Visiting Prof. Ronald Michael Norman offered three film courses on film genres, comedy movies and TV series, and screenwriting, respectively, at TNUA last semester.
Incorporating the visiting professor's longterm observations of Taiwan's films and his own experiences, the courses led students through an exploration of the potential of Taiwan film.
Prof. Norman has rich practical and teaching experiences. Previously a director at Horizons Productions in the United States, he has taken part in the writing of screenplays for many Hollywood film projects.
He has worked with many film professionals, such as Ridley Scott, and has produced films in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Britain, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Because of his love of Taiwan film, he has taught at various universities in Taiwan over the last 20 years or so, and has witnessed the golden age of Taiwan's New Wave film.
His screenwriting course was an intensive workshop lasting for nine weeks (from October 2016 to January 2017), during which the students worked together to write a complete screenplay that could be turned into an actual film in the future.
For his course on comedy, he showed video clips at the start of each class, and then asked students to analyze the directors' approaches and the actors' performances.
He noted that many of the films shown in class are from different cultures. But the cultural differences do not prevent the viewers from understanding the films or from winning prizes in international film festivals.