BCST 454L
Cinema, Television and the Web
Study, Design and Construction of Film and Television related sites on the World Wide Web

 
FALL 2001
 Alan Bloom: Professor
Monday and Wednesday KH B4007
 Office: KH D4050c
Lecture Monday 9:10 AM-12:00 PM
 Office Phone: 343-4209
 Labs Wednesday 8:00-10:00 AM 10:00-12:00 PM
 Office Hours: 
M 5:00 - 8:20 PM

 

Optional Course Text: Laura Lemay, Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML 4.0 In A Week, Sams.net Publishing, Indianapolis, IN 1998.

Week 1. Intro. to the Web

What the web is and how it works. Introduction to the use the wide array of resources available on the World Wide Web. Navigation and research strategies. Assignment: Basic web navigation and research. Find ten sites on the web that are of professional/academic interest to you, you will have a "links" page ready for the web in week two. Look for and secure an off campus host for your site. This will allow you to continue to use and maintain your site. This list in Yahoo is a good place to start.


For searching the web this is a good place to start, just enter your search terms in the window above and click on "Yahoo Search". Yahoo is the place where you can find web sites that want to be found. Once you have your Yahoo results you can expand or refine your search by making use of some other search engines, like Alta Vista, HotBot, Excite, SEARCH.COM, About.com, Lycos and WebCrawler. Yahoo provides smart links to some of these at the bottom of your page of Yahoo search results.

Week 2. The World Wide Web In Film/Video Studies and Production

Student Web Sites

How do you use the web? Introduction to the possibilities of web based Film and Video materials and resources. Assignment: Basic HTML exercises and content. What would be a good addition to the BCST Site? What resources might other students in BCST find useful? Have a site ready to show (This activity should continue throughout the quarter). Create a personal page with your interesting links, you will put these on the web (Due in week 2 lab). A basic example page for this week's assignment and a second page model that is a bit more advanced.

Week 3. Best Examples Of Cinema / TV On The Web

What are the best uses of the web for students and filmmakers and why are they effective? Content, interactively, utility and design issues will be covered in this session. Assignment: Expand your web page of links to sites that you find useful and describe them using a glossary list format (Due by week 3 lab). Example page for this week.

Week 4. Constructing The Film Students Desktop

An overview of what a you might need, in terms of both hardware and software, to take full advantage of what the Web has to offer will be covered in this session. Assignment: Continue to build your web site.

Week 5. What You Can Do On The Web

Continue to expand, modify, improve and correct (de-bug) your site. Produce content guides, flow charts, storyboards and scripts for the site that you are building (Due the beginning of week 6).

Weeks 6-7.

Strategies for optimizing your web site to maximize awareness and access. Assignment: Now is the time to have a good picture of the complete look and structure of all the component elements for your site. By this time some of you may already have fairly well developed sites.

Weeks 8-10. Web Site Construction

Finish building your own site. Assignment: Finish building your web site and mount it on the World Wide Web. Suggestions and tips for this final phase:

1. Content, Content, Content
Work on fleshing out the content of your site. Create material which sets your page apart and makes it unique.

 
2. Page Creation And Internal Site Navigation
You should have several pages in your site by now. Make sure that all your internal links are working, that you have all the internal links that you need, that your internal site navigation is clear and logical and that you have no deadends.

 
3. Clean Your HTML
Your site should only have the HTML tags that it needs. Your should make sure that you have no extra tags and that you know what all of your tags do.

 

Final Exam Schedule:

Wednesday, December 5th, from 8:00-10:30 AM

Final written project self critique along with your URL, copies of your production materials, all your related production materials and a print out of your web pages are due in class today.

Grading System:

Students will be evaluated on the basis of their ongoing site building progress, final web pages and sites, their proposal/plan package, including but not limited to storyboards and related production materials, their participation in class, their contributions to their classmates projects, a final exam and a final written project self critique.

 Participation  15 Points
 Finished web projects  50 Points
 Written assignments  25 Points
 Final Exam  10 Points

Note: Instructor reserves the right to change the course outline or course requirements due to class size or student need.

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