Film / Animation / Video
In Film/Animation/Video (FAV) you explore the art of the moving image, learning to master the tools needed to articulate a creative vision, whether using film, animation, installations, interactive media or a combination. Faculty support you as you explore the technical, aesthetic and conceptual questions central to creating strong content with a unique voice.
Degree program
With the option to focus on live action, animation or open media, the FAV bachelor’s encourages you to make work in a range of genres, master technical skills and deepen your knowledge of the moving image as a powerful art form.
In the studio
In the studio, FAV majors bounce ideas off each other while focusing on making documentary, experimental and narrative films or animated work using a wide range of techniques, from CGI to hand-drawn to stop-motion animation and more.
FAV Senior Show 2025
Live screenings: May 9–10 at the RISD Auditorium, 7 pm
Streaming on YouTube: May 16–17, 7 pm
In celebrating this year’s FAV graduates, our annual exhibition of senior degree projects showcases each artist’s vision, commitment and passion come to life. Each film marks a year-long process of growth, challenge, collaboration and joy, and an open invitation for viewers to join the filmmakers in their individual and collective journeys.
Movement Lab
This interdisciplinary space supports investigations into the social, cultural, ecological and expressive properties of movement through experimental research, active learning and exchange. It houses technologies to study and create movement, as well as a growing collaborative archive of works generated within it.
Student work
Television and film producer Ryan Cunningham has collaborated with acclaimed comedians like Amy Schumer, Tracy Morgan and John Mulaney on numerous high-profile projects. The co-owner of NYC studio Running Man consults on scripts, works on set during shooting and oversees “pretty much everything that happens from the moment the camera stops rolling to the point when a show airs.” While still at RISD, she started her career as an intern for WGBH public broadcasting, where she went on to win an Emmy for producing the children’s series The Electric Company.
Within five years of graduation, video artist Ryan Trecartin had landed a trio of major awards, racking up more than $200,000 in art prizes leading the art critic for The New Yorker to proclaim him "the most consequential artist to have emerged since the 1980s” and New York Times critic Roberta Smith to predict that he’s “bound for greatness.” A regular collaborator with RISD Sculpture alum Lizzie Fitch, Trecartin has shown work in solo exhibitions all over the world, from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and MoMA PS1 in NYC, to Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria among many others.
Known for his audacious, often offbeat movies, director Gus Van Sant has built his success on a magical combination of ingenious writing, perceptive casting and a healthy obsession with detail. From My Own Private Idaho and Drugstore Cowboy to the Oscar-nominated Good Will Hunting and Milk, he has shown great range while maintaining an independent voice.
Featured stories
The celebrated pianist and composer used his improvisational skills to collaborate with faculty and students in RISD’s Film/Animation/Video department.
Offered through the Film/Animation/Video department, the course explored the role of movement in public projections that breathe new life into the built environment.
Faculty members Sara Jordenö and Pouya Ahmadi and alum Nina Martinez view forced migration through unique lenses and present radical and creative interventions.