MISSION OF THE
CINEMA AND TELEVISION ARTS DEPARTMENT
The mission of the CTVA Department is to instill in students the knowledge, expertise, and creative skills that will allow them to pursue their goals in the fields of cinema, television, screenwriting, management, radio, and multimedia. The CTVA curriculum promotes the critical, analytical, creative, ethical, and conceptual thinking that will enrich the students’ academic and professional careers.
GOALS:
The department’s BA program is structured to accomplish the following goals.
1. To educate student as independent and life long learners who are flexible and equipped to survive and thrive in a technologically fluid environment.
2. To ensure our students are grounded in the theory, history and practice of cinema and television in order to create and generate new methods and new ways of being in the emerging multimedia and culturally changing world.
3. To increase our engagement with the entertainment community for the academic benefit of our students, for the financial enrichment of the department, and for the enhanced reputation that will accrue to our college and school.
The CSUN Cinema and Television Arts program has always defined itself as a broad-based generalized curriculum at the undergraduate level. We deliberately have tried to avoid being characterized as a specialized program in any one area, such as production, theory, writing, and management. Our philosophy has always been that a thoroughly educated professional in any aspect of the media industries should have a solid grounding in most of these areas.
The CTVA major is designed for students who plan a professional or academic career in radio, television, film, multimedia or interactive multimedia (either in a management or creative capacity), or in related scholarly areas. The major has the dual function of (1) providing a scholarly framework for a general investigation of mass communication arts, and (2) developing competence in specific areas of the profession based on a theoretical, technical and professional knowledge of the mass media.
We have one of the largest undergraduate programs in the country based on this type of generalized approach to the field.
The CTVA Department also offers a Master of Arts in Screenwriting. Graduate courses are continually amended to reflect the current states of both the film and TV industries and academia. We believe that a thorough grounding in the history of cinema, generally, and the craft of screenwriting, specifically, will enrich the quality of screenplays produced by our students. It is our goal that students leave the MA program with knowledge of the craft and art of screenwriting, with a thorough understanding of the industry, and with a portfolio of professionally crafted scripts ready for submission to agents, studios and producers. Our Master of Arts in Screenwriting program has been developed to prepare students for professional advancement in film and television.
Sincerely,
Robert Gustafson
Cinema and Television Arts