How Movies Manipulate Us

Movies can elicit fear for imagined dangers, deep grief for fictional lives, and visceral suspense during familiar narratives. In this course, we explore how filmmakers have developed cinematography, editing, sound, music, performance, and narrative to shape our perceptions and emotional responses. Through film clips from directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and others, we examine how movies direct our attention, create identification with characters, manipulate our perception of time, generate suspense and fear, and influence our understanding of what we see. Rather than simply examining how movies are made, we investigate what happens inside us while we watch them and why the techniques of cinema work so powerfully on the human mind. This course uses the Hybrid format which allows students to participate remotely and/or in the classroom. This course will be recorded. Students will have access to videos for the duration of the course.