Now that wlt4 has provided the expected techno-centric response to mike's 'intro filmmaking' course taught on video, let me offer a counterargument. As signifiers, 'film' and 'video' represent different aesthetic sensibilities which have relationships to certain historical tendencies that developed around the respective media, but have no necessary relationship to the way those media may be used today. For example, a cinema verite documentary or a classical-style Hollywood narrative are fundamentally 'filmic' in purpose and reception codes whether they're shot on photochemical film or video, and three-camera coverage of live events retains one form of 'video' sensibility, even if shot on film and cut on a flatbed. wlt4 misses something in saying "conceptually things like editing and camera angles are the same". While some basic principles apply, as these things have developed into the different cultures that have come to be labeled 'video' and 'film,' different approaches to elaborating these principles have developed -- diferent senses of time, linearity, attention... There may be some technological biases in these directions, but they are hardly determinate. Moving image-making has evolved into different conceptual camps based on different purposes and strategies of the members of the diverging groups. If these cultural purposes and strategies are not PEFECTLY translatable accross different technolgies, they are at least largely so. To declare oneself to be 'video' or 'film' is a matter of choosing a camp, a particular outlook, even more than a matter of choosing a technology. To avoid some of the controversy, I call my class 'Fundamentals of Motion Picture Production'. But our little program is called Film Studies, the students think of themselves as film students, call their projects films, and so on, and that's the way I think it should be, since that's what the curriculum is referencing: 'film' CULTURE, not the practical aspects of Eclair magazines, Moviola flatbeds, etc. There ARE problematic aspects of labeling a class taught with video as 'filmmaking', but -- especially within a curriculum that dovetails production with film analysis -- the connotations of rejecting the label 'filmmaking' are much much more problematic. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * David Tetzlaff Assistant Professor of Theater "The spectacle is the sun which never sets Box 5345, Connecticut College over the empire of modern passivity. It 270 Mohegan Ave. covers the entire surface of the world and New London, CT 06320 bathes endlessly in its own glory." 860-439-5253 ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu