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Home > Programs > Department of Film, Television and Digital Media > Undergraduate Degrees > Film and Television BA Program

Undergraduate Film BA

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Note: The School of Theater, Film and Television does NOT allow double majors.

The undergraduate Film and Television major encourages development of a personal vision that incorporates creative, practical, intellectual, and aesthetic values. Within the context of a liberal arts education, the program provides a broad background in the field and in the diversity of film and television practice, including courses in history and theory, critical thinking, animation, screenwriting, and the fundamentals of film, video, and television production.

Freshmen and sophomores enroll each quarter in one or two courses designed as preparation for the major (primarily cinema and media studies), while also completing their general education, writing, literature and foreign language degree requirements.

In their junior year, students explore and develop a range of craft skills covering all major aspects of film, television, and digital media production. In their senior year, students concentrate in their choice of film production/directing (narrative and documentary), screenwriting, cinematography, animation, digital media, or editing/postproduction. Students must complete a professional internship in their junior or senior year as part of the degree.

Our course offerings cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. Scholarly work in the areas of history, criticism and theory provide a conceptual underpinning for our world class professional training courses and an educational response to the opportunities that emerging technologies offer. Our scholarly explorations, in turn, are anchored and informed by the practice of the art.

Students have access to exceptional resources, including the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the largest university-based moving image collection in the world. The proximity of the world's entertainment center, in Los Angeles, gives students access to people accomplished in their fields, many of whom are supportive UCLA alumni. Working and highly placed professionals visit the campus regularly as instructors or come to work here as adjunct and visiting professors.

The Department of Film, Television and Digital Media empowers the creative innovators of tomorrow by training them in all aspects of the arts and crafts of the moving image, from the aesthetic to the technological. At the same time, the Department explores the best work of past masters of film and television in Cinema and Media Studies courses, and encourages students to aspire to similar accomplishments. We affirm the importance of storytelling as the form in which human beings give weight and meaning to the most important passage of their lives.

While all media technologies are means to creative ends, not ends in themselves, we believe it is essential for our students to be actively engaged in the digital and telecommunications revolution that is transforming all areas of contemporary culture. Currently, the School can boast of more than a dozen innovative initiatives that range across every program including computer assisted theater design, special effects for film and television, digital library research and archival restoration, the design of interactive texts and instructional software, computer animation and video gaming, interactive television, and the development of web-based media arts.