Film / Animation / Video Bachelor’s Program

Sophomores are introduced to the major through a series of short assignments designed to provide a basic technical foundation in film, video, animation and digital media. Skills are further developed the following year as juniors choose to specialize in live action, animation or open media while tackling more ambitious projects involving cinematography, lighting, sound design, character design, digital editing, compositing, producing, storyboarding and interactive programming.

Upon graduating, students majoring in FAV:

• demonstrate an understanding of the plasticity of time, by working with time as a material in film, animation and video. This includes methods of the discipline such as editing, pacing structures, camera movement, composition, sound, and picture relationships. 
• demonstrate an understanding of the history and contemporary practice of film, animation and video.
• create works that demonstrate technical competence in the processes needed to create time-based media works.
• demonstrate ability to invent structures appropriate to their concept. Their work shows a marriage of concepts and execution choices.
• engage critically with their own projects, as well as the work of others, assessing assumptions made about the ideas or people represented and the implications and practical consequences of those assumptions.
• embrace experimentation and making as a form of research.
• have developed a multifaceted understanding of how meaning is constructed through narrative and non-narrative content.
• have discovered vital questions through their work that engage with and contribute to a wider community.

An in-demand department, FAV is home to approximately 150 undergraduate majors, with students from other disciplines often taking selected classes and offering different perspectives from the vantage point of their major disciplines. Juniors and seniors get the opportunity to screen finished films to a wider audience via popular spring film festivals open to the public. FAV faculty members offer a wide range of expertise in various areas and work closely with students to help them develop as strong, well-informed artists with the conceptual and aesthetic vision to reach well beyond a technical facility with film production.

FAV facilities offer production studios for film, video, 16mm, 35mm and puppet animation; digital editing and sound mixing rooms; and CGI and Macintosh workstations with a full range of professional production and editing software. But at RISD we go beyond teaching students how to use the latest technology. Instead, the idea is to master the use of tools by focusing on concepts, critical thinking and content development.

In working on individual degree projects guided by faculty mentors, seniors need to meet the formidable challenge of conceiving of and producing a final live action or animated film. All films are screened at a public film festival held in May—and many go on to become award-winners in national and international festivals, helping students to establish their names after graduation.