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The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – How “Big Data” Became Big
R1B 003 | CCN: 25413
Location: Social Sciences Building 80
Date and Time: M, W 5:00pm - 6:29pm
4 Units
“Big Data” is both our present and future. It’s allegedly the new oil, the new resource to be extracted, and the key to unlocking cutting-edge decisions in government, business, and culture. If you’ve ever used a spam folder, unlocked your phone with facial recognition, or watched a film recommended to you by Netflix, “Big Data” is already part of your daily routine. This course will help you develop the critical tools to interrogate and explore the impact of data and technology on society and culture. While these technologies can undoubtedly improve our lives, they have also played crucial roles in upholding inequities. We will explore the impact (or not) of “Big Data” on questions of cinematic and visual representation, on conceptions of authorship and originality, and on labor and production. By the end of the class, students will learn practical skills like using tools of aesthetic analysis, reading a court case, and writing across different genres for diverse audiences. Students are encouraged to write on a variety of topics including Hollywood film lighting and digital cinematography, authorship in the age of artificial intelligence, and how audiences perform unpaid labor.