"Procopius of Caesarea: The Buildings" by Timothy Brosius

Presented at UMBC's 12th annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day: This project was a coming together of a large research effort and a film production workflow. "Procopius of Caesarea: The Buildings" took hundreds of hours over the course of half a semester to complete and along the way afforded me the opportunity to work with experts in both Byzantine history and film production. The film is about Procopius, the Byzantine historian at the time of Justinian the Great, and his viewing of the completed structure of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. I collaborated with UMBC professor of Byzantine history, Dr. John Birkenmeier. With his help and lots of research, I was able to use the actual plans of the modern day Hagia Sophia and primary source texts written by Procopius and others to create a three-dimensional model of the building as it would have looked in 560 CE when Procopius saw it. I also worked with UMBC professors Cathy Cook and Fred Worden to master the necessary production techniques to produce the film in Super 16mm color film and composite the film into the animated environments. The final step was transferring the completed work to digital video in order to capitalize on that medium's distribution possibilities.