FILM TV M50
Introduction to Visual Culture
Description: (Same as English M50.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour; laboratory, two hours. Enforced requisite: satisfaction of Entry-Level Writing requirement. Study of how visual media, including advertising, still and moving images, and narrative films, influence contemporary aesthetics, politics, and knowledge. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Overall: Professor Hornby, while very funny and sweet, is excellent at putting me to sleep. I had so much trouble staying awake during the first few lectures because they were so boring. The class borders on philosophy and the readings were hard and SO SO SO boring. I wouldn't say it's the easiest GE, but it will get the job done if you really have nothing else to take. Class Material: The class is kind of misleading. I thought it would be a really cool film class, but each week is broken down into a different category (color, white, black, blindness, etc.) The topics vaguely touched on film and were more about abstract concepts that came off as pretentious and silly to me. If you're really artsy and enjoy philosophical readings, you'll like the material but personally, it wasn't what I expected. Lectures: She doesn't use slides and when she does they are just pictures so they aren't helpful at all. She talks for the whole time and often doesn't really have a great structure or main idea to her lectures. I just wrote down what I thought was important but it was hard since she just rambles. I would recommend going to the lectures because without going, I would not know wtf is going on in the readings. Homework: The homework was all reading and even though they are extremely boring, I would read them or at least skim. If you skim, definitely go to lecture so you know the main ideas. Personally, I found most of the readings very pretentious and hard to understand, but reading them was VERY helpful for the midterm, final, and papers. Tests/Quizzes: There were no tests or quizzes, only three papers. The papers are sort of hard to write because the prompts are really vague and open. However, I found it best to just use the ideas she gives in lecture and then go to your TA. I would go to my TA's office hours every time there was a paper and she was really helpful in telling me if I was on the right track/what to fix. Midterm/Final: The midterm was 7 questions and you choose 5 to answer in one paragraph. They were pretty specific, so you do need to have read the readings to know how to answer them. IDK if she does this every year, but for us she dropped the question that we got the lowest score on so it was kind of a grade booster/curve. The final was a bit harder. She gives us 5 images from movies we watched and we have to describe what is happening, the movie it is from, the director, and we had to use readings to supplement our answers. The scenes she used were all scenes that she focused on during lecture so it wasn't too bad. Then, we had to choose 2 essay questions to write, 4-6 paragraphs each. TA: I had Brenda as my TA and besides her office hours, discussion was not very helpful. It was very student oriented, meaning we would just kind of talk among ourselves. This isn't helpful because in the papers and on the midterm/final, you just have to talk about the ideas Professor Hornby gives, not really your own. But Brenda is really nice and going to her office hours saved me for the papers.
Fall 2019 - Overall: Professor Hornby, while very funny and sweet, is excellent at putting me to sleep. I had so much trouble staying awake during the first few lectures because they were so boring. The class borders on philosophy and the readings were hard and SO SO SO boring. I wouldn't say it's the easiest GE, but it will get the job done if you really have nothing else to take. Class Material: The class is kind of misleading. I thought it would be a really cool film class, but each week is broken down into a different category (color, white, black, blindness, etc.) The topics vaguely touched on film and were more about abstract concepts that came off as pretentious and silly to me. If you're really artsy and enjoy philosophical readings, you'll like the material but personally, it wasn't what I expected. Lectures: She doesn't use slides and when she does they are just pictures so they aren't helpful at all. She talks for the whole time and often doesn't really have a great structure or main idea to her lectures. I just wrote down what I thought was important but it was hard since she just rambles. I would recommend going to the lectures because without going, I would not know wtf is going on in the readings. Homework: The homework was all reading and even though they are extremely boring, I would read them or at least skim. If you skim, definitely go to lecture so you know the main ideas. Personally, I found most of the readings very pretentious and hard to understand, but reading them was VERY helpful for the midterm, final, and papers. Tests/Quizzes: There were no tests or quizzes, only three papers. The papers are sort of hard to write because the prompts are really vague and open. However, I found it best to just use the ideas she gives in lecture and then go to your TA. I would go to my TA's office hours every time there was a paper and she was really helpful in telling me if I was on the right track/what to fix. Midterm/Final: The midterm was 7 questions and you choose 5 to answer in one paragraph. They were pretty specific, so you do need to have read the readings to know how to answer them. IDK if she does this every year, but for us she dropped the question that we got the lowest score on so it was kind of a grade booster/curve. The final was a bit harder. She gives us 5 images from movies we watched and we have to describe what is happening, the movie it is from, the director, and we had to use readings to supplement our answers. The scenes she used were all scenes that she focused on during lecture so it wasn't too bad. Then, we had to choose 2 essay questions to write, 4-6 paragraphs each. TA: I had Brenda as my TA and besides her office hours, discussion was not very helpful. It was very student oriented, meaning we would just kind of talk among ourselves. This isn't helpful because in the papers and on the midterm/final, you just have to talk about the ideas Professor Hornby gives, not really your own. But Brenda is really nice and going to her office hours saved me for the papers.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - For context I took this class as a lower div for the film minor. Useful for learning some film basics and learning to close read scenes. However, the intersectionality of disability with the technical film analysis does add a decent bit of complexity. Weekly readings are dense and often long winded but you have to at least skim them because she randomly calls on people during lecture and asks about them. You have to be in attendance or you might miss participation for the week. 5 weeks of study questions (about an hour of work) and two papers for midterm and final. I blew through every other writing requirement with zero issue but this class was tricky for me. I ended up spending a disproportionate amount of time polishing my final paper compared to the other more important classes I was taking. I would recommend this class but it is work. I will say the caveat to this is it’s heavily TA dependent. There’s no rubrics for papers so if you get an easy TA you’ll probably have a much easier time than I had.
Fall 2023 - For context I took this class as a lower div for the film minor. Useful for learning some film basics and learning to close read scenes. However, the intersectionality of disability with the technical film analysis does add a decent bit of complexity. Weekly readings are dense and often long winded but you have to at least skim them because she randomly calls on people during lecture and asks about them. You have to be in attendance or you might miss participation for the week. 5 weeks of study questions (about an hour of work) and two papers for midterm and final. I blew through every other writing requirement with zero issue but this class was tricky for me. I ended up spending a disproportionate amount of time polishing my final paper compared to the other more important classes I was taking. I would recommend this class but it is work. I will say the caveat to this is it’s heavily TA dependent. There’s no rubrics for papers so if you get an easy TA you’ll probably have a much easier time than I had.
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