Digital Cinema Overview

The School of Art and Design's B.F.A. in Digital Cinema offers you the opportunity to take up to 24 hours of digital cinema courses. The B.A. and B.S. have a possible 16 hours in digital cinema with the option of a minor.

Each course contains several levels of the digital cinema experience ranging from history to production. The major emphasis in the upper level courses is on the individual production of digital cinema with each student expected to demonstrate his/her proficiency in the many skills involved as opposed to learning only one aspect of production, such as editing or script writing. The program does not stress one particular genre or style, but allows students to pursue their own interests which have ranged from animation to the documentary.

All projects within the studio are produced in digital video with facilities and equipment that include the following: Sony HC65 digital video cameras, seven nonlinear Apple Dual Processor G5 workstations and 25 editing stations with Final Cut Express, five stations with Final Cut Pro, fluid head tripods and lighting and sound equipment. Studios are available for screenings, animation and sound production, and are open for student use with supervision over 50 hours a week. Usually the amount of undergraduate Digital Cinema majors in the department varies from twenty to thirty, so there is rarely a strain on the availability of equipment. Currently, students are using the iBooks to edit video.

Course expenditures vary from semester to semester depending upon the length and complexity of a project a student wishes to investigate. Usually the minimum cost expected for supplies and textbooks averages from $100-150 per semester. Upper level students are required to purchase a digital video camera for their own use, similar to photography students who acquire still cameras. Also, financial aid is available both from the department (scholarships of $1000) and the university (work-study).

Recent graduates are currently employed in many facets of digital cinema making, including commercial animation, feature film and television production, Web site developers (digital cinema majors have 12 hours of required courses in Electronic Imaging), medical audio-visual production, digital cinema distribution, education institutions and self-employed studio artists.