwriting as outlined in Screenwriting for Silent Film. In order to successfully complete this class, all students must achieve “script lock”. At the completion of this class, each student will formally enter into Pre-Production of the Year One Final Film.
Prerequisite: Screenwriting for Silent Film

Film Aesthetics 2: Advanced Composition
& Performance Design.5 Semester Credits

This lecture/seminar builds upon knowledge and skills acquired in the first semester’s course: Aesthetics 1, Director’s Craft, and is a concentrated academic examination and critical analysis of the aesthetic elements of mise-en-scène: shot choice, composition, setting, point of view, character, and movement of the camera. Starting where the first semester directing class left off, students learn how to cover a dialogue scene with a series of shots as well as more sophisticated approaches to coverage including the use of dollies. Students practice different approaches to coverage by breaking down scenes from their own scripts. They create floor plans and shot lists, and then discuss their choices with the instructor.
Prerequisite: Film Aesthetics 1

Student Line Producing .5 Semester Credits
Student Producing 2 leads students through the entire process of pre-production, including scouting and securing of locations, permits, and casting. The producing instructor and the students design a production schedule for the entire class. The instructor encourages students to form realistic plans for successfully making their films. Using script breakdowns, students learn how to plan and keep to a schedule and budget for their productions. They use their own finished scripts in class as they learn how to take advantage of budgeting and scheduling forms and methods.
Prerequisite: Budgeting & Scheduling

Advanced 16mm Camera & Lighting .25 Semester Credits
Students are trained to operate the Arriflex 16SR camera and accessories.
Prerequisite: 16mm Camera & Lighting

Advanced Cinematography 1: Painting with Light .25 Semester Credits
This course reinterprets the practical, technical aspects of cinematography from the storyteller’s point of view. This class immerses students in the advanced technical and creative demands of cinematography. An array of color film stocks are tested to help students learn to distinguish between the various attributes of different stocks, and to help students to justify and defend choices for their films. Students will use color correcting filters and gels consistent with scene needs during shooting tests. Lighting and contrast ratios are reviewed. By shooting set-ups from students’ own storyboards, this camera and lighting-centric class provides students with a practical approach to getting the most out of their resources, and challenges them to “sculpt” and “paint” the images that compose their films with the highest attention to detail.
Prerequisite: None

Critical Film Studies 1: Historical Perspectives 2 Semester Credits
This course is an intense film studies seminar in which students are taught to identify the techniques used by cinematic innovators throughout the history of filmmaking. Through screenings and discussions, students will grow to understand how filmmakers have approached the great challenge of telling stories with moving images from silent films to the digital age. The course explores ways that the crafts of directing (particularly shot construction), cinematography, acting, and editing have developed. This course however does not just take a critical look at development. Students are asked to place themselves in that development with regard to their on-going film projects.
Prerequisite: None

Casting Actors .5 Semester Credits
Building on the tools students gained in the Directing Actors course of the first semester, students break down their own scripts for the purposes of casting. This course takes a comprehensive look at casting from the actors and directors point of view. Students are asked to identify the dramatic beats of their scenes and translate this into effective casting choices. Students learn to adjust character objectives through rehearsal of their own scripts. A strong emphasis is put on establishing believable performances. Students should expect to review and revise scenes from their own scripts as is necessary and appropriate during the casting process.
Prerequisite: Acting for Directors

Synchronous Sound Production Workshop 1 Semester Credit
This class asks student to interpret and apply all theory and practice of the second semester curriculum in a hands-on workshop. In a series of sync-sound production exercises students shoot complex, dramatic scenes on 16mm film from their own scripts with the guidance and critique of the instructor. Students must determine what adjustments to make to their scripts and shooting plans before their films go into production. These practice scenes are fully pre-produced (storyboarded, cast, scouted, rehearsed and pre-lighted) and treated as actual productions.
Prerequisite: Production Workshop

Synchronous-Sound Editing 3.5 Semester Credits
This class teaches students to edit their sync-sound projects. Dailies from the exercises from Cinematography class are transferred to digital video so that students learn to sync and edit with dialogue. This gives students the hands-on technical training they need to edit their own project. Students are encouraged to expound upon previously mastered techniques to establish a consistent editing design, dialogue rhythm, and sense of pacing and continuity that compliments the story as a whole.
Prerequisite: Principles of Editing

