Description

Hi everyone…my name is Roopa Swaminathan, AKA The Messy Optimist, and I’m a National Award-winning writer and filmmaker. I’m also an academic who teaches creative writing to college students (for over five years now). Also, I’ve taught Creative Writing to non-native English-speakers in Shanghai for many years.

I wrote and directed my first English-language film for the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) called Five By Four. The film traveled to multiple film festivals all over the world including the Shanghai film festival. the Ashdod film festival in Jerusalem, the Santa Monica Film Festival and more. The hands-off approach of NFDC meant that I also execute produced the film myself. In short – I know the inside out of making a film.

And this class allows me to impart my knowledge and deep-seated love for cinema.

This class is a basic introduction to world of cinema. Over the course of this class students will learn to understand and appreciate the basics of film – from the Hollywood perspective. Students will learn some of the basic vocabulary that goes into the making of a film including and not limited to elements like the multiple genres of film, the mise-en-scene, historical background, silent film versus the talkies and the various aspects of the storytelling process. Students will also learn to differentiate between the fundamental aspects of what goes into the making of film like screenwriting, editing, cinematography, editing, sound and, of course, direction.

Lights! Camera! ACTION!