Television Commons^™

Style Talk: A Collection Of Interviews On Personal Style, Lauren Dulay

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My concept for this creative Capstone project is to see how much of a correlation there is between culture and fashion. I wanted to speak to people from a variety of backgrounds to see how much a person’s family and culture impacts the way one regards fashion and affects the way one dresses. In order to have a diverse set of interviews, I chose to interview three American female students and three non-American female students who attend Syracuse University.

In the past, I have noticed that many style shows focus on the current trends and do profiles on celebrities and …

Living In Spring, Danielle Peck

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Music is universally recognized as a tool for transcending the natural and cultural boundaries that separate one individual from the next. Living in Spring, a short film built upon Beethoven’s Sonata No.5 in F Major, Op. 24, 1^st Movement (informally referred to as the “Spring” Sonata), introduces this idea as a violin teacher’s advice to his student: “Each of us, we are only inside ourselves, you can only move your own fingers… music is different,” Sasha explains. Eve, the violinist, faces a challenge for her final performance—one that cannot be found in the practice room, no matter how …

Ctrl + Z, Andrew Golibersuch

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In Ctrl + Z, Amanda rides the train to work and tells her new employee the story of a particularly bizarre and life changing day from her early career. While working on her laptop at her favorite coffee shop, she discovers that her computer’s undo function, control + z, affects real life. At first she can’t believe what is happening, so she begins experimenting. Eventually she decides to use the power to her personal advantage, specifically to try to get a guy’s attention. Unfortunately she inadvertently causes some severe problems and is forced to choose between what she wants and …

Dengue Fever: Infectious Hope, Collin Shea

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract Not Included

Producing Sa Today, Lara Rolo

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

After analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of last year’s production of SA Today, I developed a new structure for the show and its purpose. SA Today is a show produced by CitrusTV for the Syracuse University Student Association, (SA). It serves as a broadcast outlet for SA to better inform and maintain contact with Syracuse University and SUNY E.S.F. students. The show’s purpose has grown under my care. With changes in design, structure, writing style and content value, my team and I have been able to create a new product produced by CitrusTV to better serve our campus viewership. The …

"Chance" Screenplay, Simone Laroche

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My Capstone Thesis is a creative screenplay pursuing the complexities of predestination and our innate obsession to control fate. I became intrigued with the idea that our decisions or actions dictate outcomes we may have had the ability to prevent or perpetuate. I recently found it difficult to accept my misfortunes for ineptitude or lack of preparation. Instead I called it “fate” or “destiny” that circumstances were not meant to work in my favor. In hindsight I realized I had allowed my passivity to compensate for my lack of commitment and courage to take risks. Granted, I do believe regardless …

Float Your Boat, Jamian Shapiro

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

For the past year, I have served as the Executive Producer for the sketch comedy television show Float Your Boat. Syracuse University students produce this show through the student run television station, Citrus TV. The show is a single camera show shot entirely out of studio and on location. Each episode is composed of several sketches that can range from thirty seconds to five minutes. Each individual sketch is also posted online through a variety of websites visited by college students. Additionally, the complete episode is posted online and screened at the end of each semester. The screening is …

Homecoming, Sandra Appiah

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The media is a business, but unfortunately has the greatest impact on society. Today, most people get their information from the Media and tend to believe everything it presents without much of a critical analysis or reflection. Africa is a continent filled with many natural resources, a unique culture, a rich history, and more. However when one turns on the Television in the western society, all that is presented is the negative side of Africa. We see the starvation and aids epidemic, we see the tribal wars, corruption, and more. There is always the presentation of the need for charity …

Red Rock: An Original Dramatic Tv Series, Jared Shalek

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The concept of my Capstone Project is a screenplay for an original, dramatic television series. The idea was conceived during the summer going into my senior year, as I examined the script I had just written for TRF 400: Dramatic Writing for Television, a class I took in spring 2009 with Tom Seeley. I had labored over the script for the second half of that semester, and Professor Seeley really liked the idea from the start, but ultimately I did not fare as well I wanted to in terms of the final grade. Thus, I decided that I would redraft …

