More about our degrees

This foundation course in film studies is a requirement for all film majors and minors and is recommended as your first film class for all subsequent film electives. It introduces you to the formal building blocks of films: narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. We study the operations of each of these formal parts in detail and then consider how they work together. The course will train you in the specific critical methods necessary to describe, analyze, and appreciate the film text. 

Why study old films and media? What are the best methods for enjoying, understanding, and watching these moving image artifacts? What do the past artistic, political, and technological movements that created them have to say to us today? As a technology, art, industry, and cultural force, film dominated the twentieth century and continues to influence the media landscape of the twenty-first century. This course provides a survey of film and media history, moving from the invention of the cinema in (approximately) 1895 through the 1940s. The class covers film movements such as early independent Black filmmaking, Yiddish film, Soviet silent film, German Expressionism, and the Mexican Golden Age. Throughout the quarter, we will collectively ask how to best approach these films, and what they can tell us about our contemporary relationship with moving image media. Students will leave knowing both the major developments in film history and different historiographic methods that can be used to study this history.

It is impossible to talk about the City of Angels without talking about its movie business. The history of American cinema is so intertwined with Los Angeles that the term Hollywood is used interchangeably with American film worldwide. This course will look at the history of Los Angeles cinema and the complex relationship that American film has had with its host city throughout history. We will look at the mythical allure of the region that enticed film pioneers to leave the East Coast for the land of sunshine - a place that journalist and labor activist Carey McWilliams called An Island on Land. We will consider the ways that Los Angeles is depicted by native Angelenos and by outsiders. This course will also look at the diverse L.A. Rebellion School, the city's penchant for destroying itself on film, and how the late 70s/early 80s Los Angeles music scene fueled a punk aesthetic in independent films. Lastly, we will explore Los Angeles neo-realist cinema - a cinema of marginalized voices that contrasts sharply with the glittering image of the city in mainstream American film and television.

This introductory screenwriting course will provide you with a working knowledge of screenplays, teleplays, plot structure, character arcs, dialogue, scene construction, and story conflict viewed through the exciting prism of Hollywood.

Through lectures, discussions and workshops, you will break down narrative films and their corresponding scripts, dream up marketable, high-concept ideas, convert such ideas into treatments, and bring these treatments to life in the form of a “spec” screenplay. Along the way, you will also learn how to navigate the “biz”, meet some exciting industry gatekeepers, and learn how to speak “industry speak.”

In this introductory course, we will explore the foundational elements of film form–including cinematography, editing, lighting, and sound–and develop the technical proficiency to put these elements into practice. Through a range of assignments emphasizing imaginative problem solving, collaboration, visualization, and critical media literacy, we will explore the three primary modes of filmmaking: experimental, documentary, and narrative. We will examine the formal approaches that have historically defined these modes, put our findings into direct practice through a series of audio-visual projects, and engage in regular critiques of student work.