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The UC Irvine Department of Film and Media Studies provides a comprehensive liberal arts education exploring film, broadcasting, and digital media. Students develop expertise in cultural analysis while gaining extensive knowledge of moving image history. The program emphasizes writing proficiency through immersive engagement with cinematic, broadcast, and digital culture. Additionally, the department offers screenwriting and production courses designed to enhance media comprehension through practical experience.
Our program celebrates diversity by supporting students from various backgrounds with different interests. The curriculum takes an interdisciplinary, historically informed approach to studying visual media across all platforms. Whether examining television policy evolution or crafting video game narratives, students receive a distinctive education exploring the historical and social contexts of film, television, and digital media. Our distinguished faculty conduct pioneering research in areas including globalization, gender studies, queer theory, broadcasting, intellectual history, digital media, game studies, photography history, and national cinema analysis - with coursework exposing students to these innovative fields. Production and screenwriting classes offer practical training in creating short films, TV pilots, web content, digital games, and other visual media.
Film and Media Studies prioritizes fostering our diverse student community and their wide-ranging interests. The curriculum employs an interdisciplinary, historically rooted methodology for examining moving images across all formats. From analyzing television regulation history to developing video game narratives, students gain a multifaceted education in the cultural and historical dimensions of visual media. Our renowned faculty pursue groundbreaking research in globalization, gender studies, queer theory, broadcasting, intellectual history, digital media, critical game studies, photographic history, and national cinema analysis - with courses providing access to these cutting-edge developments. Practical courses in production and screenwriting enable students to create short films, television concepts, web content, digital games, and various visual media projects.
Student must have completed secondary school with excellent grades/marks in academic subjects and have earned a certificate of completion that enables you to be admitted to a university in your home country and is equivalent to a U.S. high school diploma. If your secondary/high school was completed in a country where English was not the language of instruction, or if you have less than three years of high school curriculum instruction in English in the U.S., you are required to demonstrate English proficiency.
Various examinations and scores may be used to demonstrate proficiency in English: Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) examination: Internet-based test (IBT): score 80 or higher; Score 6.5 or higher on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS); Freshman applicants may complete one UC approved English composition course.