Courses
Helpful Resources
Current Degree Requirements
2025-2026 Undergraduate Academic Calendar
Cinema and Media Arts ( Media Arts ) - Bachelor of Fine Arts
*Students admitted before 2021-2022 stay with their old requirements,
but can choose to switch to the new requirements if desired.
Possible Pathways Chart
Shows the possible courses you can take within the program and recommendations from other departments.
York University Courses Website
An official YorkU website where students can navigate and see course offerings for different sessions, and find course codes for enrollment.
Media Arts Course Descriptions
[CMA 1001 3.00] Introduction to Media Industries
Course Description:
Designed to introduce students to a wide array of media arts industries, focusing on how new technologies have affected the traditional fields of cinema and media. Also explores how the internet and ubiquitous computing devices such as smartphones have become an indispensable part of producing media in a changing world.
Course credit exclusion: FA/CMA1020 3.00. Degree requirement for Cinema and Media Studies majors.
Open to non-majors by permission of the department.
[CMA 1101 8.00] Media Practice I
Course Description:
Media Practice I is an introductory practical studio course that allows Media Arts students to recognize and realize the potential of making short videos for a variety of digital platforms. Concepts and techniques of video production for the web, multimedia and interactive media platforms with branching narratives are addressed, from the workflow of a project to the editing, sound, and final output formats. Assigned projects provide students with the opportunity to explore the creative and communicative potential of very short video forms through the completion of assigned creative work. Technical demonstrations and workshops provide students with a wide range of versatile tools and approaches through which ideas may be explored and developed. Studio production and experimentation complement readings, discussions, and viewings, resulting in a more thorough understanding of historical and contemporary discourses surrounding the mobile video image.
Co-requisite: PANF 1100A or permission of the department.
[PANF 1100A 1.00] Tech Knowledge Training: Video and Sound Editing with Davinci Resolve
Course Description:
In this micro-credit course, students will learn techniques for creative media production using specific software. These short intensive courses offer technical training in how to navigate application interfaces, create media, and incorporate into a wider production ecosystem.
Open to non-majors.
[PANF 1100B 1.00] Tech Knowledge Training: 3D with Blender
Course Description:
In this micro-credit course, students will learn techniques for creative media production using specific software. These short intensive courses offer technical training in how to navigate application interfaces, create media, and incorporate into a wider production ecosystem.
Open to non-majors.
[PANF 1100C 1.00] Tech Knowledge Training: Web Coding HTML/CSS/JS
Course Description:
In this micro-credit course, students will learn techniques for creative media production using specific software. These short intensive courses offer technical training in how to navigate application interfaces, create media, and incorporate into a wider production ecosystem.
Open to non-majors.
[CMA 1123 3.00] Writing for Games & Interactive Media I
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the basic principles of writing for games and interactive media, including core concepts of storytelling, and the ways in which interactive writing departs from the traditional. From social media storytelling to branching fictions, video and text games, and non-linear interactive websites, theories of storytelling and gameplay (narratology and ludology) will inform learning through hands-on, project-based work designing characters, branching storylines, and environmental storyworlds.
No pre-requisites. Required of all first-year BFA Media Arts majors. Enrolment is limited to BA and BFA Cinema & Media Arts majors.
[CMA 1400 6.00] Film Art: An Introduction
Course Description:
Introduces the aesthetics, theory and history of film. Lectures concentrate on the elements of film, including narrative structure, visual composition and the uses of sound and editing. Documentary, experimental and feature films are encompassed.
Course credit exclusion: FA/CMA1401 6.00. Required of all first-year BA and BFA Cinema & Media Arts majors.
Enrolment is limited to BA and BFA Cinema & Media Arts majors.
[CMA 2101 8.00] Media Practice II
Course Description:
Introduces students to diverse platforms and innovative production modes in media arts. Using an innovative modular structure, the course explores a range of contemporary media practices through lectures and workshops where students are engaged through continuous making and reflecting. The course is team-taught by CMS faculty supported by guest lectures by leading practitioners and media artists.
