Friendship is not always magical, as the protagonists learn in "The Miss-Adventures of Molly & Sage." In this buddy-comedy set in a magical fantasy world, the titular characters are two teenage girls who go on epic quests and cause mischief. Many aspects of the story went through changes during the production of this hand-drawn animated short film. However, the main characters and their chaotic friendship remained consistent throughout the animation process. While developing this film, I noticed that my peers responded positively when I referenced my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in various story elements. The film's artistic style was heavily inspired by early 20th-century Russian artist Ivan Bilibin, who illustrated Eastern European folktales and fairytales. I also studied the work of other Art Nouveau-inspired artists, such as Charles Vess, with the goal of creating a 2D animated film with a youthful storybook feeling. As the film became more personal, it also became more engaging and emotional. This film has allowed me to examine my own beliefs about friendship, reflect on my Jewish identity in the context of animation and fantasy, and take audiences on a haphazard adventure in a world of magic and monsters. "The Miss-Adventures of Molly & Sage" can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/421744704 using "missadventures2023" as the password.

Inkling is an animated short film about a creature made of ink falling into a cycle of anxiety. This film explores the use of visual effects in character design. Inspiration for this film was drawn from Absurdist essays and stories and used abstract imagery and cinematic devices to manipulate the audience into feeling the character's anxiety. This thesis briefly examines the foundation of methods pioneered by visual effect artists. To produce this short film, critical decisions in software and animation were made to streamline the process to allow more time to focus on creating a method for the visual effect of the character. Inkling is a culmination of different simulation methods, pipeline processes, and research methods to create a character made of fluids. To view the film, click here: https://youtu.be/tnFVIMssJaI

Tooth Farmer is a 2-minute hybrid animated short film combining stop-motion puppetry with a 3D environment. Tooth Farmer is a vital story as it was developed over four years and getting closer to the artist's goal of creating a successful stop-motion armature puppet that is durable for an entire stop-motion short. The story is a different take on the Tooth Fairy mythology that varies from culture to culture. This story offers an alternative to the world of the Tooth Fairy folklore. In Tooth Farmer, a little mouse lives inside a person's mouth to help maintain tooth hygiene. The film focuses on unique character designs with environmental concepts resembling a person's mouth. Armatures from the company LAIKA and Aardman Studios heavily inspired the explorations of stop-motion puppetry. Using the Elegoo Mars Pro 2 and Standard Photopolymer Resin to create 3D printed heads with 23 facial expressions for the main character was a huge goal and purpose for creating this animated short film. Delving deep into research for building a physical armature for a stop-motion puppet and compositing a 3D render scene was a challenge with harmonizing the design of physical objects with digital scenes. The paper documents the processes used in creating a hybrid film. It explains what the artist did, what the artist should have done, and what the artist can improve in the future.

One Pint at a Time is a documentary feature by Aaron Hosé, created as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Feature Film Production from the University of Central Florida. This is the first documentary film in history to focus exclusively on the stories of African American beermakers and brewery owners, their ties to ancient Egyptian and African brewing traditions, and how they are trying to make their mark within the business of craft beer; a multi-billion-dollar industry in which merely one percent of breweries are Black-owned and operated. Following the guidelines of UCF's program, Aaron and his team produced the film on a microbudget (under $70,000) level. The project spanned across four years (2017-2021) from concept to completion. Principal production took place in Florida, Connecticut, New Orleans, Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania. Second unit covered additional scenes in various states across the country and continued throughout the pandemic. This thesis is a record of the film's progression from development to production, post-production, and launch of the film's marketing phase in October of 2021.

Soda Pop, the feature-length documentary film by David Bailey, is presented to fulfill the required component toward a Master of Fine Arts in Feature Film Production from The University of Central Florida. This thesis documents research and production choice to pronounce the director's path to discovery of the element of Story beneath the commercialization of the soda industry. Under the guidance of the University of Central Florida Film Department, Soda Pop was accomplished within the parameters set, including the budgetary discipline of micro-level production costs not to exceed the $50,000 threshold. The film's focus and success were from soda archival footage that collaborated with crowdsourced storytellers from across the internet. Soda Pop, the thesis is a journal telling the Story of filmmaking on a defined level, documenting not only the process but also the imagination.

