Library Research Guides: FILM 3380 Film Authorship: Cronenberg (Rusnak): Open Educational Resources (OER)

What are OER?

"Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation." - UNESCO

As the definition above illustrates, OER are not limited to only open textbooks; however, textbook affordability is a central issue for many OER initiatives.

If you'd like to learn more about OER and textbook affordability, visit the Open Educational Resources and Affordable Textbooks guide.

OER for Cinema and Media Arts Production

OER Textbooks

Moving Pictures: An Introduction to Cinema by Russell Sharman
A free and open-source introduction to the art and science of cinema. From the earliest iterations to the latest innovations, this introductory text explores the tools and techniques of mise-en-scene, narrative form, cinematography, editing, sound and acting, how each has contributed to the evolution of cinematic language, and how that evolution implicates critical issues of representation in mass media. Moving Pictures offers in-depth examination of how cinema communicates, and what, exactly, it is trying to say.
Exploring Movie Construction and Production by John Reich
Exploring Movie Construction & Production contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production. The discussion covers theme, genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, story, plot, directing style, cinematography, and editing. Important terminology is defined and types of analysis are discussed and demonstrated. An extended example of how a movie description reflects the setting, narrative structure, or directing style is used throughout the book to illustrate building blocks of each theme.
An Introduction to Technical Theatre by Tal Sanders
An Introduction to Technical Theatre draws on the author’s experience in both the theatre and the classroom over the last 30 years. Intended as a resource for both secondary and post-secondary theatre courses, this text provides a comprehensive overview of technical theatre, including terminology and general practices.
Media Studies 101 by Erika Pearson
Media Studies 101 is the open educational resource for media studies studies in New Zealand, Australia, and Pacifica. The text is constructed so it can be read in a number of ways. You may wish to follow the structured order of 'chapters' like you would in a traditional printed textbook. Each section builds on and refers back to previous sections to build up your knowledge and skills. Alternatively, you may want to go straight to the section you are interested in -- links will help guide you back to definitions and key ideas if you need to refresh your knowledge or understand a new concept.
Understanding Media and Culture
Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was written to squarely emphasize media technology. The author believes that an introduction to mass communication text should be a compelling, historical narrative sketching the *ongoing evolution* of media technology and how that technology shapes and is shaped by culture — and that is what he set out to deliver with his new textbook.

Open Access Books

The Economics of the Audiovisual Industry by Mario La Torre
Recent reductions in public funding for audiovisual products have led to dramatic changes in the industry. The lack of interaction between the industry and capital markets has made sourcing funds for audiovisual products especially difficult.This book explains why the distance between the audiovisual and financial markets exists, and considers the perspective of both audiovisual companies and financial intermediaries. Providing an overview of the audiovisual industry in three major categories (television, cinema and web), it analyses the financing behind each.
Eric Rohmer's Film Theory by Marco Grosoli
In the 1950s, a group of critics writing for Cahiers du Cinéma launched one of the most successful and influential trends in the history of film criticism: auteur theory. Though these days it is frequently usually viewed as limited and a bit old-fashioned, a closer inspection of the hundreds of little-read articles by these critics reveals that the movement rested upon a much more layered and intriguing aesthetics of cinema. This book is a first step toward a serious reassessment of the mostly unspoken theoretical and aesthetic premises underlying auteur theory...
The Future of Television: Convergence of Content and Technology
This book presents a collection of chapters that focus on the convergence of television today, approached using an interdisciplinary perspective. Clearly, the importance of technological advances describes only one aspect of this evolutionary process. In this book, convergence is also examined from other equally important perspectives, which include a historical case study on convergence and culture-viewer evolution and the changes that interactivity has introduced as opposed to static content. Because this publication focuses on all aspects that transform the medium, users, content, broadcasting, and interactive technology, it becomes evident that convergence is a highly interdisciplinary subject that must always be addressed from various perspectives.
Feminisms: Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures by Laura Mulvey (Editor); Anna Backman Rogers (Editor)
This collection brings together an exciting group of established and emerging scholars to consider the history of feminist film theory and new developments in the field and in film culture itself. Opening the field up to urgent questions and covering such topics as new experimental film, the digital image, consumerism, activism, and pornography, Feminisms will be essential reading for scholars of both film and feminism.
Farocki/Godardhb by Volker Pantenburg
This book brings together two major filmmakers--German avant-gardist Harun Farocki and French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard--to explore the fundamental tension between theoretical abstraction and the capacities of film itself, a medium where everything seen onscreen is necessarily concrete. Volker Pantenburg shows how these two filmmakers explored the potential of combined shots and montage to create "film as theory."
Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans by Vicki Mayer
Early in the twenty-first century, Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the United States, redirected millions in tax dollars from the public coffers in an effort to become the top location site globally for the production of Hollywood films and television series. Why would lawmakers support such a policy? Why would citizens accept the policy's uncomfortable effects on their economy and culture? Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans addresses these questions through a study of the local and everyday experiences of the film economy in New Orleans, Louisiana--a city that has twice pursued the goal of becoming a movie production capital. From the silent era to today's Hollywood South, Vicki Mayer explains that the aura of a film economy is inseparable from a prevailing sense of home, even as it changes that place irrevocably.
Cinematic Vitalism by Inga Pollmann
This book argues that there are constitutive links between early twentieth-century German and French film theory and practice, on the one hand, and vitalist conceptions of life in biology and philosophy, on the other. By considering classical film-theoretical texts and their filmic objects in the light of vitalist ideas percolating in scientific and philosophical texts of the time, Cinematic Vitalism reveals the formation of a modernist, experimental and cinematic strand of vitalism in and around the movie theater. The book focuses on the key concepts including rhythm, environment, mood, and development to show how the cinematic vitalism articulated by film theorists and filmmakers maps out connections among human beings, milieus, and technologies that continue to structure our understanding of film.
The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded by Wanda Strauven (Editor)
What have Lumière in common with Wachowski? More than one hundred years separate these two pairs of brothers who astonished, quite similarly, the film spectator of their respective time with special effects of movement: a train rushing into the audience and a bullet flying in slow motion. Do they belong to the same family of "cinema of attractions"?Twenty years ago Tom Gunning introduced the phrase "cinema of attractions" to define the essence of the earliest films made between 1895 and 1906. His term scored an immediate success, even outside the field of early cinema. The present anthology questions the attractiveness and usefulness of the term for both pre-classical and post-classical cinema.