Amanda Green, Alex Piliouras

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I have submitted for my Capstone Project three interactive scripts for the series Amanda Green. The series features a fourteen-year-old girl, Amanda Green, who solves mysteries with her friend Jerome relating to school and social life. In the pilot episode, submitted here, Amanda hopes to ask the school heartthrob to the dance, but is robbed of the opportunity when the principal announces that the dance is canceled due to an act of vandalism. After her grandmother regales her with an inspirational story, Amanda decides to head an investigation of the crime scene in the hopes of solving the mystery …

Still Water, Louis Foglia

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Still Water is full-length feature screenplay with the driving premise that vengeance creates suffering. While the script might be characterized as a procedural in that relies heavily on the plot to create suspense and to sustain a dramatic momentum that keeps the audience engaged, I was also interested in adding a layer of provocative depth to the story. Consequently, Still Water explores the themes of guilt, redemption, vengeance, corruption, and Italian-American identity.

Still Water is the story of the Sippilini family. During his campaign for Manhattan District Attorney, the family’s patriarch, Richard, gets involved in a corruption scandal that ultimately …

Beneath The Waves, Allison Nast

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Beneath the Waves is an original, feature-length screenplay. It is a fairy tale set in Ireland, where a woman dives to the bottom of the ocean to reclaim her husband, who had been taken by mermaids. She succeeds in rescuing her husband, and in doing so discovers that mermaids are not the beautiful women of legend, but rather man-eating deep-sea creatures. I wrote the short story Brigid and the Mermaids in my junior year in order to get the basic storyline down in an understandable form. In writing the screenplay I used the free screenwriting program Celtx, which formats easily …

Film Score, Jeff Peters

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My capstone project involves creating an original musical score to an independent film. As the music is so invested in the narrative of the film, all work leading up to the actual composition of the music was on the history of film scoring and possible technical and creative methods, learned in classes on the subject. This knowledge and hands-on practice provided me with some limited experience, but this film was the first practical application of my composing skills.

My extensive background in music allowed me to perform all of the parts heard in the score. It was my job to …

The Lovely Invader: A Documentary On Lonicera Research, Danielle S. Houghton

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

For over a year a half, I followed Steve Maheux, a Biology major, throughout his journey to conduct a research study on honeysuckle, an invasive plant. He posed a question regarding the possibility of predicting the occurrence of an invasive plant based on certain environmental factors: soil depth, soil pH, neighboring plants and other aspects that would make up an ideal environment for this menacing plant. The focus of my documentary was to show what true research looks like in all of its tedious glory. Research isn’t fancy. It often doesn’t make for “sexy film,” but it is vital for …

Pickle Jarred, Robert Hetzron

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The concept behind my capstone project was to creative a narrative in which a seemingly apathetic, appropriately disgruntled, teenager is propelled to social activity which will not only benefit himself personally, but his overall community. In order to do so, I set to develop a short-story narrative, entitled “The Pickle Jar,” and then adapt it into a screenplay.

In writing the short story, I set to narrate the drama and provide insight into Neil’s psyche through first-person dialogue. Neil would narrate the drama while allowing the reader to hear his inner-thoughts and opinions throughout the process. The plot would follow …

A Qualitative Assessment Of College-Students’ Functional Health Literacy: A Case-Study At Syracuse University, Thomas D. Wichman

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This case study of Syracuse University’s health promotion and student health behavior provides data that may be employed to understand and influence future, functional health literacy. Key components of functional health literacy—self efficacy, independence, institutional services, social influences, gender, etc.—rise to the surface, and are the focus of this analysis. This study was approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board for the Fall 2008 term, and received funding through the Crown Wise Scholarship. The research subjects include a convenience sample of 26 full-time, college seniors. The subjects were divided into four focus groups to provide qualitative data on 21 topics …

Sons Of Liberty, Scott Fluhler

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract not Included

How A Work Changes In Response To The Work Itself: Researching Civil War Photography, A Case Study, Rose Margolis

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This piece combines my two passions of history and television/film. I have been able to combine these two passions by doing two years of research on Civil War photography and sketch artists.

