Collections

Theater & Film – LibreTexts (various CC licences).

Courses

Do-It-Yourself Film School Online Course (CC BY-NC).

This course will teach you the basics of how to get the most out of shooting video with your mobile device. It will help you get to grips with the basics of shooting video, such as how to orientate your camera, and how to avoid shaky footage; understand the ‘rule of thirds’, and how to use it; the importance of lighting, including scenarios for filming outdoors and indoors; and how to get the best audio, and why sound is often more important than video.

Film Aesthetics (CC BY).

This open set of course materials for Film Aesthetics is a downloadable version of a course created for a learning management system. Included are learning modules and a quiz bank based on introductory film concepts including the following topics: Narrative structure and motifs, mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound design, music, and visual effects.

Film Appreciation (CC BY).

This course, on film appreciation and provides embedded film links and a glossary of film terms. Film appreciation takes two parts: analyzing film form and film style. The elements of film form are the building blocks of cinema: all of the tools that a filmmaker has at her disposal to tell her story. Form includes mise-en-scène – the ability to externalize the themes and subtext of the story. It includes editing – the ability to manipulate time. It includes cinematography – the ability to immerse the viewer within the story world. The resource includes chapters on Film history, narration, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound, genre, beyond genre and writing film analysis.

Software

Shotcut (GNU GPL).

This is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. Major features include support for a wide range of formats; no import required meaning native timeline editing.

Textbooks

Contemporary World Cinema (CC-BY-NC-SA).

Contemporary World Cinema is a free, open access introduction to the art and science of cinema. An adaptation of Moving Pictures. An Introduction to Cinema by Russell Sharman, James Skidmore’s Contemporary World Cinema preserves Sharman’s chapters on the tools and techniques of cinema (mise-en-scène, narrative form, cinematography, editing, sound and acting), and includes a new section on world cinema with an introduction to the concept, case studies of nine films from around the world, as well as an overview of the questions that guide film analysis.

Film Appreciation (CC BY).

This course, on film appreciation and provides embedded film links and a glossary of film terms. Film appreciation takes two parts: analyzing film form and film style. The elements of film form are the building blocks of cinema: all of the tools that a filmmaker has at her disposal to tell her story. Form includes mise-en-scène – the ability to externalize the themes and subtext of the story. It includes editing – the ability to manipulate time. It includes cinematography – the ability to immerse the viewer within the story world. The resource includes chapters on Film history, narration, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound, genre, beyond genre and writing film analysis.

Interpreting Love Narratives in East Asian Literature and Film (CC BY-NC).

This book explores the role of traditional East Asian worldviews, ethical values, and common practices in the shaping of East Asian narratives in literature and film. It offers a specific method for this analysis. The interpretive goal is to arrive at interpretations that more accurately engage cultural information so that narratives are understood more closely in terms of their native cultural rather than that of the reader/interpreter.

Moving Pictures: An Introduction to Cinema (CC BY-NC-SA).

A free and open-source introduction to the art and science of moving pictures, offering in-depth exploration of how cinema communicates, and what, exactly, it is trying to say.