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Cinema and Photography (B.S.)

If you prefer to see the world through the viewfinder of a camera or projected on a screen, you're going to love being a cinema and photography major. From your first semester, you'll be deeply involved in planning, shooting, and editing film and still photography projects while at the same time learning the theory and history behind your work.

Your introductory courses will teach you to evaluate your work with a deeper understanding of what gives an image impact and meaning. You'll venture forth from film production classes with a whole new appreciation for the amount of planning and work that goes into a movie long before the cameras start rolling.

By your sophomore year you'll select a concentration in still photography, cinema production, or screenwriting. If you choose still photography, you’ll take classes exploring the practice, history, and theory of photography and American visual culture. If you're interested in cinema production, you'll take such courses as film theory, screenwriting, advanced cinema production, and selected topics in advanced cinema production. Our interdisciplinary screenwriting concentration features courses in television writing and cinema studies as well as courses from the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Whatever your choices, we have the equipment and the facilities, including three film and video studios, to help you get excellent results. All students supply their own digital SLR camera and light meter, but we provide traditional film cameras such as Bolex, Aaton LTR, and Aaton XTR Prod, and professional HD cameras. We provide our students with professional lighting equipment such as HMI and Kino Flo, and our editing labs are equipped with Final Cut Pro, Avid, and CS4 editing software.

We've developed lots of opportunities for you to try out your new skills. Our Los Angeles program arranges internships at film studios, production and post-production companies, providing real-life experience and contacts that will help you after graduation. Students in the Photo Italy course travel to that country for several weeks of hands-on photography in the summer, and other students have gone to countries such as Antigua, China, South Africa, and South Korea to get a taste of life as working photojournalists. If you can picture yourself doing any of these things, this is the major for you.