My original intention was to create a documentary about this topic, but due to unanswered questions about copyright I quickly abandoned this idea. I then moved onto writing a screenplay after slightly narrowing my topic to focus on three photographers: Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy H. O’Sullivan. My intent was to focus on how they made the photographs, their relationship to each other, and why Gardner and …

Archbold Stadium The Story Of ‘78, Gordon Christopher Brookes

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Archbold Stadium, The Story of ’78, was inspired by an exhibit at the Syracuse University Admissions Office. The exhibit was a number of old postcards, and one of these was of Archbold Stadium. The stadium was home to Syracuse football from 1907 to 1978, and was home to such greats as Ernie Davis, Jim Brown, Floyd Little, and many others. The 1959 team that played there won Syracuse’s only national football championship, and was home to its only Heisman winner. When it was built in 1907 by John D. Archbold, it was the largest concrete stadium in the world, costing …

Immortal, Eddie Beeby

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract not Inlcuded

A Director's Guide To The Galaxy: Navigating The Drama Of A Performance Organization, Shaina Rosenthal

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract Not Included

200 Days Of Innocence: An Original, Feature-Length Screenplay, Sarah Rois

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract not Included

Motherhood And The Political Project Of Queer Indian Cinema, Bryce J. Renninger

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Motherhood & the Political Project of Queer Indian Cinema is a thesis that works to understand the variety of ways the films of queer Indian cinema use the figure of the mother. The Indian mother has a long history at the fore of the Indian imagination. Popular narratives and public culture within India have a history of focusing on the mother as a key site of Indian tradition. Narratives and cultures of all religious traditions in India have consistently focused on the mother as a central character and agent of change. Queer Indian cinema, of the diaspora and made from …

Leaving Neverland, Jonathan Krieger

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Leaving Neverland is an adaptation of Peter Pan meant to take the classic story in an entirely new direction. The story is set in modern day and takes place ten years after the end of the original Peter Pan. Wendy is twenty years old and, when she returns to Neverland, Peter falls in love with her. He gives up his immortality for a chance at a love.

The story deals with the ensuing relational change between Peter and Wendy, between Peter and the Lost Boys, between Peter and Hook, and even between Peter and the Neverland universe.

As Peter grows …

Saving Face Racial Socialization And Its Effect On Cross Socioeconomic African American Interactions, Tiffany Nicholson

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract not Included

A Real World Love Story, Erik Jeffrey

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract not Included

Tears Of A Clown, Adam Knobler

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

For my honors thesis project, I chose to write a screenplay entitled, “Tears of a Clown”. This story, which is roughly based on my life, is about two clowns who wind up falling in love and working together in the circus. This story loosely shadows my life in the sense that I myself wanted to pursue a career in standup comedy rather than clowning. The main difference between my life and the life of the main character was that despite the fact that I did not fail at being a standup comedian, I chose to pursue an alternative route of …

The Heart Is A Muscle, Emily Kowalczyk

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The Heart is a Muscle is a video shot with a Sony HVR-Z1U and manipulated to create a visual hybrid between an old Super 8mm home movie and the crisp HD picture of the newest technology. I achieved most of this manipulation by layering filters and de-interlacing the video to slightly blur the image and make it appear softer.

Conceptually, the video centers around the idea that a muscle must break down/apart before it can get stronger and grow. It then takes this fact and applies it to the heart (which is also a type of muscle), and explores the …

Doozy Productions, Andrew Steier

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Doozy Productions is a project in producing songs performed and recorded in Sound Studio 3 at the S.I.NewhouseSchoolof Public Communications. The recordings range from a variety of musical genres, including rock, soul, and jazz. The purpose of the project was to produce the highest-quality music by using professional recording and mixing tools. Preparations for production included research on how sound functions and projects in an electronic medium, as well as listening to professional recordings across all genres. All music was recorded, mixed, and produced by Andrew Steier.*

* “Electric Waltz” was produced by Emily Osgood and Andrew Steier.

The [Radio] Play’S The Thing Direction And Production Of The Shakespearean Baseball Game: A Comedy Of Errors, Hits And Runs, Michael K. Girts

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Directing and producing The Shakespearean Baseball Game was a perfect capstone project for mySyracuseUniversity career. I have the proud distinction of being the only student at SU to graduate with both a B.S. in Television/Radio/Film and a B.F.A. in Acting. My goal was to invest my time and energy into a thesis that would utilize my expertise in both areas. Directing and producing this drama has been just that project.

I’ve learned about drama as a visual and audial medium. In radio drama, however, the director must paint the picture – must tell a story – with sound alone. My …