Course Overview

Understanding Film Aesthetics and Mood is a richly immersive and intellectually expansive course that invites you to explore the intricate visual and emotional fabric of cinema. At its core, this course is about decoding the visceral language of images and how the look and feel of a film (its aesthetics) work synergistically with emotion (its mood) to shape viewer experience, meaning-making, and cinematic memory.

Aesthetic choices color, lighting, framing, composition, texture, pace, sound design, costume, performance style, camera movement are not simply technical or stylistic decisions. They are fundamental narrative tools and psychological cues, shaping how a film feels, what it communicates, and how deeply it resonates with its audience.

Film is a temporal, sensory, and immersive medium. Unlike static visual arts, cinema unfolds in time, inviting the viewer into carefully crafted aesthetic environments that evoke specific emotional states of nostalgia, tension, dread, euphoria, melancholy, serenity, and ambiguity. This course takes a deep dive into understanding how filmmakers evoke mood deliberately through visual, auditory, and temporal aesthetics, and how these emotional atmospheres can carry as much meaning as plot or dialogue.

We will analyze iconic sequences across world cinema, observing how tone and feeling are meticulously constructed through choices in lighting (e.g., chiaroscuro vs. naturalism), color palettes (e.g., warm tones vs. desaturated greys), camera proximity (e.g., close-ups for intimacy, wide shots for alienation), and pacing (e.g., long takes to linger in emotion, rapid cuts to generate anxiety).You will learn to “read” the emotional logic embedded in cinematic images and to recreate such affective impact in their own work.

In tandem, the course explores major theoretical frameworks including phenomenology, affect theory, psychoanalysis, and atmospheric theory that explore how mood becomes a medium for identification, projection, emotional immersion, and even social critique. From Tarkovsky’s meditative landscapes to Wong Kar-wai’s melancholy color waves, from Jordan Peele’s anxiety-laden horror to Céline Sciamma’s quiet queer longings this course traverses global cinema to understand mood as both a cinematic tool and an emotional language.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Define and distinguish key components of film aesthetics and mood.
   
   

2. Analyze how cinematic elements interact to produce emotional tone and atmosphere.
   
   

3. Trace the historical and cultural evolution of aesthetic trends in global cinema.
   
   

4. Identify and discuss major film movements known for aesthetic experimentation (e.g., German Expressionism, French Impressionism, New Hollywood, Slow Cinema, etc.).
   
   

5. Evaluate how sound, silence, and music shape cinematic mood.
   
   

6. Interpret mood through the lenses of film theory, including affect theory, psychoanalytic theory, phenomenology, and feminist/queer aesthetics.
   
   

7. Deconstruct the emotional architecture of scenes, beyond plot or dialogue.
   
   

8. Apply theoretical knowledge to analyze the affective structure of film sequences and full features.
   
   

9. Create mood-driven visual pieces through practical exercises in lighting, color grading, composition, and editing.
   
   

10. Develop a personal mood aesthetic and articulate it in a reflective artist’s statement.
    
    

Course Structure & Weekly Topics

Week 1: Introduction to Film Aesthetics and Mood

• What is film aesthetics?
  
  

• What is the mood and how is it cinematic?
  
  

• The difference between mood, tone, and emotion
  
  

• How filmmakers manipulate perception
  
  

Week 2: The Psychology of Mood : Affective Engagement in Cinema

• Basic emotion theory
  
  

• Affect theory and the body in film (Deleuze, Massumi, Sobchack)
  
  

• Emotional immersion vs. narrative engagement
  
  

Week 3: Color as Emotion : Chromatic Language and Psychological Mood

• Warm vs. cool palettes
  
  

• Color grading and digital color science
  
  

• Cultural interpretations of color
  
  

• Symbolic and atmospheric color theory
  
  

Week 4: Light and Shadow : Luminance, Texture, and Emotional Resonance

• High-key vs. low-key lighting
  
  

