Full Sail University ICX Media, founded in 2015, is a Washington, D.C.-based digital video management and data analytics platform for media companies, brands, agencies, and creators. 27. The programs newest faculty members, Champion and Robert Corna, visiting instructor of media and film studies at BSC, have graduate degrees from two of the finest film schools in the country--the University of Southern California and Columbia University. You wouldnt think the executive who made AMC vital by programming Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead would quit to become the dean of a Christian schools new School of Cinema and Media Arts, but thats what Tom Halleen just did. Biola You get real budgets, and you have to figure that out. (Girls Raised in the South). More than 200 SCAD alumni and students contributed to 21 nominated films at the 2020 Oscars. AFI Conservatory At Hopkins famous Peabody Institute, Thomas She Blinded Me With Science Dolby runs a Music for New Media program to train students to make innovative sounds for film, television, video games and virtual reality. 29. Largest cities in the United States for Cinematography. Mount St. Marys University The universitys production workshop experience places students in a writers room environment to create episodic content, which is then filmed on historic locations and studio backlots for an immersive professional experience. Columbia College Chicagos Department of Cinema and Television Arts Department just got a new chair, Thelma Vickroy, who was the sole woman in her film class at Cal State Fullerton in the 70s, one of three women at NYU in the 80s and an award-winning documentarian. Semester internship program, SU students study in London, Prague, Florence, Bologna, Venice, Santiago, and Moscow. 43. This is a great acknowledgement of our students talent and creative work.. Ex-CAA agent Joe Rosenberg and Friends producer and longtime faculty star Jill Condon are launching an ambitious careers office to connect students with internships and mentors. Read more from TheWraps 2020 college issue here. Founded in 1967, the School of Cinema teaches history, theory, criticism and production to develop students personal voices. Another reason UCLAs future is bright as Hollywood enters the rainbow era: More than 60% of its students and teachers are people of color. The school has a social conscience, as evidenced by alumna showrunner Sierra Ornelas (Superstore, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Rutherford Falls) and her #Donation4NavajoNationChallenge, which raised $250,000 for medical supplies, PPE and other lifesavers for Navajo citizens. Grads populate sets and writers rooms at Amazon, Disney, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, ABC, CBS, NBC and abroad.

RISD was recently rated the fifth-best art school in America, and that context informs its film/animation/video department. 50. This year, seven students had films at Toronto, six in the Cannes lineup, 23 at Sundance, 10 that would have gone to SXSW and two at the Venice International Film Festival, where four alumni won the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film for Darling. Melina Lens debut, Cancin Sin Nombre (Song Without a Name) screened at more than 80 international film festivals and won more than 30 awards, including the New Voices/New Visions Award in Palm Springs. Believe me when I say this could not have happened at Yale. Theres a new, 16,000-square-foot Basinger Center for Film Studies with a soundstage and theater. Perched in heavenly hills over Malibu, Pepperdines students are 53% Christian and 88% say diversity is a Pepperdine core value. 900 Arkadelphia Road Birmingham, AL 35254. NYUs $2.25 million Black Family Film Foundation awards $150,000 in production grants, and the incoming freshman class in the undergraduate program is 55% female for the second year in a row. 23. Also Read: ShortList Festival Jurors' Advice to Aspiring Filmmakers: Find Your Voice and Collaborators | Video, 36. BU FTV alums include Paramount chief Jim Gianopulos, Uncut Gems auteurs Josh and Benny Safdie, Bonnie Hammer and Bonnie Arnold. Though the crisis shuttered the schools film productions (like the industry itself), and there was some reputational damage from USC scandals not SCAs fault, Dean Elizabeth Daley one of the most powerful fundraisers in American education said, We always say our students are set-ready. The film, engineering and computer sciences colleges collaborate on game-engine pipelines and software for previsualizing animated and live-action films. 11. Despite COVID, UCSBs Carsey-Wolf Center, endowed by Marcy Carsey and Dick Wolf, is still an important place in the film world it recently hosted New York Times critic Manohla Dargis and Alison Kozbergs virtual lecture Moviegoing in the Age of COVID-19. UCSB hosts the excellent AFI Routledge film book series and gives students entre to Hollywood. The department chair is Noah Isenberg, a veteran of New Yorks New School and Wesleyan. Emerson, with 24% students of color and 50% women, is working to increase diversity, and the latest course is Mara Agui Carters Art of Anti-Racist Media Making. 8. New courses: First Person Narrative, geared to individual and family stories; New Korean Cinema; and Storytelling Strategies: From Aristotle to Beyonc and Beyond. Indie film writer/directors Eliza Hittman (Never Rarely Sometimes Always), Andrew Ahn (Driveways, Spa Night), and Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias (Cocote) are perennial favorites at Sundance. Students win multiple Sundance honors, and two sold their thesis films to HBO. It comes after a very bad period when deans came and went amid nasty controversies, and AFI fell to its lowest ranking yet on our 2019 list. Blessed with a low 9-to-1 student/faculty ratio, UNCSAs School of Filmmaking looks like a little Hollywood studio lot, and it really is like one maybe with less ruthless cruelty, though students can probably hear stories about that from A-list Hollywood survivors like Ava DuVernay. Chapman University 5. Theres never been a better time for a film grad to get outta Dodge and into Hollywood. Theres also a BA and MA in film studies. VFX producer Brooke Noska (American Horror Story, Barry) got an Emmy nomination for The Orville, and editor Ryan Malick (Project Runway, RuPauls Drag Race) got his fifth in eight years, and his first win. California State University, Northridge Theres a joint program with Second City (which spawned Stephen Colbert and Tina Fey). Schools were chosen based on their overall ratings, reputation, notable alumni, internship opportunities, faculty accomplishment, and more. ASU Herberger is also helping turn L.A.s old Herald Examiner Building into a new 80,000-square-foot satellite campus.

