UCI Giving Day 2022

UC Irvine’s Department of Film and Media Studies provides students with a strong liberal arts background by combining history, theory, and practice, giving our majors the tools necessary to navigate the complex film, television, and digital media landscape.  

Led by award-winning faculty who are leaders in areas like TV, game, and digital studies, students gain skills in theoretical, visual, historical, and cultural analysis and broad knowledge of the history of moving image studies, broadcasting policy, popular culture, and social media.

The department is now the largest major in the School of Humanities, home to over 500 majors who make up one-quarter of the undergrads in the School of Humanities!  

To enhance our focus on nurturing our students’ diverse backgrounds, experiences, and potential, we seek to supplement their foundational liberal arts education on campus by increasing access to key career-building internships beyond the classroom.   

Most internships in the film industry are unpaid, and many of our students cannot afford to accept unpaid positions. Your support would help make professional internships more equitable and attainable.  

In addition, most of our students are first generation, the first in their families to go to college. Many of them do not know how to break into media production, or if they do, feel that such opportunities are out of reach.  

Internships are a great way for our students to earn career experience, make professional contacts, and help demystify the industry. 

Our Giving Day mission is to raise $7,500 to fund five internships for our Film and Media Studies students, so that they will be better equipped for careers and lives beyond UC Irvine. 

Testimonials:

“My internship at Zero Gravity Management was so valuable in steering me in the direction I want to go in the industry. I started at the perfect time - people were starting to trickle back into the office and I was getting introduced to managers left and right. I immediately started putting myself out there and helping out in all different areas of the company, from development to talent representation. One of the first things I learned at Zero Gravity is how to write script coverage, which I wrote for feature films and pilots, as well as potential scripts for the INSPIRE division at the company.  

My internship got really exciting when I introduced myself to the talent agents and their assistants. I started going to the talent department every day asking what I could help out with and it became a regular thing for them to assign me different projects. I got to work with the assistants on updating current film and television casting calls and assisting them with casting breakdowns through breakdown express. This made me realize that working for a talent agency and representing actors is definitely a potential career for me. Some other projects I was tasked with by my internship coordinator was conducting industry research on the latest trends in Hollywood and organizing the research database. I also managed Zero Gravity's ‘Below The Line’ social media accounts and website to update client reels with their new work.  

Thank you so much again for your generous contributions to the Film and Media Studies department at UCI, especially to those of us pursuing internships within the entertainment industry.” 

• Sydney Caulder, UCI Film and Media Studies undergraduate 

Double your impact! Gifts in support of Film and Media Studies today will be matched dollar for dollar up to $3,000 by alumnus Mr. Leon Dudevoir.