MDST 3830

Matt was an absolutely amazing professor that I adored so much that I'm taking another class with him now. He is goofy and full of life, and he is incredibly passionate about the topics. His class is flexible and grading is easy and straightforward. He lets you know the topic of the paper at the beginning of the year, so you have a near-infinite amount of time to work on it. He makes personal connections with near everyone in the class that speaks, will alter assignment requirements or dates is he sees people struggling, and does not feel the need to trip people up on tests. Do the practice quizzes, watch the movies, pay attention, and you'll do brilliantly.

Professor Marshall is very nice and funny! I highly recommend this course. I took this course while taking history of media and there was a lot of overlap. We had weekly movie screenings (Monday Nights) which were a bit annoying sometimes because he posted the films on collab but you had to go to get participation points. I will say, some of the movie screenings were fun because Professor Marshall would play live music to go with the film. In terms of assignments, we had weekly movie quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam, and a final paper (all assignments were on collab). This course is not difficult and you will learn a lot! I am even considering pursuing a concentration in cinematography because of this course. Professor Marshall is very approachable and even with everything going on with the coronavirus, he made sure to check in with each student.

This is a good class if you're interested in learning more about old American cinema and also for the great Professor Marshall, who has an infectious energy and passion for film. The class also covers some European cinema as well as Chinese cinema too. In addition to lectures, we had weekly movie screenings on Monday nights, so you have to not mind having one weekday evening taken up by this class. Workload is pretty light; we just had one short quiz on a movie after the weekly screenings and every few weeks we had to watch this film documentary and just take notes on it. We also had other fun assignments (e.g. trying to put mixed up still shots from a film in chronological order) sparsely given throughout the semester. I do admit though, a large part of this class focuses on silent film, so it can get a bit boring at times, but there were a few interesting silent films and it got better as we moved into sound films imo. Overall, a fun, stress-free class!