Film at Liberal Arts Colleges

hudsonvalley51 · September 27, 2010, 10:30am

My daughter is interested in studying film at college, with her current career interest focusing on directing or screenwriting. As such she is looking at many of the usual big-school suspects. She does want to be able to continue acting, however, and is possibly interested in double majoring in theater. Or perhaps in English. For this reason she has not ruled out pursuing a film degree at a liberal arts college. All of this has prompted us to develop a “Big List” (tip of the hat to swissbeauty) of liberal arts colleges that offer a degree in “film studies” in which the actual making of films is a critical component of the curriculum (as opposed to programs focusing on theory and critique of film). I make no claim that this is a complete list and would welcome additions. I would also be interested in any experiences with, or impressions posters have, of the programs on this list:

Liberal Arts Colleges With Film/Cinema Programs

Baldwin Wallace College - Film Studies (Berea, Ohio)
B-W: Film Studies Major

Bard College - Film and Electronic Arts (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York)
Academics | Film and Electronic Arts

Barnard College - Film Studies (New York, New York)
Film Studies at Barnard College

Bennington College - Film and Video (Bennington, Vermont)
Bennington College:Visual Arts

Carleton College Cinema and Media Studies (Northfield, Minnesota)
Carleton College: Cinema & Media Studies

Champlain College - Digital Filmmaking (Burlington, Vermont)
Digital Filmmaking

Clark University - Screen Studies (Worcester, Massachusetts)
Screen Studies - Visual and Performing Arts Department ~ Clark University

Denison University Cinema (Granville, Ohio)
Cinema Homepage - Denison University

DePauw University - Film Studies (Greencastle, Indiana
DePauw University - Film Studies

Franklin and Marshall College Film and Media Studies (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
[Film</a> and Media Studies — Franklin & Marshall](<a href=“Film and Media”>Film and Media)

Hampshire College - Film, Video, Photography, Communications & Media Studies (Amherst, Massachusetts)
<a href=“http://www.hampshire.edu/dof/files/FilmPhotoVideo.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hampshire.edu/dof/files/FilmPhotoVideo.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://www.hampshire.edu/dof/files/C...ia_Studies.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hampshire.edu/dof/files/C...ia_Studies.pdf</a>

Ithaca College - Cinema, Photography and Media Arts (Ithaca, New York)
Cinema, Photography, and Media Arts - Ithaca College

Lafayette College Film and Media Studies (Easton, Pennsylvania)
[Film</a> and Media Studies: Home](<a href=“http://fams.lafayette.edu/]Film”>http://fams.lafayette.edu/)

Marlboro College - Film/Video Studies (Marlboro, Vermont)
Marlboro College: Academics: Areas of Study & Degree Fields

McDaniel College Cinema Major (Westminster, Maryland)
[Cinema</a> Major](<a href=“http://www.mcdaniel.edu/6208.htm]Cinema”>http://www.mcdaniel.edu/6208.htm)

Middlebury College - Film & Media Culture (Middlebury, Vermont)
Film & Media Culture

Muhlenberg College - Film Studies (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Film Studies - Muhlenberg College

Oberlin College - Cinema Studies (Oberlin, Ohio)
Overview - Oberlin College

Occidental College - Film and Media Studies
Occidental College ::* Film and Media Studies

Scripps College - Media Studies (Claremont, California)
Scripps College : Academics : Intercollegiate Media Studies Department

Swarthmore College - Film and Media Studies (Swarthmore, Pennsylvania)
Swarthmore College :: Film and Media Studies :: Fall 2009 Courses

Vassar College Film (Poughkeepsie, New York)
Vassar Film

Wesleyan University - Film Studies (Middletown, Connecticut)
Film Studies - Wesleyan University

hudsonvalley51 · September 27, 2010, 10:34am

Note: Apologies for the dropped links. We’re having some problems with the wireless connection at the moment.

kmazza · September 27, 2010, 11:33am

If taking Directing, Screenwriting, and making a film is a critical component of the curriculum then it is a Film/TV Production program not “Film Studies”. Film Studies is reserved for the mollycoddled students who don’t like long days of shooting, getting their fingernails dirty, and like to discuss post modern PC nonsense in classes like “(Critique and Analysis of) Gender Stereotypes of gay African Americans in American film”.

hudsonvalley51 · September 27, 2010, 8:24pm

kmazza – Yes, yes. I know the routine. My daughter tells me all the time. Although there actually are some programs that are called “Film Studies” by the college that are in fact film production programs. Anyway, my daughter is not interested in the critique and analysis of of gender stereotypes of gay African-Americans in American film, but she might want to make a film on that subject.

