Magic Kingdom is a feature-length, microbudget motion picture, produced, "written", directed, and edited by Milos Ajdinovic as a part of the University of Central Florida's Masters in Fine Arts program in Digital Entrepreneurial Cinema. Its narrative is a product of the collective improvisation between a group of collaborators – Chealsea Anagnoson, Henry Gibson, Mikaela Duffy and Marcus Nieves – moderated by Milos Ajdinovic. This written dissertation is an attempt to document the concepts and processes that surrounded the production of this film.

This paper describes the development of a feature length script and an independent episodic animation to be distributed online. The goal is to show that appealing animation can be achieved using digital tools, a limited animation workflow, few artists and a strict micro-production budget. I will detail the methods of animation used for the project and describe plans for its distribution to an online audience, including a market analysis and business plan.

Often overlooked in its contribution to cinema history, the State of Florida has the distinction of being among just a handful of regions in the United States to have a continuous connection with the American motion picture industry. This relationship in turn has produced iconic entertainment that has shaped the state's image to the outside world, while production spending has served as an important booster for local economies across Florida. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how the sometimes cooperative and often contentious dynamics between film and television producers and state politicians have influenced this history of film production in Florida. This can best be understood by examining the ideological divide between the pro-business and anti-corporate factions in Florida's government. Through a series of interconnected case studies that apply place-based analysis, this project demonstrates how the Florida government and communities have historically interacted with the motion picture industry. While Florida never truly became an "Almost Hollywood" or "Hollywood East," film producers and state officials were at various times successful in turning the cities of Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami into important centers for film and television production. Yet just as each of these production hubs gained momentum, resistance at the state and local level resulted in the industry's decline and departure. These moments of cooperation and conflict provide important insights into the specific environmental characteristics that inspired filmmakers to come to Florida, as well as the social-political circumstances that eventually pushed them from the state. With a close scrutiny of trade press sources, periodicals, local newspapers, and the personal papers of filmmakers and politicians, this work explains the varied reasons behind the repeated rise, fall, and occasional exodus of the state's motion picture industry. This will be achieved by scrutinizing examples that range from policy decisions made by Florida's government from the turn of the twentieth century on through to the current efforts being made by Florida lawmakers to reinvigorate the state's production industry.

Asper is a microbudget feature-length film written, directed, and funded by Isaiah D. Nearor for the requirements of earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. Completing a film production can be challenging because not every day is the same. Production took place during Summer 2021 during COVID 19. With proper guidance and safety protocol, the film made it through production. The film is a narrative thriller. This thesis explains the process and decisions made from preproduction through post-production.

Peat and Patty is a 3D animated short story of a young scientist, Patty, and her pet parrot Peat, whose goal is to save their world from a dying ecosystem. Ultimately, they inadvertently receive help from a nearby polar bear which leads to the success of Patty's experiment. The purpose of this story is to highlight the dangers of global warming to our own ecosystem thus building eco-consciousness in viewers. We currently have natural disasters increasing in frequency, a rising global temperature, and pollution in our bodies of water (Rossati). By personifying nature, animation can invoke empathy from viewers towards their environmental issues in the real world. In Peat and Patty, Polar Bear is one of the personified animals I use to draw emotion from viewers by highlighting the bear in its melting ecosystem. Ideally, Peat and Patty will inspire viewers to empathize and reflect on how they can help find solutions to the temperature crisis on Earth before the effects of global warming are irreversible

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The report details the development, pre-production, production, and post-production stages of Plus/Minus. Plus/Minus is a short, narrative film about about a young couple examining their relationship as they await the result of a pregnancy test. / text

This thesis examines the industry of non-profit educational filmmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa, from the 1930's to the present, with particular attention on the contemporary period of video production from the late 1980's to approximately 2010. This thesis, first, identifies that there is a consistent industrial infrastructure around non-profit educational filmmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has not previously been articulated. Second, it describes the industry's historical origins and contemporary manifestation, delineating the pathways for funding, systems for production, and avenues of distribution and exhibition, as well as the ideological underpinnings of each. Finally, this thesis proscribes alternative industrial practices for the imagination and execution of non-profit educational videos that alleviate some of the otherwise deeply engrained hierarchical features of the industry by drawing on several examples of recent innovations in the industry. This thesis claims that the standard procedures by which non-profit educational films and videos in Sub-Saharan Africa come to be are problematic in the way that they maintain colonial hierarchies between Western philanthropic funders, cosmopolitan humanitarian professionals acting as producers, African casts and crews, and audiences that are necessarily objectified in order to be studied quantitatively. This structure has profound effects on content, most recently evident in neoliberal ideas that valorize the privatization of solutions to public health problems and quaint stories designed to encourage audiences to emulate ideal behavior based on Western gender norms as a primary solution to complex social problems, such as HIV/AIDS. Drawing on examples from recent innovations in the industry, this thesis finally proposes that changes in the balance of decision-making power in the African educational film and video industry - changes such as sourcing audiences for stories addressing HIV/AIDS, integrating with existing media markets, or more loosely providing international support to existing local initiatives that pinpoint local concerns - are necessary in order to better realize the potential of cinema to effectively address the myriad of social, environmental, political, economic, and medical challenges faced by real and distinct Sub-Saharan audiences.

This report describes the inspiration, writing, development, pre-production, production, and post-production of the graduate thesis film Pō. / text

The thesis revisits film and film-culture history in Sweden, Denmark and Norway with a view to discourses and practices of the inter- and trans-Scandinavian in the silent era. Excluding the earliest films, but including the transition to synchronised sound, it covers the period of the 1900s to 1930 with emphasis on the 1910s and 1920s. The thesis identifies notions about the relations between the Scandinavian and the national by means of a number of case studies based on textual historical sources. As a consistent Scandinavian perspective on this period is new, the investigation substantially supplements and revises the individual national film histories of these countries. It adds missing context to national developments and makes visible border phenomena such as transnational collaborations and co-producing practices. The thesis finds that film production in Scandinavia in the silent era was orientated towards one of two poles, at times combined or in a state of negotiation: international economic ambitions or national cultural aspirations. The latter was frequently conceptualised as northern, Nordic and Scandinavian. ‘Scandinaviannesses’ performed when drawing on nature, folklore, literature and heritage, not least that of Norway, were employed for use in and out of Scandinavia by means of strategies of ‘double-entry book-keeping’.  During the period, the notion of location underwent changes from an illusory, theatrical device to an inherently meaningful entity carrying identities infused with the Scandinavian. Examining the effects of shared comprehension of language and a shared recent history of Scandinavist ideas, the thesis identifies instrumental notions of kindredness and senses of cultural proprietorship extending to the output of the neighbouring countries. These notions were mobilised selectively within film culture and motivated practical transnational collaboration from the side of the authorities as well as in trade organisations.