SCA must provide structure for CAMS students

When you enter an orientation session for the incoming class of School of Cinematic Arts students, the presenter will tell the entire audience, “This is the first day of the rest of your career.”

Around the room may be production, screenwriting or animation and digital arts students, all entering into programs that offer labs, practicals and seminars that directly correlate with the work they may do in the field. But for cinema and media studies students, this message might not seem applicable.

Despite asserting that the major prepares students to work in media and entertainment fields, as a foundation for jobs in talent, management, production, or studio work, the sparse and seemingly impractical coursework for CAMS students reflects otherwise.

In order to aptly prepare CAMS students for post-graduate life and to match the practical rigor that is provided for the other majors within the film school, SCA must offer concentrations that complement incoming students’ interests and bolster their career aspirations.

Currently, the curriculum for CAMS majors follows the same sorts of early requirements that other students in the film school also must complete. But beyond the classic “Introduction to Cinema” and “History of the International Cinema I & II,” the only practice-based course that CAMS majors are required to take is “Cinematic Communication,” better known as 290. 

CAMS students are encouraged to take 290 in the spring semester of their junior year to be with students within their major (instead of with the big production kids). They are met with other CAMS students that are simply trying to get through the course or those that are excited about this type of curriculum and simply waiting to transfer to a different major within the film school. 

Beyond 290, CAMS students are required to complete four upper-division electives, which feature some interesting topics such as “Censorship in Cinema,” “Transmedia Entertainment” and “Practicum in Film/Television Criticism.” But Norris Cinema Theater and SCA 108 are the classrooms loaned out to the more “popular” electives, including “Marvel,” “Hitchcock” and “The Cinema of Quentin Tarantino.” 

While fun and academically stimulating, these electives don’t teach anything practical, such as how to extend undergraduate studies into academia beyond writing a term paper. And even though students can take courses in one of the other programs, they don’t count toward the major, exacerbating students’ course loads and sending them down a rabbit hole of D-clearance and advising check-offs.

While bachelor of arts programs in film studies are rather sparse on the undergraduate and graduate levels, there are other programs in the United States that provide their students with greater structure. The cinema and media studies major at Boston University requires students to complete 11 courses of foundational work with courses focusing on cinema in at least three regions of the world, including Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and Europe, along with the UnitedStates. At Stanford University, students declare the film and media studies major along with their preferred concentration, either culture and criticism or screenwriting.

At USC, there is an entire faculty at SCA with expertise in fields that cover more than just the basics. The cinema and media studies major could benefit from concentrations in international media, which could function like the international relations major from a bachelor of arts standpoint and require an in-depth historical and linguistic understanding to complement a specific region’s film culture. 

For students interested in academia, there can be a concentration where students are required to take a thesis course or multiple courses that encourage the publishing of academic work and pairs students with a mentor to help gain insight into graduate school and beyond. 

And for those wanting to pursue film criticism, adding more than one elective focusing on the subject and creating writing seminars similar to those in the screenwriting department, where the professor functions more as an editor, can lead a student in the right path. 

Additionally, the film school could partner with more than just the Marshall School of Business to provide students with greater practical opportunities. Along with the business cinematic arts major (which is only open to freshmen, so sorry everybody else), SCA could partner with the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism to create combined majors such as film journalism or public relations for the entertainment industry. Students shouldn’t have to scramble to find the right minor or load up on miscellaneous classes just to find the right fit. 

For a film school that was ranked No. 1 for the seventh year in the row by The Hollywood Reporter, it seems obvious that every student should get the same support — not just those that are going through the same production program as famous alumni and donors once did. 

Now, more than ever, media studies are critical in analyzing the expansion of international content into more mainstream and popular venues in the United States.; it’s inescapable. SCA should be at the forefront in helping their students meet these increasing demands.