The Film and Digital Media major at UCSC offers an integrated curriculum involving theory, criticism, and cultural analysis, as well as a production program in the aesthetics and techniques of film, video and digital media. This Bachelor of Arts degree program provides students with the critical skills, theoretical concepts, and historical knowledge necessary to analyze cinema, television, video art, and new media, along with the up-to-date technical knowledge, practical skills, and artistic background needed to produce film, video, and digital media. The major provides a course of study that develops an understanding of moving image and digital media as essential tools of communication and artistic practice.

Students in the general Film and Digital Media major develop an understanding of major movements in world cinema and different aesthetic approaches to the medium, while also studying the cultural impact of television and the rise of video and digital art in recent decades. Students in the highly selective Production Concentration are encouraged to demonstrate technical proficiency and creative vision in film and digital media production while creating films, videos and digital artworks. Students admitted to the Critical Studies Concentration focus on advanced study of moving image history and theory.

Students in all facets of the major develop skills in media analysis while maintaining a broadly-based liberal arts perspective. The UCSC program is interdisciplinary, combining theory and practice in film, video, and digital media with study in other areas of the arts, humanities, and social sciences that help students understand the role these media play in society.

Over the years our graduates have established careers as professionals in the fields of film, video, television and digital media, working as filmmakers, editors, digital media artists, film archivists, media educators, film festival curators, script analysts, television producers, computer programmers and studio executives. Recent graduates have screened work at the Sundance Film Festival, on HBO, Cinequest, Milan Film Festival, and Santa Cruz Film Festival. Graduates of the Film and Digital Media program also have a strong track record of gaining admission to the top graduate programs for M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees, including USC, UCLA, NYU, Columbia, The American Film Institute, Cal Arts, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.