Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Developing The Screenwriter’S Notebook And Its Implementation Of The Adapted Comic Book Origin Story Of Solstice, Mohansingh Udhwani Jr.

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This thesis features three documents: The Screenwriter's Notebook Template, The Screenwriter's Notebook: Solstice, and a reflection paper. The Screenwriter's Notebook Template is a planning and pitch tool designed to help screenwriters tell better stories, faster. The template is designed so the user may start with one word (the thematic subject) and flush out their story through a series of guided diagrams inspired by the works of Robert McKee, Dara Marks, and John Vorhaus. The end result is the user developing a detailed scenic model outlining what is happening in each scene in conjunction with Marks' Transformational Arc, to use as …

All Good, Father, Chieh-Chun Lee

Theses and Dissertations

All Good, Father is a 50-minute documentary film about how my love-bound, intimate relationship with my father is entangled with his social values surrounding my sexual identity and his expectations for me in his old age.

The Life Of Dan, Jeremy S. Levine

Theses and Dissertations

The Life of Dan is a hybrid film about the complications of brotherly love and working through the horrors of the past. The film explores past traumas between brothers Dan and Jeremy through their shared love of horror films. As they work through unsettled moments from their childhoods, building towards Dan’s temporary hospitalization, the documentary transforms into a horror film about mental illness and traumatic memory.

Dear Elsa: 10 Letters + 10 Experiments, Amanda Madden

Theses and Dissertations

Dear Elsa: 10 Letters + 10 Experiments is a short form personal experimental documentary in which filmmaker Amanda Madden attempts to embody and communicate with the ghost of the radical poet, model, performance artist, sculptor, and time traveler, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927) about living and creating as a womxn artist.

Trauma, Violence, And Deathly Consequences: Female Justice In Contemporary Literature And Television Adaptations, Allie Owens

English MA Theses

Over the past decade, a familiar villainous character has begun to arise in television adaptation: the mentally-fractured heroine who turns to villainy: women who have been attacked, raped, or lost loved ones to villains. These attacks and losses trigger murderous rampages and other violence that often leads to their descent into villainy. Netflix’s Jessica Jones, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones, feature heroines that turn to violence to get revenge. However, the violent heroines in these texts and television adaptations do not just become villains; some …

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Green Book (2018) And Blackkklansman (2018): An Analysis Of White And Black Perspectives In Contemporary Films Using Critical Race Theory, Kelsie E. Posey

Honors College Theses

This research analyzes two films, Green Book (2018) and BlacKKKlansman (2018), to uncover the connections between diverse racial representation off-screen, and the presentation of non-white perspectives on-screen. This study uses CRT to frame the effects of diverse source materials and production teams on the films' narratives.

Through The Lens Of Koreans: The Influence Of Media On Perceptions Of Feminism, Neha Cariappa

Master's Projects and Capstones

Regardless of country and culture, the media has the power to influence the opinions and perceptions of its viewers. This project evaluates specific Korean movies—and the reactions of South Koreans to gender representations in films that are considered “feminist”—along with the variety show genre, which also tends to reinforce gender stereotypes and imbalances. With these media representations as a framework, this research explores the impact of the internet in forwarding feminist views along with unearthing the reactions of Koreans. Given the anonymity of the internet and social media, these platforms allow for honest expression and counterpoints to sexist views and …

An Art-Based Exploration Of Interdisciplinary Reactivity Toward Problematic Clients, Devon Govoni

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This art-based dissertation explored professionals' reactivity toward problematic-client interactions across the art therapy, expressive arts therapy, hairstyling, and tattooing disciplines. The concept was explored with a participant from each discipline in a four-phase sculpting process and through semi-structured interviews, response sculptures, and video footage and aggregates. Research questions examined (1) what happens to the participants' professional understanding of problematic clients and (2) self-understanding through engaging in a sculpting process focused on problematic clients, (3) similarities in participants' experiences across disciplines, and (4) what happens when the researcher creates and presents response art to the research participants. The two main outcomes …

Little Magazines, Postwar Internationalism, And The Construction Of World Cinema, Louise Kane

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This essay explores how two interwar film magazines, Close Up (1927-33) and Experimental Cinema (1930-4), pioneered early forms of world cinema as part of wider postwar attempts to forge transnationalism, improved international relations, and humanistic dialogue among people and nations. I argue that both magazines presented the cinema as a form of global community through their establishment of film societies and clubs, inclusive contributor policies, turn toward Russian cinema, and staunch rejection of Hollywood cinema’s commercialism. These strategies enabled the construction of a shared, albeit idealistic, vision of world cinema centered on comparative approaches, anti-imperialism, and the preservation and documentation …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

The Theory Of Dispositions In Filmmaking And Leadership, Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Inclusive media arts education should be accessible for all young people so that they can be successful citizens of this media-rich, media-saturated world. Issues surrounding access and exclusion are complex. What barriers contribute to exclusion within media arts education programs? The purpose of this study is to determine how best to create more inclusion in media arts education through leadership practices. More specifically, how do we become more inclusive in filmmaking practice, and what is the role of leadership in that endeavor? This study strives to determine how leadership best serves a highly successful inclusive media arts organization, and to …