35mm Filmmaking 1 Semester Credit
This class will train students in to effectively use and operate 35mm cameras and accessories. All the fundamental creative skills and concepts students have learned working with 16mm film and digital video apply fully to 35mm filmmaking. The 35mm class is an opportunity for students to see how the wider frame and higher resolution of 35mm affects their shot design, framing, composition, staging, camera movement, lens choice, and lighting. Students are taught to maximize the utility of 35mm film and to identify the demands of this film stock choice with regard to script length, budget, and production schedule.
Prerequisite: Production Workshop

Year One Final Film 10 Semester Credits
Year One culminates in the pre-production, production, and post-production of the Year One Final Film. This film project is the capstone project of Year One, and Masters students are challenged to incorporate lessons from all other courses in the design and execution of these films.
Prerequisite: Semester One Final Film

Eight-Week Screenwriting Workshop 5 Semester Credits
The goal of this workshop is to fully immerse each student in an intensive and focused course of study, providing a solid structure for writing and meeting deadlines. Students will learn the craft of writing by gaining an understanding of story, structure, character, conflict and dialogue. With strict adherence to the rituals of writing and learning, students will complete a first draft of a feature length screenplay of 90 to 120 pages.
Prerequisite: Screenwriting: Writing Dialogue

Feature Script Development 5 Semester Credits
This class is designed as a creative and academic safe-haven for students to develop, re-write, and polish their scripts from the Pre-Semester Workshop. In order for a student to successfully pass this class, each project must be “script–locked” by the end of the semester, and ready for Pre-Production in Semester Three. Students who intend to direct and edit their features in Semester Two of the MFA in Filmmaking Program must receive “Script Approval” from the Feature Script Development instructor before proceeding to Pre-Production and Production of their feature length films.
Prerequisite: Eight-Week Screenwriting Workshop

Advanced Approaches to Directing 1 Semester Credit
This class is an advanced exploration of the art of directing performance. Students will hone their skills and prepare a number of scenes for in-class presentation. Students will be provided with a selection of pre-published texts, including plays, television scripts, and scenes from produced feature length screenplays. They will workshop the scenes (both inside and outside of class) with professional actors from the local community. Instruction and in-class criticism will focus on the process of the director in working with actors. Meticulous sculpture of these scenes will continue throughout the semester.
Prerequisite: Film Aesthetics 2

Advanced Line Producing Workshop 1 Semester Credit
In this class students will analyze budgets and schedules of films and television shows that have already been produced in order to gain an understanding of these two key elements in preparing a project for production. In later sessions students will prepare a budget and a schedule from scratch and learn how these two elements interact and drive the production. A second focus of this class will be an in depth lecture on, and discussion of, the nuts and bolts of practical hands-on producing. Students will need to utilize the New York Film Academy Student Library in order to successfully complete this class.
Prerequisite: Student Line Producing

HD Workshop 1 Semester Credit
Similar to the 35mm workshop in Year One, students will participate in a week long Workshop, camera tech, and production period featuring the use of high definition cameras and the in-depth study of high definition cinematography.
Prerequisite: 35mm Filmmaking

Master’s Seminar: Industry Perspectives .5 Semester Credits
On a week-to-week basis, industry professionals will address New York Film Academy master students following a screening of their recent work. A broad cross-section of the film community will be represented in this lecture series, including directors, producers, directors of photography, editors, screenwriters, production designers, post production coordinators, and casting directors. Students will be exposed to multiple avenues for potential employment in the film industry. All lectures will be followed by an extensive Q&A session.
Prerequisite: Critical Film Studies 1

Stage Work/On-Camera Scene Workshop 1 Semester Credit
In this hands-on workshop, students will gain the valuable experience of shooting in a sound stage. Working with dollies, cranes, flats, standing sets, green screens, and the many other positive elements inherent to filmmaking on a closed stage, students will be exposed to a professional filming environment. Students will shoot several in-class group projects including a music video, and are encouraged to make use of all of the tools at their disposal.
Prerequisite: 35mm Filmmaking

Advanced Post Production 1 Semester Credit
In a series of lectures, field trips, and hands-on demonstrations, students will study the constantly evolving world of high end digital Post-Production and finishing to film. Many aspects of Post-Production including telecine, datacine, Efilm, negative cutting, conforming, optical printing, color timing, answer printing, sound editing, sound track mastering, effects compositing, ADR, foley, looping, and theatrical printing will be explored.