TED Talks

The TED Talks listed below are available under a Creative Commons license. For complete information about how TED Talks can be used, visit the TED Talks Usage Policy page.

The pride and power of representation in film
On the heels of the breakout success of his film "Crazy Rich Asians," director Jon M. Chu reflects on what drives him to create -- and makes a resounding case for the power of connection and on-screen representation.
Bring out your inner filmmaker
Video is ubiquitous. Companies use it for entertainment, marketing, training – and customers generally expect it. Mark Halliday describes "Studio in a Box," a program he put together which allows State Street employees to make professional-quality videos of their own.
Visions of Africa's future, from African filmmakers
By expanding boundaries, exploring possibilities and conveying truth, films have helped change Africa's reality (even before "Black Panther"). Dayo Ogunyemi invites us to imagine Africa's future through the lens of inspiring filmmakers from across the continent, showing us how they can inspire Africa to make a hundred-year leap.
A tour of Nollywood, Nigeria's booming film industry
Zambia-born filmmaker Franco Sacchi tours us through Nollywood, Nigeria's booming film industry (the world's 3rd largest). Guerrilla filmmaking and brilliance under pressure from crews that can shoot a full-length feature in a week.
Everything you hear on film is a lie
Sound design is built on deception -- when you watch a movie or TV show, nearly all of the sounds you hear are fake. In this audio-rich talk, Tasos Frantzolas explores the role of sound in storytelling and demonstrates just how easily our brains are fooled by what we hear.
How film transforms the way we see the world
Film has the power to change the way we think about ourselves and our culture. Documentarian and TED Fellow Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy uses it to fight violence against women, turning her camera on the tradition of honor killings in Pakistan. In a stirring talk, she shares how she took her Oscar-winning film on the road in a mobile cinema, visiting small towns and villages across Pakistan -- and shifting the dynamics between women, men and society, one screening at a time.

Library of Congress Film and Video Collections

The Library of Congress holds many collections that contain film and video. Though not all items within the collections are openly licensed or in the public domain (i.e. free of copyright), they are available online for educational and research purposes.

Below are links to a few of these collections, but there are many more on the Library of Congress' website at the above link.

National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is a list of movies deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" that are earmarked for preservation by the Library of Congress. They are not selected as the "best" American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring importance to American culture.
This digital collection presents a variety of Registry titles including the World War II documentary Memphis Belle (1944), Master Hands (1936), a beautiful mechanical ballet shot on a General Motors automotive assembly line, and a plea for racial tolerance from Frank Sinatra in The House I Live In (1945).
National Screening Room
The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library of Congress' vast moving image collection, designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, freely accessible to the viewers worldwide.
Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies
This site features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles. In addition, histories are given of Edison's involvement with motion pictures and sound recordings, as well as a special page focusing on the life of the great inventor. Prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) has had a profound impact on modern life.
Origins of American Animation
The development of early American animation is represented by this collection of 21 animated films and 2 fragments, which spans the years 1900 to 1921. The films include clay, puppet, and cut-out animation, as well as pen drawings.