Communication Arts - Community Education - Meadows School of the Arts

Communication Arts: Courses in this area include computer courses pertaining to both operating systems and software programs. We also offer concurrent enrollment in Meadows Cinema-Television courses in production and film studies.

Early Enrollment Discount

Register seven or more days in advance and receive an early registration discount, available on designated courses listed beside the regular course fee in brackets ( ). Discount does not apply to “Concurrent Enrollment” classes.

Arts Administration

Law and The Arts* AR301SP08 Susan Bruning, Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, Anthropology Department, SMU; J.D., Dedman School of Law, SMU; Adjunct Lecturer in Law, Dedman School of Law, SMU This course will examine laws and legal implications relating to (i) the activities of visual and performing arts organizations, (ii) the creation, acquisition, use, transfer, and disposition of works of visual and performing arts and related intellectual properties, (iii) the interests, obligations, and relationships of creators, users, and consumers of the arts, and (iv) broader domestic and international issues impacting the art world. Instructor approval required to enroll in class. Concurrent enrollment in ARAD 6321. Limit 2.
T (1/15-4/30), 11:00am-1:50pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $650

Computer

Computer Basics: Macintosh OS MC112SP08 James Jaeger, Instructional Technology Specialist, SMU This course will serve as a prerequisite for all Community Education Macintosh computer courses. Students explore primary Macintosh operations and applications. Emphasis is placed on students developing the ability to operate Macintosh hardware, operating systems and applications in the professional world. Topics include nature and use of hardware, disk and file manipulation, and software applications. Text required. Limit 15.
4R (2/7-28/08), 6:30-8:30pm, Age 16-Adult
Cost: $146

InDesign I MC153SP08 Ric Martin, B.A. Advertising (Creative Track), Temerlin Advertising Institute, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Prerequisite: Computer Basics or student must be able to save/open a file and have a working knowledge of Windows or MacOS. Adobe’s InDesign is the industry standard for page layout design. Create realistic page layouts using text and picture boxes; make and use master pages for multiple page documents; enter and import text; select and apply the font, style, size, leading, kerning, tracking and color; link text boxes; format text with indents, tabs, drop caps and paragraph spacing; import pictures. Learn to size and proportion both line and continuous tone art. Text required. Limit 15.
4R (3/20-4/10), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146

InDesign II MC253SP08 Ric Martin, B.A. Advertising (Creative Track), Temerlin Advertising Institute, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Prerequisite: InDesign I. Continue learning program basics by working with paragraph and character style sheet, proper tab techniques; importing and editing text; creating and modifying master pages for use with multiple page documents; threading text to multiple frames and pages; applying text wrap to objects; using the glyph palette for special characters; importing and editing linked graphics; using find and replace; simple vector paths; typing text on a path; design of multi-page documents. Text required. Recommended: 128Mb or larger flash memory drive for saving your work. Limit 15.
4R (4/17-5/8), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146

Macintosh: iLife Series MC312SP08 James Jaeger, Instructional Technology Specialist, SMU Prerequisite: Computer Basics: Macintosh OS or have a working knowledge of MacOS 10. Let your imagination soar! The iLife software applications let you do fun, creative things with your pictures, music and movies in ways that PC users can only dream about. You’ll learn Apple’s award-winning software featuring three of the best-of-breed multimedia applications: iTunes for managing music, iPhoto for digital photography, and iMovie for editing digital video and to integrate them so that they work together seamlessly. Text required. Limit 15.
5R (3/25-4/22), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $163

Photoshop I (Photoshop Basics) MC150SP08 Ric Martin, B.A. Advertising (Creative Track), Temerlin Advertising Institute, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Prerequisites: Computer Basics or student must be able to save/open a file and have working knowledge of MacOS or Windows. Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for photo manipulation and image editing. Whether you are an elementary school teacher, freelance artist, or office manager, this introductory course will show you the basics of photo alteration and image creation with emphasis on tool and palette usage, making and saving selections/masks, digital imaging formats resolution terminology, basic tonal/color adjustments and basic special effects. Text required. Limit 15.
Sec A: 4T (2/5-26), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146
Sec B: 4R (2/7-28), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146

Photoshop II (Photoshop In-Depth) MC250SP08 Ric Martin, B.A. Advertising (Creative Track), Temerlin Advertising Institute, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Prerequisite: Photoshop I. This course introduces advanced tools for manipulating images. Topics include an introduction to filters and full coverage of corrective filters, advanced layer features and blending modes, plus practical experience with color correction, recognizing images and more. Text required: Limit 15.
4T (3/4-4/1, skip 3/11), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146

