Advanced Projects in the Visual Arts: Personal Narrative
MIT's advanced video production course builds on the introductory 4.351 class, focusing on narrative in cinema and video. Students examine classical narrative cinema principles, then test their limits through exercises addressing story trajectory, character development, verisimilitude, time-space continuity, viewer identification, suspension of disbelief, and closure. The course combines screenings of narrative films with hands-on production exercises, culminating in a final video project that applies these concepts. Materials come from MIT's OpenCourseWare archive under the Architecture department's visual arts offerings, and the course is free to audit with no certificate attached. It suits students who have already covered basic video techniques and want to work seriously on constructing narrative through moving images rather than just technical execution.