Prerequisites: FA/CMA 1001 3.00, FA/CMA 1101 8.00. Pre- or Co-requisite: PANF 1100B 1.00 or permission of the department.
Course credit exclusion: FA/CMA 2001 6.00 or 9.00.
[CMA 2841 3.00] Digital Culture: History, Theory, Practice
Course Description:
Explores the history, theory, and practice of digital media through an examination of contemporary practice and theories of digital art, social media, gaming culture, film, new media, animation, and software studies.
Prerequisites: FA/CMA 1400 6.00 or FA/CMA 1401 6.00, or permission of the Instructor. Open to non-majors.
[PANF 2100A 1.00] Unreal Engine Introduction
Course Description:
In this micro-credit course, students will learn techniques for creative media production using specific software and incorporate previous software knowledge. These short intensive courses offer technical training in how to navigate application interfaces, create media, and incorporate into a wider production ecosystem.
Open to non-majors.
[PANF 2100B 1.00] Tech Knowledge Training: Animation and VFX with Fusion
Course Description:
In this micro-credit course, students will learn techniques for creative media production using specific software. Each section of this course will be dedicated to a specific skill set including: 3D modelling, 2D animation, video editing, creative programming, web coding. The course is designed to allow students to build on previous software experience to ensure a thorough understanding of fundamentals, of situating the technique/software within a wider set of technologies, and of how to establish a longer self-learning journey through to more advanced techniques. Each course is designed to be taken over six 2-hour sessions.
Open to non-majors.
[PANF 2100C 1.00] Tech Knowledge Training: Creative Coding with TouchDesigner
Course Description:
In this one-credit course, students will learn techniques for creative media production using specific software. Each section of this course will be dedicated to a specific skill set including: 3D modelling, 2D animation, video editing, creative programming, web coding. The course is designed to allow students to build on previous software experience to ensure a thorough understanding of fundamentals, of situating the technique/software within a wider set of technologies, and of how to establish a longer self-learning journey through to more advanced techniques. Each course is designed to be taken over six 2-hour sessions.
PLUS Six Credits from:
[CMA 2200 3.00] Early Cinema to the Coming of Sound: 1895 – 1930
Course Description:
Examines the emergence of cinema as a technology, cultural experience, economic structure, and means of artistic expression.
Prerequisite: FA/CMA 1400 9.00 or 6.00.
[CMA 2230 3.00] Film and Television as Mass Culture, 1920s-1960s
Course Description:
Presents histories and theories that focus on the role of film and television as mass culture from the 1920s to 1960s including their relationship to everyday life, social and power relations, and cultural practices in the period.
Prerequisite: FA/CMA 1400 9.00 or 6.00.
[CMA 2123 3.00] Writing for Games & Interactive Media II
Course Description:
This course investigates the ways that digital tools have changed our relationship to story and provides a detailed overview of what it takes to produce projects that combine story and technology. We will look at narrative traditions that precede the digital to understand the foundations of storytelling as an evolved and evolving form of meaning-making and then proceed through different digital storytelling modalities – textual, typographic, visual/auditory, cinematic and hypermedial – to arrive at an integrated approach to interactive, multilinear and immersive storytelling. We will analyze hypertext fiction, twine games, interactive cinema, videogames, Alternate Reality Games, and more. Our critical study will concern issues such as nonlinear narrative, network aesthetics, and videogame mechanics. Students will have an opportunity to respond to the ideas raised in this class through hands-on exploration of digital storytelling practice.
Prerequisite: FA/CMA 1123 3.00.
[CMA 2205 3.00] Exploring Media Industries
Course Description:
Exploring Media Industries develops a comprehensive critical examination of how media industry organization shapes and influences creative practice, mass culture, and society to prepare the student for both scholarly and professional careers in the media industries.
[CMA 3101 8.00] Media Practice III
Course Description:
Media Practice III builds on media fundamentals introduced in Media Practice I and II with a more in-depth concentration on developing creative projects that explore narrative and experience. Emphasis is placed on developing creative skills in virtual production and interactivity using game engines and 3D applications, while applying them in the making of interactive installations, XR projects, virtual filmmaking, or other discovered applications of these technologies. Special attention will be put on effectively incorporating composition, movement, sequence, form, light, and sound in media making.