This dissertation centers on New German Cinema filmmaker, Ula Stöckl, as a director and the first feminist filmmaker in Germany. Studying her gives scholars a better understanding of women directors, as she offers a female perspective in her films, which counters the "male gaze" seen in most traditional films. For Stöckl, getting to the crux of male-female power relationships and the hypocritical and deceptive logic that created them has become a lifelong passion. While addressing the masculine constructs of femininity and disregard of women's desires and actualities, Stöckl's films are significant in terms of the honest perspective they offer about women and their relationships, desires, and sexuality, and they argue for women to pursue an identity that they frame themselves. Stöckl was, arguably, the only woman addressing the socio-political frustrations of women in German cinema at the time that she began her film career in the early 1960s, and her stories and themes promote women's freedom to choose their own path, and be open and comfortable with their gender and sexuality. My analysis will demonstrate that Stöckl has been able to convey these important aspects of women in the dialogue and visual languages of her films, and particular attention will be paid to her films Antigone (1966), The Cat Has Nine Lives (1968), and The Sleep of Reason (1984). While a full consideration of her work is overdue, Stöckl has recently been gaining more recognition, and her accomplishments in film and the feminist movement have now begun to be celebrated at contemporary film festivals. Although Stöckl's films seem now to have been ahead of their time, they were in many ways apropos of their time, with the emerging second wave feminist movement of the 1960s in the West, and continue to be relevant today for their themes and historical context.

83 ORANGE PEELS is a feature-length film written and directed by Klara Hammoud and produced by Biddayat as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The project aims to challenge existing conventions of the documentary filmmaking on multiple levels – aesthetic, narrative, and technical– while also examining growing importance of workflow throughout all aspects of production. These challenges were both facilitated and necessitated by the limited resources available to the production team and the academic context of the production. This thesis is a record of the film, from concept to completion and preparation for delivery to an audience.

Mirrors for Monsters is a body of work created by Alejandro Watson in partial fulfillment of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The body of work consists of a feature length documentary, MHD, several installations (Self-Acknowledgement/Self-Acceptance, Garden of Bodies, Why Am I Like This?, Not My Thoughts), several short video pieces (In A Dream I Saw A Way to Survive and I Was Full of Joy, Car Ride (Baker Act Version), My Lunch With Andy, Prompts) and an art book, It's All Good. The body experiments with how best to illustrate the author's various intersecting identities, as well as the experiences of other underrepresented groups. The works that comprise the body focus on different aspects of mental health, body image, and gender through the media of film, installation, and book art.

Some Southern Waters is a microbudget feature-length film written, directed, and produced by Julian Baner as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The film is a black and white, semi-abstract narrative mainly in the mystery genre, with elements of thriller, horror, and black comedy throughout. This thesis is a description of the creative impetus behind the project, as well as the technical process from pre-production through production, and post-production.

Whatever happened to Blackwater RD.? is a feature length documentary thesis film created and cultivated by Michael E. Stephenson to fulfill the requirements of the Master of Fine Arts degree in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema while attending the University of Central Florida. Whatever happened to Blackwater RD.? has met these criteria of the School of Visual Arts and Design, in the College of Arts and Humanities, by being a feature length digital film with a budget no larger than $50,000. This film is the efforts of the filmmaker to trace the failure of his original narrative thesis film Blackwater RD., attempting to discover where everything went wrong while trying to recover from such a crushing defeat. Assembled from behind the scene videos and interviews, this film represents a collected effort to discover a way to make digital cinema from multiple sources, ranging from digital cameras to smartphones, while still crafting a singular vision. Digital cinema allows for films to be made in a collage-like effort to explore how narrative can be manipulated and how a director may steer it, even in the documentary field. Through the exploration of his own failings the filmmaker has discovered perhaps the most important lesson of both academia and film: failure is always an option. To fail is a life worthy experience that one should learn from and utilize in accomplishing future tasks.