Filmmaking

Lichtenstein Center, College of Arts and Sciences

Undergraduate Program Director: Karen Offitzer, karen.offitzer@stonybrook.edu 
Undergraduate Program Coordinator: Liz McRae, Elizabeth.McRae@stonybrook.edu

The Minor in Filmmaking (FLM) invites students from all disciplines to engage in the power of the cinematic image and its relationship to storytelling. The undergraduate filmmaking minor at Stony Brook immerses students, hands-on, in the art of narrative filmmaking. Students who want to tell stories on film need a firm understanding of the power of images and sounds, a solid grasp on how to develop a compelling storyline and the technical know-how to manipulate and transform these images in a way that can inform, educate and persuade audiences of the 21st century.

Created in the spirit of the innovative MFA in Film, a program with a “roll up your sleeves and dive in” approach, the undergraduate filmmaking courses help students develop the narrative, analytical and technical skills needed to make films that tell the stories they want to tell. We begin with harnessing what students already know - their smartphones and their everyday interaction with social media and movies - and build their understanding of filmmaking through workshops that immerse them in screenwriting, film analysis from the professional filmmaker’s perspective, cinematography, editing and production.

As visual literacy becomes increasingly necessary in a world of moving images, workshops in the craft of filmmaking enable students to develop their capacity for creative and critical thinking as well as the technical acuity necessary to create compelling stories and images as filmmakers.