The $10 million Marcus Fund for Excellence in Cinema renovated facilities, bought new ARRI, 16mm and VR/AR cameras and endowed two new Chairs in Social Justice Fiction Filmmaking (Mayuran Tiruchelvam) and African American Cinema Studies (Artel Great). Want diversity? Two hundred applicants vie for 26 spots in Rutgers film program, which is located at its New Brunswick campus, and applications are growing 28% annually. We had a board meeting and the feeling was unanimous: Were going to get through this. SAICs Black Harvest Film Festival was rescheduled from August to November, and though the Siskel Center is dark, SAICs Film Center From Your Sofa streams on, with Facebook filmmaker Q&As to watch in your sweatpants. At this years Academy Awards, 149 graduates were credited on 24 nominated films, and 40 of them had credits on Oscar-winning films. 6. Weiss, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jon Turteltaub. CSUNs Department of Cinema and Television Arts (CTVA) trains students in the art, craft and technology of filmmaking, television production (narrative and documentary), screenwriting, VR and emerging media, entertainment media management and media theory and criticism. The acting/directing faculty boasts Galina Boulgakova, a graduate of the Moscow Art Theater School, where the Stanislavski System originated. Mainstream animations gonzo cousin experimental animation trains filmmakers in stop-motion animation (Henry Selick), interactive live performances (Miwa Matreyek), and abstract and handmade films. Programs include undergraduate degrees in film, journalism, professional photography, and B.S. With the priciest of state-of-the-art facilities, soundstages, edit bays, scoring stage and IMAX theater, students have access to more technology than many cinema professionals, and they can access training in every aspect of the film, TV, and interactive media businesses, from pitch and script development to distribution. I am thrilled that our college has been recognized along with some of the countrys premier film programs, said Dr. Teddy Champion, visiting assistant professor of media and film studies at BSC. 1 spot on our top-film-school lists to the upstart David of AFI but Hollywoods Goliath is still very much standing. Pepperdine I lied about my age, he said. Once a week, we also had lessons where we were taught about production, setup and even worked on content for their social media platforms., Also Read: How the ShortList Film Festival Finalists Overcame Dark Subject Matters, Unexpected Production Challenges (Video), Stanfords Jeff Orlowski photographed by Chris Loupos for TheWrap. Thanks to the recently opened New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, Rutgers Filmmaking now has a 300-seat movie theater. Or midcareer alumni on the business side: Sonys John Weiser, Orions John Hegeman and Epixs Rachel Brill. Star alumnus Gus Van Sant is a Hollywood great, but he remains a painter and visual artist at heart (and his remake of Psycho was a Warhol homage). The SAIC Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department (FVNMA) was going great guns until the pandemic trimmed revenue by a projected $25 million, causing the loss of over 100 jobs and temporary closure of the Gene Siskel Film Center, the public face of SAIC. Skype and Zoom keep students in touch with Stewards industry contacts and others, like Dark Knight executive producer Michael Uslan and Brooklyn Nine-Nine director of photography Rick Page. Also Read: 11 Best Back-to-School Movies, From 'Animal House' to 'Mean Girls' (Photos), Trey Parkers student film from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Giant Beavers of Southern Sri Lanka.

Whats a first-rate film program doing at a liberal arts college for brainiacs? Heavy-hitter alumni like Ryan Coogler, Stacey Sher, Kevin Feige, Tina Mabry and Judd Apatow, who were themselves pivoting during the pandemic, Zoomed in to classes and for special Q&A conversations with students. Galloway, who ran THRs mentorship program, introduced the new Chapman Mentorship Program to create a pipeline for brilliant youngsters from underserved communities to work with Chapman students and professors and enroll as undergraduates, with new scholarship money from producer Chuck Lorre and Spotify, among others. Even if youre not one of the eight students accepted into Stanfords MFA program in documentaries famously the strength of its film department, whose grads often get their films on PBS and in film festivals, win scads of Student Academy Awards and get hired by HBO and others you can be an undergrad filmmaker and do fine.