Cinematography
Fundamentals
Program Overview
Build Expertise
Learn from leading NYU faculty with on-demand video lessons and develop real-world skills through self-paced projects and assignments to build your show reel.
Map Your Career
Gain practical understanding through real-world examples and get first-hand insights and advice on the craft of cinematography from industry experts.
Stand Out
Earn a Certificate of Completion in Cinematography Fundamentals from the prestigious NYU Tisch School of the Arts, bolstering your profile and résumé to help you stand out.
After completing Cinematography Fundamentals, you will have an understanding of the art of cinematography, including:
- Principles of visual composition for storytelling
- Creating and using storyboards for planning
- Pre-production planning and shot organization
- Fundamentals of cinematic lighting
- Lighting’s role in mood and atmosphere
- Types and uses of camera movement
- Historical evolution of camera techniques
- Basics of digital video and audio editing
- Editing sequences and refining cuts
- Intro to color correction and visual effects
Curriculum
Cinematography Fundamentals includes 19 video lectures and related reading materials, visual aides, and skill-building activities delivered via Smashcut, a media-based online learning platform. Topics include composition, storyboarding, pre-production, lighting, camera movement, and editing. Students can work through the course at their own pace and, upon completion, earn an NYU Tisch Certificate of Completion.
Composition
To tell a visual story, you’ll need to construct images in three dimensions so they deliver the information and the impact you want them to. You’ve got a rectangle, and a near-infinite corridor of space within it: these are not limitations, but opportunities.
Storyboarding & Pre-Production
Lighting
Movies are fundamentally recordings of light and shadow, and from the art form’s very beginning it’s been this basic allure that’s drawn us to the screen. You’ll learn how light and shadow have been used by artists over the long history of movies.
Camera Movement
The capacity for movement is where movies completely have it over every other art form, whether by way of pans, tilts, zooms, tracking shots, handheld explorations, or combinations thereof. The visceral excitement of a movie when it truly moves is a unique and special cultural experience. You’ll take a look at over a century’s worth of how, and why, filmmakers have made it happen.
Audio & Video Editing
Editing the sight and sound of a film project requires planning and attention to fine details. You’ll learn the fundamentals of configuring a project, creating a sequence, adjusting audio levels, finessing edit points, applying basic post effects and color correction, and exporting video in a web-ready format.
Stand Out
Earn a Certificate of Completion in Cinematography Fundamentals from the prestigious NYU Tisch School of the Arts, bolstering your profile and résumé to help you stand out.
Choose How You Pay
Pursue your passion for filmmaking with this online certificate course from NYU Tisch. The course is 100% online and can be completed on your own schedule. You’ll learn the fundamentals of the art of cinematography, get written feedback on your work from an NYU instructor, and earn a certificate of completion from NYU Tisch School of the Arts!
One-Time Payment
4 Monthly Payments
12 Monthly Payments
Have a discount code? Add it at checkout.
Frequently Asked Questions
Tuition is $1,199 when paid in full. Two payment plans are also available at checkout: 4 monthly payments of $329 or 12 monthly payments of $119.