Photoshop III (Techniques for Photographers) MC350SP08 Ric Martin, B.A. Advertising (Creative Track), Temerlin Advertising Institute, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Prerequisite: Photoshop II orPhotoshop proficiency. This class is designed for the hobbyist or professional photographer looking to expand their knowledge of digital studio techniques. The class deals with how to achieve professional quality images from digital cameras and scanners; teaches advanced techniques for enhancing images in Photoshop. Limit 15
4T (4/8-29), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146

Web Design: Dreamweaver MC145SP08 Scott Jenkins, B.S. Youngstown State University; Professional Web Developer Prerequisites: Have a working knowledge of Windows and Mac OS. The single most powerful tool for creating web pages is Macromedia Dreamweaver. It allows you to create a page visually—like a good graphics programs—but it also allows you to modify clean HTML code. With Dreamweaver you can easily create dynamic animated pages (DHTML) and add complicated functions at the click of a mouse. This class will give you hands-on practice creating a multi-page website with images, links, tables and forms. You will have a basic understanding of Dreamweaver’s capabilities and the underlying HTML it creates. Textbook required. Limit 15.
4W (4/9-30), 6:30-8:30pm, Age: 16-Adult
Cost: $146

Electronic Media and Film

American Television History* CA210SP08 Derek Kompare, Assistant Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Focus on the history of American television with an emphasis on the industrial and socio cultural aspects of the medium’s development. Issues of race, gender, class, genre, sexuality, and national identity will be studied in the context of significant television shows of the past and present. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 2353. Limit 5.
T&R (1/15-4/30), 11:00am-12:20pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Basic Audio Principles* CA209SP08 James Caldwell, Adjunct Lecturer, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Provides a survey of the theory and equipment used in sound recording. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 2307. Limit 5.
R (1/17-4/30), 6:30-9:20pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Basic Screenwriting* CA214SP08 Kelli Herd, Lecturer, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Would you like to know what the basic skills are required in screenwriting? Basic skills for both fiction and nonfiction screenwriting will be addressed. Topics will include research methods, script preparation, differences in script formats, verbal-to-visual style, and the uses of music, effects, pacing, and rhythm. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 2354. Limit 5.
T (1/15-4/30) 6:30-9:20pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $600

Dark City: Film Noir 1940-1960 CA106SP08 Rick Worland, Chair and Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU This course will survey Hollywood’s popular cycle of violent and pessimistic movies produced in the 1940s & 1950s now called “Film Noir”. Although successful with audiences at the time, the movies were often disparaged by contemporary critics as lowbrow commercial filler. Yet the very notion of Film Noir, the term coined retrospectively by postwar French critics, stressed the centrality of the films’ stylistic richness for comprehending their meanings and affects. Their deep black shadows and strange camera angles, complicated narratives, and voice-over narration combine to create a world suffused with danger and doom, and some of the most memorable and influential movies of Hollywood’s “golden age”. February 5—Stranger on the Third Floor (RKO, 1940). Peter Lorre got top billing in this amazing RKO programmer, even though he was cast because he owed the studio just two day’s work. Sometimes called the “first” film noir, this nightmare tale of a reporter who testifies in a murder trial only to be accused of a similar crime himself, contains all the visual and thematic elements of the form. Latvian-born director Boris Ingster was a friend and one-time colleague of Soviet master Sergei M. Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) and it shows in his command of montage in the extended nightmare sequence. [64 min.] February 12—Murder My Sweet (RKO, 1944). RKO transformed hard-boiled detective writer Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely (1940) into this near-definitive statement of the private eye and his fragile place in the Noir world. Stepping out of his song-and-dance man persona, Dick Powell carries off the role of vulnerable tough guy. From the moment hulking Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) steps into Phillip Marlowe’s darkened office illuminated only by a flashing neon sign, the movie crackles with style. dir. Edward Dymytryk. [95 min.] February 19—Double Indemnity (Paramount, 1944). “I did it for money and for a woman”, says a bleeding Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in the opening scene. “I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman”, he continues, typifying Film Noir’s end-of-his-rope protagonist. A sultry Barbara Stanwyck plays the ruthless femme fatale and Edward G. Robinson shines in a supporting role in director Billy Wilder’s telling of James M. Cain’s novel. [107 min.] February 26—Criss Cross (Universal, 1949). Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo play the typically doomed Noir couple in director Robert Siodmak’s tale of an armored truck heist that goes terribly wrong. Less celebrated that the Lancaster/Siodmak collaboration on The Killers (1946), Criss Cross features more affecting performances, including Dan Duryea as a wry but deadly mobster. Siodmak frames long-gone Los Angeles locations with strange and exciting shot compositions. [88 min.] March 4—Gun Crazy (United Artists, 1949). This low-budget gem by versatile action director Joseph H. Lewis stars John Dall (Hitchcock’s Rope) and Peggy Cummins in one of the surest proofs of Noir’s typical Freudian undercurrents. “It’s something else about guns that gets him, not killing”, Dall’s sister pleads with a Judge, trying to be helpful. The film’s exciting, too, and influenced French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard’s innovative Breathless (1960). [87 min.] March 18—-Kiss Me Deadly (United Artists, 1955) The film’s opening credits move backwards from the top of the screen to the bottom to tell us this is going to be an unusual exercise in style and the film doesn’t disappoint. Ralph Meeker plays Mickey Spillane’s violent and misogynistic detective Mike Hammer trying to solve a murder in truly nightmare landscape. The film revisits the downtown L.A. locations of Criss Cross to create an even darker, more hysterical and paranoid mood, the ultimate Film Noir for many critics and fans. dir. Robert Aldrich [105 min]
6T (2/5-3/18, skip 3/11), 6:30-9:30pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $99

