Our film students do it all. Our approach to working with the moving image encompasses storytelling, digital and analogue techniques, history, and criticism. With a focus on hands-on learning, the program weaves together currents of dramatic, documentary, and experimental film practice. You will study cinema as an art form while learning how to be part of a crew, collaborative team, and industry.
Students can access NSCAD’s top-notch equipment and facilities at a dedicated Media Arts campus in a (surely) haunted historic building at the foot of Citadel Hill. Combining creativity, practical technical skills, and organizational aptitude, learn how to balance collaboration with vision (and caffeine addiction) as you cycle through departments: screenwriting, directing, cinematography, production design, sound, acting, and post-production (editing, sound design, colour correction, and visual effects). Shoot on analogue or high-end digital video in our 3,000-square-foot soundstage or use the scenic and scrappy city of Halifax as your set.
FOUNDATION PROGRAM: You will start your NSCAD degree with an immersive Foundation studies program. This first year introduces you to all the disciplines and practices we teach at NSCAD, and it will equip you with the critical and creative skills you need to thrive in art and design school.
Film students practice in the Academy building alongside their Expanded Media siblings and have access to some of the best facilities in the country including:
By their final semester, Film students will have lost much sleep and pulled off low-budget miracles carrying out multiple roles on their classmates’ films, including producer, director, actor, animator, and screenwriter among myriad crew jobs. These films are screened in an annual cinematic extravaganza for the NSCAD community.
You will leave NSCAD ready to work in the film industry, to pursue your own individual filmmaking practices, or form a production company with your classmates. And, thanks to NSCAD’s global network, many alumni work in screen industries locally as well as in major centres like Toronto, Vancouver, New York or Los Angeles.
Alumni films have premiered at top-tier festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, and the British Film Institute, and picked up prizes from San Diego Comic-Con, the Canadian Screen Awards, and the International Film Critics Awards (FIPRESCI Grand Prix).