Students will need to utilize the New York Film Academy Student Library in order to successfully complete this class.
Prerequisite: Synchronous Sound Editing

Applied Film Studies 2 1 Semester Credit
This film studies seminar taught from the filmmaker’s perspective serves as a continuation of Applied Film Studies 1 from Year One. Through screenings and discussions of historic and modern cinema, students identify techniques they may use in their own films. They learn how filmmakers have approached the challenge of telling stories with moving images from silent films to the digital age. This lecture also examines Joseph Campbell’s analysis of myth structure, and demonstrates point by point how the 12 steps of the hero’s journey can be applied to the dramatic structure of a film and beyond. Scene-by-scene analysis of classic films demonstrates a convincing argument for this relationship.
Prerequisite: Critical Film Studies 1

New Media: Film vs. Digital and Beyond 1 Semester Credit
In the ever-changing world of the motion picture industry, it is essential for a filmmaker to keep abreast of evolutions in new media technology. New media trends are nearly impossible to predict. The climate changes so quickly that often times, revolutionary new ideas face obsolescence within months of their inception. This class will immerse students in this maelstrom of technological developments, as well as the “age old” debate over which format will finally prevail: Film or Digital Video. The many advantages and disadvantages of new technology will be explored in comparison to the classical beauty of chemical exposure. Students will use this knowledge when choosing a format for their thesis films.
Prerequisite: Critical Film Studies 1

The Business of Filmmaking 1 Semester Credit
As burgeoning film professionals, master students will learn the importance of balancing their artistic inclinations with a thorough understanding of the business of filmmaking and the industry as a whole. Topics such as marketing, financing, sound licensing, film festivals, representation, and distribution will be covered. Students will learn to develop themselves as a commodity as well as a creative individual, so that they may better pursue their goals of financially supporting themselves through a life in the arts.
Prerequisite: Student Line Producing

Documentary Filmmaking 1 Semester Credit
This course examines artistic and technical approaches in documentary filmmaking. Documentary styles, shooting approach, methods of interviewing, documentary structure, theme, documentary editing, importance of research, “truth and objectivity,” point of view, ethical questions, and reenactment will be discussed and critiqued.
Prerequisite: Film Aesthetics 2

Short Form Thesis Workshop: Writing 2 Semester Credits
The focus of this elective is to prepare master students for short form thesis productions. Students will develop, outline, and write drafts of their short form thesis scripts. Students who wish to direct short form thesis films are required to take this elective unless they present a production ready short script to the Thesis Coordinator prior to the commencement of the elective, and receive approval to pursue a different course of study. This elective is reserved for students pursuing Thesis Option A. Students pursuing Thesis Options B or Thesis Option C may not register for this elective.
Prerequisite: Screenwriting: Writing Dialogue

Navigating the Industry 2 Semester Credits
There is no single path or formula for creating a career in filmmaking. During the last weeks of the MFA Program, students in this seminar will explore the many different possible roads to a life in film. Guest filmmakers will share their experiences with students; and mentors will work individually with students to discuss the next step in their careers.
Prerequisite: The Business of Filmmaking

Short Form Thesis Workshop: Polish & Pre-Production 3 Semester Credits
The focus of this elective is to prepare master students for short form thesis productions. Students will re-write, polish, and pre-produce the short films over the course of the first eight weeks of the Fourth Semester. Students who wish to direct short form thesis films are required to take this elective unless they present a production ready short script to the Thesis Coordinator prior to the commencement of the elective, and receive approval to pursue a different course of study. Students who intend to direct feature length thesis films, and students who wish to deepen their knowledge and skills in cinematography may not register for this elective.
Prerequisite: Short Form Thesis Workshop: Writing

