William Brand

Biography
William Brand, professor of film and photography, holds a B.A. in art from Antioch College and an M.F.A. in film from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Hunter College and was awarded the MacArthur Chair at Hampshire for the years 1994-97. Since 2005 he has taught film restoration in the graduate Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program at New York University. Since 1973, his films, videos and installations have exhibited extensively in the US and abroad in museums, microcinemas, and on television. They have been featured at major film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival and New Directors/ New Films Festival. The work is written about in cinema history books and in articles by Erik Barnouw, David James, Janet Maslin, Paul Arthur, J. Hoberman, B. Ruby Rich, and Noel Carroll, among others. His 1980 Masstransiscope, a mural installed in the subway system of New York City which is animated by the movement of passing trains, is a widely regarded work of public art. In 1973 he founded Chicago Filmmakers, the showcase and workshop and until 1991 served on the Board of Directors of the Collective for Living Cinema in New York City. He is currently an Artistic Director of Parabola Arts Foundation which he co-found in 1981. Since 1976 he has operated BB Optics, an optical printing service specializing in 8mm blow-ups and archival preservation. In 2006 he was named an Anthology Film Archives film preservation honoree and given a month long retrospective to celebrate BB Optics' 30th anniversary.

Bill Brand Office Hours
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 * Bill Brand Office Hours

Courses
For Spring 2009

HACU 256 Film/Video II: Sound and Music for the Moving Image

Meets: Wednesday 09:00 AM - 11:50 AM Photography and Film Building Room CLASS

This course is for advanced film and video students who are prepared to continue developing their own individual projects. Students will be expected to complete individual and group exercises and complete an individual final project. The course will deal in some depth with the theory and practice of working with sound and music for film including 16mm sound-synch filmmaking, audio recording on location and the set, and post- production editing and mixing. Students will learn to make sound tracks for film and video using Final Cut Pro and Protools. Readings and writing about the theory and history of the subject is an essential aspect of the course. Workshops that give training for using equipment and software will occur outside regularly scheduled class and students who already have experience in music composition, electronic music, or sound recording and mixing are welcome in the course. Students must purchase their own film and tape and must pay their own processing fees. Required screenings and workshops sometimes occur in the evening. There will be a $50 lab fee. Instructor permission required.

HACU 299 Division II Independent Projects Seminar in Film, Video, Photography, and Installation

Meets: Tuesday 12:30 PM - 3:20 PM Photography and Film Building Room CLASS

This course will provide an opportunity for Division II students in film/video, photography and related media that wish to pursue their own work, creating at least one completed new project for inclusion in the Division II portfolio. Each student will be required to present his/her work to the group several times during the semester. The members of the workshop will provide critical, technical and crew support for one another. Team projects are supported as long as each participant has a distinct and responsible role in the making of that work. Technical workshops will be offered where necessary. However, prior to joining the workshop, students must have some level of mastery over his/her medium as well as course evaluations in prerequisite areas. We will unpack the conceptual process of creating and realizing new works. Readings, screenings and museum/gallery visits, which address the specific problems faced by class members in developing the works-in-progress, will contribute to the overall experience of the workshop. All of these activities including active verbal contributions to all sessions are required of each student under the guiding principle that tracking each other's intellectual and creative process will help each person develop their respective project. A lab fee of $50 covers the use of Hampshire?s equipment plus film/video rentals. This course provides a structured context in which to do independent work at the Division II-level. Prerequisites: evaluations from at least two courses in a related discipline. NOTE: Enrolled or top 5 waitlist students who DO NOT attend the first class session risk losing their place on the class roster. Instructor Permission Required.

Students I Advise
Vincent Nero - DIV III: White Zombie

Additional Information
Bill Brand reinstalled a mural in the New York City subway system that had first been created there in 1980 but was destroyed by graffiti and entropy. Animated by the movement of trains the mural is again visible to commuters traveling from Brooklyn into Manhattan on the BQ train. Division II student Cass Greener created a blog about the mural, Masstransiscope, and alumna Rose Vincelli 98F who saw the mural on her way home to work, discovered that her Hampshire professor had created it and wrote an article about it for Filmmaker magazine.