For the past two years I have had the pleasure of serving as cochair of CCA’s Media Arts Program with Barney Haynes. During the 2010–11 academic term I will continue to serve as chair, with Brook Hinton joining me as assistant chair and Jeanne Finley as curriculum coordinator.

Together we look forward to building on the established successes of the Media Arts Program as well as introducing some promising changes, including a change of name.

Exciting Changes

As of spring 2010 the Media Arts Program at CCA was officially renamed the Film Program. The program name change represents not so much as a change in direction, but rather an expansion and realignment of the program.

CCA’s Media Arts Program has historically offered a series of approaches to filmmaking and media arts: from experimental to narrative to interactive and new media. All of these offerings remain. In the new curriculum structure students are exposed to a full range of the possibilities of filmmaking and media arts practices in a required core curriculum with added emphases on narrative and new media.

Student Projects

CCA’s Film Program is designed to be multiform and expansive in its definition of narrative as embedded in all aspects of film and media arts. For example, some students may choose a path that leads to the creation of work that is driven by stories with characters an audience may come to know and care about; others may choose to pursue ideas that explore purely visual qualities and sound textures.

Student work might be a personal documentary (or a short narrative work), a lyrical experimental piece, or a three-channel installation. Projects continue to be made for the big screen, computer screen, installation screen, and beyond.

The Film Program is housed in our new facilities on the college’s San Francisco campus and includes state-of-the-art digital production and editing suites and equipment.

Filmmaking the 21st Century

Although a relatively young medium compared to other art forms, invented little more than a century ago, film has proven to be one of the most powerful of art forms. Today the term “film” is used casually to encompass so many forms and mediums. Filmmaking, as a discipline, is no longer limited to the actual material.

Digital technology is now the driving force for change in the 21st century. With digital technology everyone has access to image making and motion-picture storytelling. The advent of the Internet and cell-phone cameras has given rise to ubiquitous so-called films and videos.

Yet the art of filmmaking and innovative media art is far more complex than merely picking up a camera; creating work that is truly artful involves conceptual development, technical training, historical and theoretical knowledge, experience, and a true understanding of craft. Such are the essentials of CCA’s Film Program.

Why the Film Program?

At CCA we see it as our mission to teach, inspire, and nurture future generations of independent-thinking filmmakers, artists, and innovators.

The Film faculty is committed to helping students develop the conceptual, developmental, and craft skills necessary to bring high-level knowledge of filmmaking and media art making to their work and to their future vocation.

CCA’s Film Program aims to foster in students an appreciation for the artistic possibilities a career as a professional filmmaker or artist or innovator holds and set students on a path on which they can pursue a vocation within the film industry or as working professional artists, creating the pathways of tomorrow.

About the Curriculum

First-year Film students focus on foundational studies that teach the fundamental aspects of filmmaking and how to work with moving images and sound. Students immediately immerse themselves in the tools. Most courses are project and exercise driven—some are structured around a single student project. Production methodology might involve a one student who individually produces all phases of the film production or, alternatively, the student may work in collaboration with fellow filmmaking students.

The program’s second-level intermediate courses provide students with instruction about the aspects of narrative filmmaking such as storyboards, location shooting, and how to use higher-end digital cameras. Students are divided into crew teams, with one student designated as director and the others as crew. They learn about writing for the screen, production, how to organize shots, and editing, using such industry-standard professional digital editing applications as Final Cut Pro and Pro Tools.

Students also have the option to work with actual 16mm and Super-8mm as material.

In the third and fourth years, advanced production courses take projects through a full production cycle of development, preproduction, production, postproduction, and exhibition. Advanced-level students have the option of taking more specialized courses such as cinematography, or tutorials in motion graphics and advanced editing. Please see Curriculum for a full outline of the program.

Much learning also takes place outside of the classroom. Previous students at the advanced level have had the opportunity to go on location and take part in the making of Gus Van Sant’s film Milk; take a field trip to watch the sound mix of a motion picture at Sykwalker Sound; experience a panel discussion of Oscar-nominated directors at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles; and attend classes held in various San Francisco galleries.

Artists & Educators

As educators we are all professional filmmakers and artists. Our goal is to introduce students to the various possibilities offered working in a medium of moving images and sound. Students are challenged to create their own form and style, which we as instructors aim to nurture. Additionally, we strive to teach our students the myriad ways to work with conventions of form and technique—and even how to break these conventions once they are understood.

Building the Future of Filmmaking

Understanding and exploring the potential of film is relevant to the changes taking place in the world now and to the changing meaning of “film” as an art form. Students learn how existing systems and worlds work, yet are given the skills to create their own paths so they can help create the future of cinema and audiovisual art.

The Film Program at CCA emphasizes narrative in all its forms while simultaneously challenging students to think experimentally and conceptually. It is a media-arts program that highlights the fundamentals, in which learners start from the cinematic language we grew up with—narrative film—and master the essential techniques to invent new languages and inventive approaches to audiovisual art, whether narrative, nonnarrative, new media, or beyond.

CCA aims to give students the knowledge, support, and inspiration to create the future of film and media art making.

Related:

Read Rob Epstein's faculty bio.
Web feature: Harvey Milk Director Rob Epstein Honored