Summer 2021 Courses

Session A: June 21 – July 30
Session C: August 2 – September 10

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.

All course are fully 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. See the course websites and syllabi for details

• Film TV 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.

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

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  Schedule of Classes

• Film TV 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.
  
  Course Website: Session A

  Schedule of Classes: Film TV 33

  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.

• Film TV 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.

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

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  Schedule of Classes

• Film TV 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.

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

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  Schedule of Classes

• Film TV 146 - Art and Practice of Motion Picture Producing: So You Want to Make a Movie? - 4 units

  Counts toward film minor

  An overview of the development, production, and distribution of feature films for the worldwide theatrical market. Topics include identifying material, attaching elements and understanding the basics of financing for both studio and independent feature films.

  Professor Barbara Boyle is Associate Dean, Entrepreneurship and Special Initiatives, and Distinguished Professor at UCLA TFT. Her company, Sovereign Pictures, has financed and distributed 25 films internationally, including My Left Foot and Phenomenon.

  Course Website: Session A
  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.

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

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  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.

  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.

  Course Website: Session A
  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.

  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.

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  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.

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

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 120A - Acting and Performance in Film I - 5 units
  Counts toward Theater minor
  
  An exploration of screen performance from an artistic, historical and cultural perspective. Examines the Stanislavski Method and other techniques advanced by famed acting teachers such as Uta Hagen, Stanford Meisner and Stella Adler. Theater 120A, 120B and 120C explore different elements of screen performance and can be taken in any order.

  Professor Joe Olivieri is the Head of Acting in the Department of Theater.

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  Schedule of Classes

• Theater 120B - Acting and Performance in Film II - 5 units
  Counts toward Theater minor

  Examines challenges confronted by actors in 10 film genres from the 1930s to the present. Streaming lectures and film clips illustrate skills required of performers in epic films, science fiction, musicals, comedies, action/adventure, Westerns, crime and gangster films, horror and suspense, war and anti-war films and dramas. Theater 120A, 120B and 120C explore different elements of screen performance and can be taken in any order.

  Professor Joe Olivieri is the Head of Acting in the Department of Theater.

  Course Website: Session A / Session C
  Schedule of Classes