“The Depth Within:” Black Women, Creative Media & The Aesthetics Of Interiority, Taylor Smith

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

In recent decades, Black women have taken more agency in the creation, transmission, and circulation of their creative works in the areas of literature, television, and digital media. This raises the question of what is it about Black women’s’ lives, in particular, that makes issues of representation, public depiction, and concealment so important? My research aims to explore this question by examining the means in which Black women conceptualize and contextualize themselves intimately and socially in those creative realms. I will accomplish this through the usage of scholar Elizabeth Alexander’s concept of the Black interior, which she defines as the …

The Invisible Professional: Visual Culture Of Successful Black Women, Sophonie Gaspard

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Black women in the United States have been arguably the most underrepresented, stereotyped, and hypersexualized groups in society; their contributions in the workplace often reduced in significance. Similarly, the perceived values of the white majority have historically dictated the images of minorities in the media. In their research on visual culture, Keifer-Boyd, Amburgy & Knight (2007) suggest that those with social, political, and economic power define how groups without power are represented and stereotyped, illuminating the privileges of having visible positive portrayals. As contemporary American society shifts towards greater inclusion and participation from black women, the media is encouraged to …

Another Likable Serial Killer: Fans' Representation Of "You"'S Joe Goldberg Through Memes, Carlisle Lynch

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

America is no stranger to likable serial killers in the media and Netflix's "You" with its protagonist Joe Goldberg is an example of this trope. Fans are taking to Twitter and TikTok to share their opinions about their new favorite serial killer, and the opinions are similar. The purpose of this research is to discover what the limited ideas on Twitter and TikTok reveal about how fans view Joe. Scholarly research shows that social media platforms have shifted fans from observers to participants, with the ability to create and share their own content across the Internet. The snowball effect that …

Happily Ever After? How Disney Princesses Represent Gender Role Stereotypes In Animated And Live Action Films, Kaitlyn M. Brown

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

The Disney princess is one of the most important female characters many children and adults look up to, but what they don't see are the underlying messages about gender roles the films portray. Many scholars have touched upon the issue of diversity in the Disney Princess franchise, but few have ventured into studying gender role messages that are portrayed in films. This paper studied six films and recorded instances and representation of different aspects of gender role. The examples were separated into five different categories for both the animated and live action princesses. Each princess that was studied showed different …

Her Voice On Air: How Irish Radio Made Strides For Women's Rights, Emilie R. Hines

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Radio is the voice of the people; this is no less true in Ireland, a nation that prefers talk radio and phone-ins. These formats were popular from 1970-2000, formative years for the feminist movement. Scholarship suggests a correlation between radio and women’s issues in Ireland but does not answer what elements create this. Here, I analyze 10 archival radio clips from Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, RTÉ, looking at how women’s issues are framed. After analyzing these clips, I found that Irish identity embedded in the shows allows for the discussion of controversial ideas. Radio promotes an inclusive environment, by …

"Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken": Ontological Insecurity In "Game Of Thrones" And Other Fantastic Transmedial Storyworlds, Nicole I. Chavannes

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Both rhetoric and composition and transmedia studies contain ongoing examinations of the complexity of author-audience relationships. This thesis utilizes the transmedial concept of ontological security in post-object fandom to examine the various ways "authors" of popular storyworlds and franchises affect narrative stability, and by extension fan and fandom stability, in an increasingly circulated and commercially-driven media landscape. To better understand disruptions in viewers' ontological security, I use HBO's Game of Thrones as a case study, examining the varied ways in which audiences respond to transmediated science fiction and fantasy storyworlds, and the ways in which authors attempt to anticipate or …

Super Heroes V Scorsese: A Marxist Reading Of Alienation And The Political Unconscious In Blockbuster Superhero Film, David Eltz

Kutztown University Masters Theses

As superhero blockbusters continue to dominate the theatrical landscape, critical detractors of the genre have grown in number and authority. The most influential among them, Martin Scorsese, has been quoted as referring to Marvel films as “theme parks” rather than “cinema” (his own term for auteur film). Despite this, these films often possess considerably challenging views in regards to social justice, and continue to interface with the pervading theme of alienation in increasingly abstract and progressive ways.

This thesis considers four films (1978’s Superman, 2000’s X-Men, 2013’s Captain America: Winter Soldier, and 2018’s Black Panther) from a Marxist perspective, viewing …

You Were There : An Exploration And Analysis Of The Filmmaking Process, Regan Emfinger

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the process of writing, shooting, and editing my short film You Were There. My process involved scriptwriting with several revisions, shooting with a cast and crew, and editing the raw footage. This paper will not only serve as a timeline leading up to the final product of the film but also will explain the function of each artistic choice. This paper will also outline the biggest lessons I learned about fictional narratives, and discuss the successes and failures of the film as a whole. I also plan on discussing how those lessons will further my academic and …