Production Design & Special Visual Effects 3 Semester Credits
Production design plays an important role in the success of any production, as it provides the audience with the visual clues that establish and enhance the production content. The production designer works to create a design style or concept that will visually interpret and communicate a story, script or environment appropriate to the production content and action. Topics covered in this hands-on workshop will include set design and construction, makeup design, costume design, and basic aesthetics. Additionally, multiple topics concerning the execution of special visual effects will be covered, including forced perspective, wirework, green-screen photography and basic compositing, and working with controlled fires and explosions, like squibs.
Prerequisite: Stage Work/On-Camera Scene Workshop

Advanced Cinematography 2: The Psychology of
Composition3 Semester Credits

As an in depth analysis of painting and sculpting with light, cinematographic control of the aesthetic, and the emotional possibilities repercussions of all aspects of mise-en-scene, this hands-on study of the art and craft of motion picture photography provides the student with multiple approaches towards a more intelligent and artistic way of shooting. Students who wish to crew as Director of Photography on any Year Two thesis films are strongly encouraged to take this elective. Students who choose to pursue a focus in Cinematography are required to take this elective.
Prerequisite: Advanced Cinematography 1

Final Cut Pro Industry Certification 3 Semester Credits
Final Cut Pro is the leading editing platform for independent filmmaking, television production, and is currently being used for many low and mid-budget studio features. This standardized measure of software comprehension instills in students a sense of confidence in the editing platform they will require at the onset of their professional lives.
Prerequisite: Synchronous Sound Editing

Thesis Option A: Short Form Thesis Film and
Feature Prep. 14.5 Semester Credits

The requirement for students who choose to pursue this track is twofold:

1) Thesis Option A master students must direct and shepherd a short-form thesis film through post-production. Projects may be up to 30 minutes in length, and must be delivered prior to graduation. Students may choose from all media formats studied over the course of the MFA program to film their thesis films.

2) Thesis Option A master students must also pre-produce and package the feature scripts they wrote and developed during Semester Three. Students must present a polished script, storyboards, a budget, production schedule, list of potential actors for consideration in each role, plans for set construction, and a concise list of potential producers, production companies and distributors to the faculty and the thesis committee for consideration prior to graduation.
Prerequisite: Year One Final Film, Short Form Thesis Workshop: Polish & Pre-Production

Thesis Option B: Feature Length Film Production 16.5 Semester Credits
Students will enter Pre-production of a feature film in Semester Four with the guidance of an appointed faculty member. Mandatory consultations with these appointed faculty members are necessary for students to gain guidance and an understanding of the grueling tasks inherent to feature length film production. These consultations will also include a clear template of delivery dates for script deadlines, casting calls, production meetings, budget breakdowns, location lockdowns and a demonstration of financial responsibility to obtain approval to shoot. Students must receive a “green light” before beginning production on their thesis films.

Students who will direct feature length thesis films must also collaborate in prominent crew positions for students directing short form thesis films. They are encouraged to fill positions based upon the elective they chose in Semester One. These positions include production design, special visual effects, cinematography or editing.
Prerequisite: Year One Final Film

Thesis Option C: Emphasis in Cinematography
and Feature Prep. 14.5 Semester Credits

Students who choose to forego directing a thesis film and wish to deepen their knowledge of Cinematography may graduate with the Master of Fine Arts degree if one of the following scenarios is successfully fulfilled:

1) Thesis Option C student takes the Advanced Approaches to Cinematography elective, develops, pre-produces, and packages a feature length script for industry production and/or sale, and works as Director of Photography on at least two short form thesis films.

2) Thesis Option C student takes the Advanced Approaches to Cinematography elective, pre-produces, and packages a feature length script for industry production and/or sale, and works as Director of Photography on at least one feature length film.

Thesis film projects will be screened for an invited audience upon completion. Students are responsible for inviting all guests. This public screening is not part of the formal evaluation process. Thesis Option C students who choose to collaborate as Director of Photography on a feature length are not required to pay for a fifth semester of study, but must wait until the end of Semester Five and the completion of production of the feature length film to fulfill their thesis requirement and graduate from the program.
Prerequisite: Year One Final Film, Advanced Approaches to Cinematography