• Natural light vs. studio design
  
  

• Light as narrative, symbolic, and atmospheric tool
  
  

• Cinematic shadows and contrast in mood design
  
  

Week 5: Camera and Composition : Visual Geometry of Feeling

• Framing emotion: close-up, wide shot, dutch angle
  
  

• Rule of thirds vs. expressive symmetry
  
  

• Movement: handheld chaos, dolly calm, or tracking dreams
  
  

• Emotional distance and subjectivity
  
  

Week 6: Rhythm, Pacing, and Temporal Mood

• Editing and temporal perception
  
  

• Long takes vs. montage
  
  

• Creating anticipation, stillness, suspense, or urgency
  
  

• Real-time vs. elastic time in emotional storytelling
  
  

Week 7: Soundscapes :Music, Silence, and the Sonic Mood World

• Music as an emotional compass
  
  

• Ambient sound and sonic textures
  
  

• Diegetic vs. non-diegetic tension
  
  

• The silence of mood: strategic quietness and isolation
  
  

Week 8: Performance Aesthetics : Acting Styles and Emotional Space

• Minimalism vs. theatricality
  
  

• The physical body as a vessel for mood
  
  

• Eye contact, facial stillness, and the internalized emotion
  
  

• Naturalism vs. stylization
  
  

Week 9: Genre and Mood Signatures

• Horror and suspense
  
  

• Romance and longing
  
  

• Drama and moral complexity
  
  

• Comedy and discomfort
  
  

• Mood within hybrid genre films
  
  

Week 10: Mood in Global and Transcultural Cinema

• Mood across cultures: melancholia in East Asia, suspense in Scandinavian noir, warmth in African cinema
  
  

• Cinematic traditions of mood: Tarkovsky, Ozu, Sciamma, Dardenne Brothers, Kiarostami, Martel
  
  

Week 11: Experimental Cinema and Visual Poetry

• Mood without plot
  
  

• Symbolism, abstraction, and mood architecture
  
  

• Avant-garde as emotional experimentation
  
  

Week 12: Final Project Presentations & Mood Aesthetic Manifesto

• Students present a mood-driven short or moodboard + visual journal
  
  

• Critical reflection of personal aesthetic philosophy
  
  

Key Theorists and Readings

• Gilles Deleuze : Cinema 1 & 2
  
  

• Laura Marks : The Skin of the Film
  
  

• André Bazin : What is Cinema?
  
  

• Vivian Sobchack : The Address of the Eye
  
  

• Laura Mulvey : Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
  
  

• Henri Bergson : Matter and Memory
  
  

• Brian Massumi : Parables for the Virtual
  
  

• Susan Sontag : Against Interpretation
  
  

• Roland Barthes :Camera Lucida
  
  

• Tarkovsky : Sculpting in Time
  
  

Films & Scenes for Case Study

• In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
  
  

• The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
  
  

• Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
  
  

• The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
  
  

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma)
  
  

• Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
  
  

• Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)
  
  

• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  
  

• The Babadook (Jennifer Kent)
  
  

• Atlantics (Mati Diop)
  
  

Assignments and Evaluation

• Weekly Aesthetic Journals (15%)
  
  

• Scene Analysis Papers (20%)
  
  

• Sound/Mood Scoring Project (10%)
  
  

• Visual Moodboard Portfolio (15%)
  
  

• Final Short Mood-Driven Film or Digital Aesthetic Piece (30%)
  
  

• Mood Manifesto & Reflective Critique (10%)
  
  

Ideal for Students In:

• Film and Media Studies
  
  

• Cinematography & Directing
  
  

• Visual Arts and Photography
  
  

• Psychology of Perception
  
  

• Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Cultural Theory
  
  

• Queer, Feminist, and Decolonial Visual Studies
  
  

• Anyone interested in emotional design through image and sound
  
  

I look forward to congratulating you upon the completion of this course.