Prerequisites: FA/CMA 1001, FA/CMA 1101, FA/CMA 2101. Pre- or Co-requisite: PANF 2100A or permission of the department.
[PANF 3100A / 3100B / 3100C 1.00] Crew Credit: Fourth Year Capstone Projects
Course Description:
In this one-credit course, students will be able to contribute to Fourth Year Capstone Courses in AMPD by taking on a significant role on a live or virtual production or animation crew. These short intensive courses offer experience in creating media as part of a larger collaboration.
PLUS 12 credits from:
[CMA 3102 3.00] Hybrid Stories for Multiple Platforms
Course Description:
Hybrid Stories is a 3rd year studio course that provides instruction in diverse methods of hybrid story creation, from writing to shooting scenes and hybridizing genres and media. While much of the mainstream continues to privilege exhausted practices of realism and naturalism on screen, more and more artists, emboldened by the expressive possibilities of new platforms and technologies, are exploring and embracing the possibilities of cross-fertilization across forms, modes, techniques and idioms.
Using diverse modes of expression, students will create compelling fiction hybrids that can better speak to the urgent multivocal realities, digital insecurities and fragmented identities of their lives in today's world. Hybrid Stories offers students a hands-on weekly workshop in research-creation, testing and exploring expanded, fragmented and innovative practices of fiction creation, for new transmedia platforms (360, XR, web, interactive).
Prerequisite: FILM or CMA 2101 or permission of the instructor.
[CMA 3103 3.00] The Interactive Documentary
Course Description:
Studies the theory and practice of interactive web documentaries, participatory online projects, and docu-games as these are reshaping the way we tell, produce and distribute documentary experience in the digital age.
Prerequisite: None.
[CMA 3123 3.00] Transmedia Storytelling
Course Description:
Provides students who have completed first- and second- year screenwriting courses with a focus on strategies for developing complex stories that can be told across multiple media platforms (film, television, web, mobile, etc.) incorporating elements of interactivity.
Prerequisite: FA/CMA 2120 6.00 or FA/CMA 2121 6.00 or FA/CMA 2123 3.00. Open to non-screenwriting majors with permission of the department.
[CMA 3200 3.00] New Waves: 1960s-1980s
Course Description:
Examines histories and theories in post-WWII global cinema including the rise of new wave national cinemas, post-colonial film, new forms of documentary and experimental film and Examines histories and theories in post-WWII global cinema including the rise of new wave national cinemas, the emergence of cinematic modernism, post-colonial film, and new forms of documentary and experimental film, in relation to stylistic, thematic, and cultural characteristics.
Prerequisites: FA/CMA 2200 3.00, FA/CMA 2230 3.00.
[CMA 3230 3.00] Contemporary Directions in Cinema and Media Studies: 1980s - Present
Course Description:
Introduces students to contemporary developments in cinema and media theory from post-structuralism to theories of new media.
Prerequisites: FA/CMA 2200 3.00 and FA/CMA 2230 3.00.
[CMA 3401 3.00] Cinemas in Canada
Course Description:
Explores critical and historical approaches to Canadian screen cultures with a particular focus on Indigenous filmmakers. Issues of sovereignty, colonialism and the settler nation are explored through the study of key filmmakers, media practices, historical policy frameworks and institutions such as the National Film Board of Canada.
Required for all Film majors. Prerequisite: FA/CMA 1400 6.00 or permission of the Film department.
[CMA 3840 3.00] Games and Media
Course Description:
Examines the history of expanded forms of cinematic narrative and interactivity within an intermedial context that includes games, environments and computers. Explores the relation between cinema and games, including non-linear modes of storytelling in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Open to non-majors.