Electronic Media Management* CA312SP08 Joseph Pirro, Adjunct Lecturer, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Explores the relationship between the theory and practice of broadcast and cable management with emphasis on the legal and economic constraints on these media outlets. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 3328. Limit 5.
W (1/16-4/30), 5:30-8:20pm Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Film & Video Aesthetics* CA204SP08 Sean Griffin, Associate Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU What does “Film & Video Aesthetics” mean in the Film/TV industries? Enroll in this class to find out! Visual and audio techniques used in cinema and television to convey meaning and mood will be studied. Careful analysis of selected films, sequences, and TV shows. Screenings for this class will be on Wednesdays 11:00am-12:50pm. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 2301. Limit 5.
M-W-F (1/16-4/30), 11:00-11:50am Age: Adult
Cost: $300

History of Documentary Film/TV* CA319SP08 Rick Worland, Chair and Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU An overview of the development of the documentary mode in cinema and television, offering a survey of the nonfiction film and video provided by newsreels, training films, propaganda movie, wartime documentaries, and “reality” TV. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 3304. Limit 5.
T&R (1/15-4/30), 2:00-3:50pm Age: Adult
Cost: $300

International Film History* CA202SP08 Kevin Heffernan, Associate Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Where and how did it all start? Join us for an overview of the development of the cinema as a technology, as an art form, as an industry, and as a social institution beginning with the origins of the medium and tracing its major movements and configurations up to the present. Screenings for this class will be on Wednesdays 11:00am-12:50pm. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 2351. Limit 5
M&W (1/16-4/30), 9:00-10:50am Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Screen Artists: The Male Image* CA311SP08 Tearlach Hutcheson, Adjunct Lecturer, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU This course examines the questions of authorship pertinent to the cinema by focusing on the works on one or more film artists. The specific directors, producers, screen writers, and other artists treated by the course will vary from term to term. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 3310. Limit 5.
M (1/28-4/30), 6:30-9:20pm Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Survey of Television and Media* CA207SP08 David Sedman, Director of Meadows Engineering & Technology; Associate Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU. Why are certain television programs placed in specific time slots or why do advertisers vie for specific placement schedules? Is there a relationship between media and society? What regulations and legal aspects of the television/media affect the industries? Join this class to answer these questions and many more. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 2320. Limit 5.
M&W (1/16-4/30), 9:30am-10:50am, Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Topics in Cinema: Multi-Platforming* CA401SP08 Derek Kompare, Assistant Professor, Division of Cinema-Television, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU This class will focus on a specific topic pertinent to film or television study. Subjects vary from term to term, and may include the areas of film/TV history, critical theory, the film/TV business, etc. Concurrent enrollment in CTV 5304. Limit 5.
T&R (1/15-4/30), 2:00-3:20pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $300

Writing

Write your Way to Success: How to Position, Pitch or Place an Article or Book Idea MC224SP08 Pamela Stone, Author/Journalist/Lecturer; author of “A Woman’s Guide to Living Alone: 10 Ways to Survive Grief and Be Happy”, Taylor Publishing, 2001. If you’re frustrated trying to sell your writing…or wondering how to reach the media…or searching for an agent…then, this is the class for you. You’ll learn how to “sell on paper,” a must in the writing field. The classes will combine the craft of writing with important selling techniques. You’ll find out how to write query letters, proposals and pitches to agents, publishers, and radio/television media. Plus, each class will introduce creative writing exercises to help you discover your playful and magical side. This workshop will tackle the writer’s challenge of how to position, pitch and place your article or book idea. Limit 15.
4W (2/6-27), 7:00-9:00pm, Age: Adult
Cost: $176