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

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. Make use of a custom web site created just for this class from which you can access thousands of sites world wide. Navigation and research strategies. Assignment: Basic web navigation and research. Find ten sites on the web that are of professional/academic interest to you, have these ready for class in week two.

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

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, we 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 film makers 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 (Due in week 3 lab). An example page for this week's assignment, those of you still not up to this level may want to continue to work with the advanced page from last 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: Begin to outline ideas for the design and content for your web site (Due the beginning of week 5). The example page for this week's assignment.

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). The example page for this week's assignment.

Weeks 6-7. Web Site Design

Designing the web site, html code, page design, use of graphics, sound and animation, how to post documents on the web, how to maintain a web site, the job of the Web master and 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 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.

 

4. Off Campus Web Host

Now might be a good time to look for and secure an off campus host for your site. While this is not a requirement of the class it is strongly suggested if you want to continue to use and maintain your site. This list in Yahoo is a good place to start.

 

Final Exam Schedule:

Monday, December 4th, from 8:00-10:30 AM

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 scripts, storyboards and related production materials, their participation in class discussions and critiques, their contributions to their classmates projects, a final exam and a final written self analysis.

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

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