[CMA 3842 3.00] Animation and New Media
Course Description:
Studies the proliferation of animation practices with the rise of digital media since 1990. This course introduces students to a range thinking about animation forms and new media (or digital media) practices in this period. In it, we will examine the following forms: experimental animation, animated documentary, web-based animation, the use of animated icons in the graphical user interface of computers and other digital devices, the importance of animation technologies in large-budget special effects films, and the intersections of animation and video games. As we explore these new forms of animation, students will be introduced to the critical tools used to engage with animation: recent developments within film studies, animation theory, new media theory, game studies, gender studies, software studies, and theories of consumer culture. The ultimate aims of this course are to allow students to see, think and write about the ubiquity of digital animation and new media in relation to older modes of animation, as well as to be conversant with the critical theories used to analyze animation.
[CMA 3844 3.00] The Art of Animating
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the history and practice of animation and special effects in cinematic arts. The focus is on different artistic practices, methods and techniques of animation. Students will explore stop motion, 2D and 3D digital, cel animation, keyframing and other post-production techniques through a combination of hands-on projects, screenings and discussions.
Open to non-majors.
[CMA 3845 3.00] Sonic Cinema: Designing Sound for Expanded Cinema
Course Description:
This class will examine the nature of sound design for expanded forms of cinema.
Open to non-majors.
[CMA3851 / PANF 3851 3.00] Virtual Environment Design for Performance, Interaction, and Cinema
Course Description:
Provides training to build animated, generative, responsive digital environments for filmmaking, installation, VFX, live performance and/or game design. Using 3D digital content creation and game engine software, students will create virtual indoor and outdoor sets with lighting ready for use in other productions. Previous basic experience working with 3D content creation tools is highly recommended.
Enrollment by application. Cross-listed with FA/PANF 3851 3.00.
[CMA 3852 / PANF 3852 3.00] Virtual Cinematography: Blending Real and Digital Worlds
Course Description:
Provides skills to create new cinematic experiences and workflows by experimenting with game engines, 3D software, real and virtual cameras, real and virtual sets. This course will focus on building production workflows that integrate a wide variety of content and explore the orchestration of virtual and physical camera, set, and performance. Previous experience working with 3D content creation tools is highly recommended.
Enrollment by application. Cross-listed with FA/PANF 3852 3.00.
[CMA 3853 / PANF 3853 3.00] Motion Capture: Performance and Interactivity
Course Description:
Introduces basic concepts in performance capture (motion capture), motion tracking, facial mocap for cinematography, games, and live performance. Previous experience working with 3D content creation tools is highly recommended.
Enrollment by application. Cross-listed with FA/PANF 3853 3.00.
[CMA 3854 / PANF 3854 3.00] Virtual Worldbuilding: Methods and Issues
Course Description:
In this course you will learn how virtual worlds have the potential to change actual worlds and how to use digital media technologies to create possible world experiences.
Open to non-majors. Cross-listed with FA/PANF 3854 3.00.
6 credits between:
[CMA 4101 6.00] Fourth Year Projects
Course Description:
Fourth Year Projects is the culminating course in the Media Arts curriculum that builds on the media fundamentals introduced in Media Practice I and developed in Media Practice II. Using a student-led approach, the focus is on developing a working prototype as the focal point of a creative portfolio that showcases a variety of skills. The possibilities range from interactive stories or documentaries to AR and VR games, podcasts, installations, and web projects, developed either individually or collaboratively. With guidance and mentorship, students will complete a substantial creative work on the platform of their choice.
Open to majors only. Pre-requisites: FA/CMA 3101 or permission of instructor.
Visit our Fourth Year Project Spring Showcase to see past student works.
[CMA 4191 3.00 or 6.00] Field Placement for Cinema & Media Studies/Media Arts
Course Description:
An experiential education field placement course specifically for students in the BA in Cinema & Media Studies and BFA in Media Arts. Students undertake field placements in moving image media industry sites, supervised and guided by AMPD faculty and staff.
Open to majors only.
Prerequisites: 60 credits and enrollment in the Honours BA in Cinema & Media Studies or BFA in Media Arts (i.e. students are eligible to take Field Placements in Year 3 and Year 4 of their degrees).
NOTE: PANF3999 / 4999 Cross Campus Capstone Classroom (C4) can be taken instead and will equal this course credit. https://www.yorku.ca/c4/what-is-c4/
For more information on Fourth Year Media Arts choices, please see the fourth-year experience section.