Weskid · September 27, 2010, 8:43pm

That’s not what a lot of film studies programs are, though. For instance, Wesleyan’s film studies program is all about the formal analysis of film as an art. So even though the majority of the classes you take are not actually production classes (though there are a number of those), it’s all about learning about how film form works (and learning about the history of the form). You take classes like “Color,” “Cinema of Action and Adventure” (where all of the papers focus on how action scenes and films are structured for coherency, suspense, etc), “Film History” (where the biggest acknowledgment of race issues is “yes, there’s blackface in this film. Yes, it’s bad. Sorry, it’s an important film to watch from the perspective of the form”), etc. The general idea is that the study of film is important to the development of a film maker as an artist (which you may or may not agree with, but it certainly worked for a lot of the directors who became big in the 70s).

So, along with looking into what programs offer production, you should also be looking at what “film studies” really means at the school. As a Wes film major, I think our program is awesome (and, IMO, it’s one of if not the best Film Studies program you’ll find at an LAC), and I’d be happy to answer any questions either here or in a PM.

kaelyn · September 28, 2010, 5:37am

If your daughter has the academic record, I’d suggest she take a look at Harvard. A friend of mine is currently doing screen writing there and she seems to be loving it.

hudsonvalley51 · September 28, 2010, 8:12am

Unfortunately, my daughter doesn’t have the academic record for Harvard – or Wesleyan either for that matter. She’s a solid B+/A- student in an all honors/AP curriculum and will probably do well, but not spectacularly, on standardized tests. There will be plenty of colleges for her to choose from, but I doubt HYPS is on her horizon.

Just as an aside, I know a fair number of people who work in independent or documentary film and none of them hold their degree from “the usual suspects.” Tufts, BU, Smith, Penn State, Dartmouth – yes. NYU, UCLA, Chapman – no. Seems there are many paths open to students with an interest in filmmaking and I’d like to see my daughter explore as many options as possible before making a final decision.

Weskid – Thanks for your clarification on the focus of Wesleyan’s film program. My older daughter visited Wesleyan 3 times during her college search, during which we became aware of the film studies program. I’ve probably forgotten most of what I once knew about it so I appreciate the update.

bears_and_dogs · September 28, 2010, 8:36am

someone form this forum
must
go
to
Wes
for me and john, weskid, drae.

digmedia · September 28, 2010, 11:52am

hudsonvalley51…

Wow, your quest brings back such memories. It seemed soooo overwhelming when we started. I am looking at your list above and reread your post and realized that those were just the LACs, and that it sounds like she would also consider other universities as well.

My advice is to very quickly whittle down the list of schools, based on her criteria for production, screenwriting, and ability to double major (or at least do a minor). A huge list is just too many to look at in detail, so I’d do a high level first pass cut. My own son was so busy that I did a lot of online research to present to him and I think he was glad to have more of a limited list for decisions.

You did not mention any financial considerations, but in our case that was important. It was just a lucky coincidence that in our case his “fit” school, the type of production program he wanted, and our financial safety all came together in one school.

Looking back on all this, I wish that getting the information we needed had been less time consuming, but it wasn’t. I looked at so many websites.

Is she wanting to do all of the research? Or is she OK with you doing some of the digging and reporting back to her on what you find? All of us will recommend a particular school, but what is best for your daughter will be up to you guys.

I can only speak for my son, but the things that attracted him to his school and program (Media Arts/Production) were:
— The facilities - an entire building of studios, labs, and equipment
— The faculty - He met with the Chairperson, but before that, we were just walking around the building when another professor asked us if we wanted him to give us a tour.
— The opportunity to start making films right away
— The opportunities to get the films shown to a wider audience, not only student film festivals, but THE event every year - the 48-Hour Shootout, where team get assigned a random genre, line of dialog, and a prompt and then have 48 hours to write the script, gather the actors, do location scouting, get all the legal agreements in place, shoot the film, then do all of the post production work - editing, original music, etc. These were incredible collaborative learning experiences and essential to finding the team of people who would work together as a unit.
— Finally, a campus he felt at home with. We visited lots of schools, but the moment we got out of the car for the first visit to this school, his body language said, “I’m home.”

