<p>is there anyone who is doing or has done studio art, art history, or film majors
at wesleyan? what is it like?</p>
<p>Wesleyan has a highly regarded film department and is one of the best in the country for studying film at a liberal arts college. Keep in mind that it is Film Studies, not Film Production. My daughter is an art studio major. The art department is very small and there is only one professor per medium -- i.e painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, photography, architecture. This provides ample opportunities for close teacher interaction but due to its small size, the program is limited by the scope of the specific teacher's interest. Many students double major with art and another discipline.</p>
<p>wow! i almost thought i wrote this post cuz that's exactly what i'm interested in, film and art.
how much opportunity is there to do production? i heard there are chances, but production is just not that prevalent.</p>
<p>Film production? There is actually a lot of chances to work on student produced films, because every semester there are kids in production classes who need help, plus senior need help with their thesis films. There is also the film co-op, which is entirely student run, which produces a few student-written, directed and produced films a year. </p>
<p>However, there are not that many actually production classes. There's film production, digital production, advanced film production, occasionally an animation class, some documentary production classes, and a screenwriting class, but that’s it, and they’re hard to get into (though every film major has to do at least one). </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m a film major, and it’s a really great program. Very rigorous, but you learn a LOT about film theory and history. Plus, we have a fabulous network (the “Wesleyan Mafia”).</p>
<p>by the way, what exactly do you mean when you say it's a "great program"? is it the faculty? resources? Can you give me some specifics plz ?</p>
<p>Yes, it's faculty. Also, philosophy and setting. Jeanine Basinger, the department chairwoman, did not even have a Ph.D when she was first hired as a lecturer some thirty-five years ago. But, her enthusiasm, immense curiosity, and, collegiality not only drew students to her early classes, but also some of the biggest hitters among the English, American Studies and Art department faculties in fashioning a really trailblazing approach to the study of film, an approach that combined the essentials of liberal arts learning: observation, analysis and, above all, good writing. That approach continues to this day.</p>
<p>Combine all of that with superb facilities (paid for by successful graduates) and you have an almost irresistible setting for the study of motion pictures, the most uniquely American of art forms. There are facilities for 16mm, digital and virtual production, but, the emphasis is always on collaboration, between disciplines, between students and between departments. "Film culture is a big part of the Wesleyan campus", said Prof. Scott Higgins, author of the recently published, "Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s", the first scholarly history of Technicolor technology. Frankly, I can't think of another film department anywhere with the kind of cultural footprint that it has at Wesleyan.</p>