Loyola Marymount University - School of Film and Television

Consolidated in 2003 within Loyola Marymount University, the School of Film and Television (LMU SFTV) combines humanistic storytelling traditions with industry-standard technical training. A central tenet of the school is its intellectual property policy: students retain complete ownership of the creative projects, films, and scripts they produce, allowing them to market, enter into festivals, or independently distribute their thesis work upon graduation. The school maintains a 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio across its undergraduate and graduate programs.

Dual-Campus Footprint

Teaching and production facilities are divided between two distinct Los Angeles locations:

• Westchester Main Campus: Serves as the home for core undergraduate coursework, foundational liberal arts education, and the Student Production Office.
• Playa Vista Campus: A 50,000-square-foot facility opened in 2018 and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Situated in the Silicon Beach media and technology district, it houses graduate programs and advanced production resources.

Production infrastructure includes the Howard B. Fitzpatrick Pavilion, which features an 86-seat 4K screening theater, flexible motion-capture facilities, and an immersive media lab dedicated to virtual reality and experimental platforms. Students also utilize dedicated camera-directing stages, three green screen studios, a Foley stage for sound recording, tapeless networked post-production environments, and dedicated Avid editing suites.

Walter and Grace Lantz Animation Program

The undergraduate Animation B.A. curriculum is designed to adapt to the convergence of animation, visual effects, and real-time interactive media. The structure allows students to shift among concentrations such as virtual production, game art, and storyboarding without changing majors:

• Year 1: Centers on foundational drawing, visual storytelling, animation history, and the completion of a first animated short film.
• Year 2: Transitions to digital pipelines and introductory 3D computer animation, leading into specialized study in Traditional, 3D, or Interactive animation.
• Years 3 and 4: Focuses on advanced studio work, including real-time animation in Unreal Engine, character modeling and texturing using Maya, Blender, and Substance 3D Painter, and directing or crewing a collaborative senior thesis film.

Graduate Film and Television Production

The Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Film and Television Production is a three-year, 60-unit program emphasizing comprehensive narrative craft. Graduate candidates complete core directing and visual storytelling sequences in their first year before declaring a specialized concentration in Creative Producing, Directing (Fiction or Non-Fiction), Cinematography, or Editing for their upper-level thesis work.