Anyway, good luck in this process. I’m glad we’re beyond that point, but it was kinda fun. He’s now graduated (2009) and working in the film industry. And I’m STILL HERE!!! LOL

kmazza · September 28, 2010, 7:05pm

I do think the Film Studies program at Wes is the best on the east coast.

@That’s not what a lot of film studies programs are, though. For instance, Wesleyan’s film studies program is all about the formal analysis of film as an art.

I’m not sure about Wes but ‘formal analysis’ of film as an art is pretty much an 80+ year tradition steeped in Marxism. One doesn’t have to be a ‘Marxist’ but only learn to translate the language to understand and/or discuss. I find due to the re introduction of ‘Identity Theory’ , feminism and essential-ism that many young students confuse epistemological with ontological issues.

@The general idea is that the study of film is important to the development of a film maker as an artist (which you may or may not agree with, but it certainly worked for a lot of the directors who became big in the 70s).

<pre><code>Well the movie brats did go through their formal years during the sixties NOT the 70’s which is a totally different generation. Italian Neo-Realism and French Le Nouvelle Vague got popular with many people since put on a lot of film + sound events too. The French have a major role in the beginnings and development of film and photography as an art form. It was many of the intellectuals and literary collection who started Cahiers and Auteur theory. I don’t see how one could study Cinema (which is an international art) and not come across Clement, Becker, Andre Bazin, Resnais, Renoir, Rohmer, Chabrol, etc. Many American students taking a cinema class just didn’t get many movies by Goddard or Truffaut never mind Renoir, Bazin or theorists like Brecht or even Foucault. One doesn’t need to study Russian formalism like Eisenstein but then they wouldn’t realize where many aspects of modern montage comes from.
</code></pre>

kmazza · September 28, 2010, 7:07pm

I do think the Film Studies program at Wes is the best on the east coast.

@That’s not what a lot of film studies programs are, though. For instance, Wesleyan’s film studies program is all about the formal analysis of film as an art.

I’m not sure about Wes but ‘formal analysis’ of film as an art is pretty much an 80+ year tradition steeped in Marxism. One doesn’t have to be a ‘Marxist’ but only learn to translate the language to understand and/or discuss. I find due to the re introduction of ‘Identity Theory’ , feminism and essential-ism that many young students confuse epistemological with ontological issues.

@The general idea is that the study of film is important to the development of a film maker as an artist (which you may or may not agree with, but it certainly worked for a lot of the directors who became big in the 70s).

<pre><code>Well the movie brats did go through their formal years during the sixties NOT the 70’s which is a totally different generation. Italian Neo-Realism and French Le Nouvelle Vague got popular with many people since put on a lot of film + sound events too. The French have a major role in the beginnings and development of film and photography as an art form. It was many of the intellectuals and literary collection who started Cahiers and Auteur theory. I don’t see how one could study Cinema (which is an international art) and not come across Clement, Becker, Andre Bazin, Resnais, Renoir, Rohmer, Chabrol, etc. Many American students taking a cinema class just didn’t get many movies by Goddard or Truffaut never mind Renoir, or Bazin. One doesn’t need to study Russian formalism like Eisenstein but then they wouldn’t realize where many aspects of modern montage comes from.
</code></pre>

kmazza · September 28, 2010, 7:13pm

I do think the Film Studies program at Wes is the best on the east coast.

@That’s not what a lot of film studies programs are, though. For instance, Wesleyan’s film studies program is all about the formal analysis of film as an art.

I’m not sure about Wes but ‘formal analysis’ of film as an art is pretty much an 80+ year tradition steeped in Marxism. One doesn’t have to be a ‘Marxist’ but only learn to translate the language to understand and/or discuss. I find due to the re introduction of ‘Identity Theory’ , feminism and essential-ism that many young students confuse epistemological with ontological issues.

@The general idea is that the study of film is important to the development of a film maker as an artist (which you may or may not agree with, but it certainly worked for a lot of the directors who became big in the 70s).

