Summer 2023 Courses

Session A: June 26 – August 4, 2023
Session C: August 7 – September 15, 2023

For information about UCLA Summer Sessions, including registration and fee information, visit summer.ucla.edu. Additional information can be found on our list of frequently asked questions.

Click through the session name under each class to see the course description on the Registrar's website.

Questions about TFT online courses can be directed to online@tft.ucla.edu.

Classes are offered in two different instructional methods:

- Online-Asynchronous. Students do not need to be online at a specific time or report to a physical location for any portion of the class, including exams. Lecture videos can be viewed at any time; there are specific deadlines for assignments.

- Online (Remote Synchronous). Class meetings are scheduled and held in real-time using Zoom, allowing for live interaction with your classmates and instructors. Course materials can be accessed any time through an online learning platform.

• FTV 4 – Introduction to Art and Technique of Filmmaking – 5 units

  UCLA General Education Credit
  Satisfies diversity requirement for most programs

  This course will introduce students to the formal and aesthetic principles of cinema, cultivating students’ literacy in both media form and cultural representation. Many of us watch some variation of film and television each day. Though we may not realize it, the representations we see on screen can have a profound effect on how we understand social categories such as gender, class, race, sexuality, and national identity. In this course, students will gain fluency in the audio-visual language that comprises visual media and the complex ways in which that language creates cultural meaning.

  Offered Session A (6 weeks) - Online Asynchronous
  Session C (6 weeks) - Online Asynchronous

  Professor Jasmine Nadua Trice an assistant professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 33 - Introductory Screenwriting - 4 units
  Counts toward film minor

  Learn the fundamental elements of effective storytelling for the screen. Work with a TA from the UCLA MFA screenwriting program to develop a short treatment for your own original feature-length screenplay. This course is intended to be truly introductory; no previous screenwriting experience is expected.
  
  Offered Session A (6 weeks) - Online Asynchronous

  Professor George Huang is a screenwriter and director who has worked on dozens of film and TV projects including S.W.A.T., Spy Kids, Machete and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 84A - Overview of Contemporary Film Industry - 4 units

  Counts toward film minor

  This course, also known as Navigating Hollywood, is an institutional analysis of the American film and television industry. It examines Hollywood's economic structures and business practices. Special emphasis is placed on marketing and distribution systems, the history and operations of studios and networks and their relationships to independent producers, talent and agencies. Know as much as — or more than — the savviest Hollywood insider.

  Offered Session A (6 weeks) - Online Asynchronous

  Professor Denise Mann teaches in the M.F.A. Producers Program at UCLA TFT.

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 106C - History of African, Asian, and Latin American Film: Lecture 2 – 6 units

  This course is a critical, historical, aesthetic, and social study--together with exploration of ethnic significance — of Asian, African, Latin American, and Mexican films

  Professor María Elena de las Carreras is a Fulbright scholar and film critic from Argentina. She teaches at the UCLA School of Film, Theater and Television

  Offered Session A (6 weeks) - Online Synchronous
  Tuesday/Thursday 11am-12:50pm PDT

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 112. Film and Social Change – 6 units

  Development of documentary and dramatic films in relation to and as force in social development. Often viewed as a medium of “pure entertainment,” film has also had an essential relationship to evolving social conditions in the United States and the struggle for change. This course will focus on those moments where cinema has commented upon, documented, and even arguably had a hand in producing social change. The course aims to acquaint students with the film movements, film authors, production conditions, and audience reception practices that have linked film to broader social movements. It will also teach students basic and essential terminology and style for writing about film, which is increasingly vital for competent citizenship in our media-driven public sphere. In addition, it will introduce students to basic theoretical concepts fundamental to understanding social conditions and social change including, power, ideology, hegemony, institutions, etc. Given the time constraints, the course focuses on American film, with occasional references to media from other countries and in other formats in order to locate our course material in broader contexts.

  Offered Session 6A – Online Synchronous
  Monday/Wednesday 7:00 p.m.-8:50 p.m.PDT

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 122J - Disney Feature: Then and Now – 5 units

  Study and analysis of Disney's animated features. Evaluation of why Disney's animated features have dominated until recently and ramifications of this dominance on animation and society.

  Offered Session C (6 weeks) – Online Synchronous
  Monday/Wednesday 7:00 p.m.-9:20 p.m.PDT

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 122M - Film and Television Directing - 4 units

  Counts toward film minor

  In this class we are going to explore the art and craft of directing. When we think of directors, we tend to imagine them on set deciding where the camera will go and guiding the actors, but a director’s creative work begins during the script phase and continues through final post-production. For those of you interested in making films, most of what is covered will be of practical use to you.

  Offered Session A (6 weeks) - Online Asynchronous
  Session C (6 weeks) - Online Asynchronous

  Filmmaker Rory Kelly is an assistant professor in the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media.

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 183B – Producing II: Entertainment Economics – 4 units

  Critical understanding of strategies and operating principles that drive flow of revenue in entertainment industry. Exploration of theoretical frameworks and development of critical perspective, while studying industrial processes through which movie and television properties are financed and exploited throughout all revenue streams.

  Offered Session B3 (3 weeks) – 7/11-7/29 – Online Synchronous
  Tuesday/Wednesday 7:00 p.m.-9:50 p.m. PDT

  Hans-Martin Liebing is an award-winning independent film and television producer, screenwriter and director. He has worked on projects in the U.S., Europe, Asia and New Zealand, and is the co-founder of the South East European Film Festival's Film Frontiers Initiative, an international Film and TV incubator.