<pre><code>Well the movie brats did go through their formal years during the sixties NOT the 70’s which is a totally different generation. Italian Neo-Realism and French Le Nouvelle Vague got popular with many people since put on a lot of film + sound events too. The French have a major role in the beginnings and development of film and photography as an art form. It was many of the intellectuals and literary collection who started Cahiers and Auteur theory. I don’t see how one could study Cinema (which is an international art) and not come across Clement, Becker, Andre Bazin, Resnais, Renoir, Rohmer, Chabrol, etc. Many American students taking a cinema class just didn’t get many movies by Goddard or Truffaut never mind Renoir, Bazin or theorists like Brecht or even Foucault. One doesn’t need to study Russian formalism like Eisenstein but then they wouldn’t realize where many aspects of modern montage comes from.
</code></pre>

digmedia · September 28, 2010, 7:52pm

While I have loved film since my college days (heck, I just published a book on how the structure of screenplays can be applied to college admissions essays), there has been an explosion of “craftspeople” these days vs “artists” making films. There are thousands more outlets than before - everything from big-budget movies to art films (now called “festival films”) to 500 television channels to video games and animation to commercials to corporate videos.

So I think the basic question to be answered these days is… Do you want to be an artist? Or do you want a job in the “film industry.” I totally agree that to be a good artist, you need a background in film studies. To make the latest version of “Transformers” or a TV episode, you probably don’t need the history, but you do need the technical craft knowledge.

Totally depends on what you want.

flyaround · September 28, 2010, 8:11pm

Digimedia - the director of transformers is a wes grad as is the producer of mad men, buffy and how I met your mother. So I guess they did use some of that history stuff.

digmedia · September 28, 2010, 8:27pm

Wow - That is interesting for sure!!! The joke is on me!!! btw, my son watches very, very few TV programs (he does not have TV service at all, so anything he sees is via the internet). He is a fan of How I Met Your Mother.

digmedia · September 28, 2010, 8:28pm

So maybe you need film studies if you want to make GOOD FILMS. LOL

flyaround · September 28, 2010, 9:04pm

yeah, its harder than it looks.

kmazza · September 29, 2010, 3:31am

Yeah people try to poo poo on Michael Bay for some reason. I agree there were some problems with Revenge of the Fallen but even if you don’t like a movie like Armageddon its really hard to say it isn’t a well done flick. The Rock and Island are well directed too and I really like his DP and editing team. I just don’t get into petty discussions on whether the two comic relief robots were degrading to African Americans through use of stereotypes and don’t think it was intended to be disrespectful.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to work around an photographer, journalist, or film editor, director, producer, screenwriter, grip or gaffer that didn’t know what they were doing or why. I suppose my answer is that I want to be my own artist plus have better jobs in the industry. Personally I just like to create and cut experimental film synchronized to music and don’t have these big dreams of being a famous director or anything. I would be fine with getting some song played in a cool scene of a movie or doing sound for film.

I think the history helped me for visual literacy and story telling purposes. Plus I’m nearly a Film Librarian/Archivist so have to know tons of history. In my niche craft I had to learn the business, legal, historical, artistic AND scientific technical side of film (as well as film making).I don’t know TV, corporate speech commercials, or video games though just books, music, maps and film. It took me some adjustment to live and work around so many younger people that grew up consuming television and video games.

A lot of ‘artistic’ stuff I do is really just old processes that are more time consuming but with more spontaneous, novel, and almost organic or hypnotic results. Those subtle glitches of old technology can be exploited to create something interesting even beautiful I think. I’m a big fan of black and white but love primitive motion picture animation toys like the zoopraxiscope and phenakistoscope. Some people like sports, some like comic books, others just are obsessed with money and/or success, what ever that means to them…I just happen to have a passion for film, music and literature.

For those that have more artistic control over their work they tend to take their craft seriously as long as they don’t take themselves toooo seriously. There is the tradition and aspect of the business of art and creating a arc between art house and mainstream cinema audiences even if the intentions seem subtle, minute or under the radar. You have to be learned or pretty damn lucky to pull off the desired and intended psychological effect in film.

maddenmd · September 30, 2010, 1:35pm

Digmedia: Would love to read your book- is it available to the public yet?

hudsonvalley51 · September 30, 2010, 2:37pm

Wow. Interesting tangent this thread has wandered off into. I share the general high regard for the Wesleyan program and for Wesleyan University. Having been through the admissions process at Wes once, however, I can say without a doubt that Daughter #2 has about a 5% chance of being admitted.

So…any insight into the programs at the other LACs listed? (Daughter is already planning to apply to a couple universities in the US and RADA in Scotland)

Film at Liberal Arts Colleges

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