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 183C. Producing III: Marketing, Distribution, and Exhibition – 4 units

  Marketing and distribution of feature films across multiple exhibition platforms and subsequent reception and consumption by audiences. Focus on engagement between distributor, exhibitor, and audience and analysis of various conceptual frameworks and industrial strategies within which these relationships are conceived and operate.

  Offered Session C – Online Synchronous
  Monday/Wednesday 3:00 p.m.-6:20 p.m. PDT

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 187B. Domestic and Global Entertainment Industry Careers and Strategies – 4 units

  Lecture, three hours. Exploration of select film and television career paths and strategies in U.S. and major international markets. Introduction to typical and atypical career paths and strategies of producers, screenwriters, directors, and creative executives in U.S. and abroad. Students take part in moderated discussions with domestic and international industry professionals and read both academic literature and trade publications addressing current state of domestic and global media industries. Through readings and discussions, students gain understanding of rapidly changing global entertainment landscape, and current and future employment trends and project development strategies.

  Offered Session XC – Online Synchronous
  Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday 7:00 p.m.-9:20 p.m.PDT

  Schedule of Classes

• FTV 194. Internship Seminars: Film, Television, and Digital Media – 2 units

  General introduction to contemporary film and television industries and discussion and engagement with and expansion on internship experiences. Common business practices and expansion of critical understanding of industry at large.

  Offered Session C – Online Synchronous
  Monday 7:00 p.m.-9:20 p.m. PDT

  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 10 - Introduction to Theater - 5 units
  Required for Theater minor
  UCLA General Education Credit

  Explores the principles and major components of live theatrical performance,including the collaborative dynamics between director, playwright, actor, and audience. The course covers major theatrical works from around the globe, exploring how theater is informed by and reflects its cultural and historical contexts.

  Offered Session A (6 weeks) – Online Asynchronous
  Session C (6 weeks) — Online Asynchronous

  Dr. David Gorshein holds a Ph.D. from UCLA TFT and has designed many courses for theater majors and non-majors.

  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 102B - KPOP: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Globalizing Asian Media
  

  This course is a critical survey of global media industry and performance culture which emerged in the late 20th century and continues to thrive today. By positing K-pop as a central case study, the course examines a broad swath of media industries globally, from the emergence of internet to the rise of AI, from the decline of physical album sales to the dominance of streaming culture, while simultaneously considering race, gender, and sexuality dynamics as a way to gauge the impacts of globalization. Although the term "K-pop" might at first suggest that this course primarily concerns Korean and the broader Asian media networks, what students will learn is a broader global media industry network that straddle various performance genres.

  Professor Suk-Young Kim's research interests cover a wide range of academic disciplines, such as East Asian Performance and Visual Culture, Gender and Nationalism, Korean Cultural Studies, Russian Literature and Slavic Folklore. She is the author of K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance (Stanford University Press, 2018). This project traces the rapid rise of Korean popular music (K-pop) in relation to the equally meteoric rise of digital consumerism — a phenomenon mostly championed by the widespread development of high-speed Internet and the distribution of mobile gadgets — and situates their tenacious partnership in the historical context of Korea from the early 1990s to the present day.

  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 106 - History of American Theater and Drama – 5 units
  UCLA General Education Credit
  Counts toward Theater minor
  
  

  This GE course is an artist-centered look at the history of American drama and theater through the lens of formal innovation in the 20th and 21st centuries. The main objective of this offering of Theater 106 is to re-think the history of American theater, which often excludes many voices from the American experience. The syllabus is arranged to look at both the centers and margins of American theater, and how national traumas are defined through theatrical works.

  Offered Session A (6 Week) - Online Asynchronous

  Professor Sylvan Oswald is a writer and artist working at the intersection of theater and live art. His language-driven plays, texts, publications and videos unravel narrative forms to explore how we construct our identities. Oswald is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Drama and Performance Art.

  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 107 – Drama of Diversity – 5 units
  UCLA General Education Credit
  Counts toward Theater minor
  Satisfies diversity requirement for College of Letters and Science and School of Music
  

  From Beyonce’s Lemonade to suffragette theater, drag queens to Hamilton, in this class we will survey a wide variety of 20th and 21st century theater movements and performances—interrogating the ways in which minoritarian theatermakers have used the stage to inspire their communities, create great art, communicate, agitate for political change and more. The dramas of diversity don’t occur only on the stage—some of them surround even the meaning of the word, how people use it in universities, and its status as an American value—the Drama of Diversity will balance a consideration of what diversity means and how it works today with introductions to many of the most exciting theater movements of the last hundred years.

  Offered Session C (6 Week) - Online Asynchronous

  Professor Michelle Liu Carriger specializes in the historiography of theater, performance and everyday life. This course also features guest lectures from a wealth of expert theater practitioners and scholars. More information on the guests can be found on the syllabus.

  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 110 - History of American Musical Theater – 5 units
  Counts toward Theater minor
  

  This course surveys the history of the American musical, by examining its early roots in various performance forms, tracing its remarkable evolution throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. By contextualizing the history of the Broadway musical in terms of its global reach today, the course offers a fresh take on pivotal shifts in the American theater. The class content includes original, archival materials and also features a diverse array of perspectives on musical theater studies. The course is designed with special emphasis on Broadway’s artistic and social impacts, aiming to introduce students to specific musicals and also to encourage critical engagement with the dynamic issues that are staged in and by musical theater.

  Offered Session A (6 Week) - Online Asynchronous

  Dr. David Gorshein holds a Ph.D. from UCLA TFT, and has designed many courses for theater majors and non-majors.

  Schedule of Classes