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The Master of Science in Fiction and Entertainment is a one-year, three-semester program where students work with world-renowned professionals in the entertainment industry to develop expertise in world-building, storytelling, film, visual effects, and video games, to build new forms of creative practice.
Coordinator: Liam Young
Program Faculty: Alexey Marfin, Shuruq Tramontini, Orin Torati
We are at an interesting moment where the technologies of filmmaking, visual effects, VR, and video games are collapsing together. The entertainment industry is now focused on building immersive worlds and SCI-Arc is uniquely positioned to train students in these new practices of spatial storytelling. Our students can work on the next Hollywood blockbuster, virtual reality environments, video games, viral videos, or political campaigns. It is urgent to widen the breadth of architecture and design beyond just buildings alone.
Our perception of the world is unquestionably determined by the extraordinary shared languages of fiction and entertainment, through which we exchange ideas and engage with our environments. Given the critical importance of media in the production of culture, there is an urgency to widen the scope of architecture beyond the built environment. Fictional worlds have always been sites within which we can prototype new scenarios and emerging cultures.
SCI-Arc’s MS program in Fiction and Entertainment provides the opportunity for students to learn the techniques of popular media as well as employ a broad range of digital tools to imagine, visualize, and produce alternative worlds. Deeply embedded in the entertainment industry of Los Angeles, SCI-Arc’s Fiction and Entertainment program challenges students to develop provocative narratives that critically examine emerging conditions of contemporary life.
The Fiction and Entertainment curriculum simultaneously creates space for students to develop their own interests, passions, and agendas while directly focusing on preparation for careers that will continue to propel their professional practice after graduation.
Students are exposed to a broad cross-section of professionals in film, game development, commercial production, visual effects, and other design industries, while supported to develop a body of work that will help them to transition into their chosen field.
Recent graduates from the program are developing careers in production design, creative direction, video games, visual effects, commercial and TV production, media art, and design research. Several Fiction and Entertainment alumni have shared their trajectories upon completing the program in the Graduate Experiences section below.
The Master of Science program in Fiction and Entertainment is organized as a year-long thesis project completed across three semesters. The core of each semester is the design studio during which students work with program coordinator Liam Young and program faculty Alexey Marfin to develop either individual or group projects.
The three-semester sequence begins with a focus on worldbuilding, transitions into storytelling in the second semester, and ends with an emphasis on production in the final semester. Within this framework, students are encouraged to develop a unique project towards a cohesive body of work that may take the form of a short film, animation, music video, documentary, video game, VR environment, theatre experience, or performance.
The design studio curriculum is supported each semester by a Design Lab course which serves as a platform for supplementary workshops, talks, and mentoring sessions led by world-renowned filmmakers, concept artists, screenwriters, and animators from the film and entertainment industry.
The program draws industry partners and intellectual collaborators from companies such as Framestore, Sundance Institute, Disney Imagineering, Vice Media, Netflix, Digital Domain, and Imaginary Forces. Instructors and lecturers in the program include:
Ongoing and former guests include the following and many more:
The Fiction and Entertainment program provides individual mentorship to equip students with a wide range of industry-standard production and post-production skills. Depending on the conceptual direction of each student's thesis project, they can learn workflows in visual effects ranging from digital compositing, hard and soft surface 3D modeling, simulation and FX, texturing and rendering, VR and game engines, to traditional techniques in cinematography, editing, direction, and on-set production. Whether entering independent and freelance industries or the commercial world, Fiction and Entertainment empowers students with both the ability to produce their own work and to work within industry-standard pipelines of larger studios.
SCI-Arc is grateful for the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Earth Mother Sky Father is a live-action music video that takes place in the year 2030, when the Congo is no longer shipping unrefined rare earth minerals out to sea, but is keeping its wealth onshore and in the ground. The processes and infrastructure of mining have been revalued and ritualized as an important aspect of local culture. This is Afrika’s future through dance—a ceremony for the God of Rare Earth. The music film features a performance from acclaimed street dancer Storyboard P playing the part of Woot, an Excavation Programmer and is supported by the sonic sounds and dissonant electro haze of the infamous duo Shabazz Palaces from Sub Pop Records.
In the midst of a bustling and vibrant Thai festival, a delivery driver sets out on a transformative journey. The animated short film Himmapan transports us to a semi-flooded future Bangkok, where digital embodiments of culture, belief, and humanity coalesce harmoniously. Guided by his impatient digital companion, the driver navigates the terrain of the future city and uncovers connections that transcend the superficial and begin to enter the realm of spirits.
Where Turtles Fly is a third-person indie game capturing the story of a young refugee boy who has fallen over the side of a boat. He washes up on the shore of a city that doesn’t want him, and with just a phone—his only connection to his loved ones—he begins a journey to find a new home.
Created from 3D scans of Beirut, a city with the highest rate of refugees in the world relative to its population, the young boy travels between fantasy and reality, traversing a surreal urban landscape of surveillance drones, watch towers, and monsters of trash.
Against the backdrop of a recorded phone call between Los Angeles and Bangkok, this animated short film chronicles the nostalgic memories of a Chinese immigrant's home in the 1970s Thai slums. A Place to Call Home captures a series of evocative memories and vignettes to explore the concept of home and what it means to different people. Whether it's the difficulties of a daily routine, the warmth from nature or the simple joy of being surrounded with empathy, the film celebrates the powerful sense of belonging that comes from feeling connected to a place.
BREACH follows a radical religious group composed of displaced wildfire victims as they reclaim the blaze through material sacrifice and BREACH is an artwork built within a game engine that speculates on the interdependence between technology, materiality, and wildfire in a climate change transformed future Southern California. “BREACH comes out of my own experience with wildfire,” says Farin, “Growing up in the foothills of Los Angeles—having been evacuated multiple times—and ironically, a few weeks ago, I was forced to grab the hard drives containing this project to escape the flame.” BREACH will see its first iteration as interactive installation in November at MIRA Festival 2019 in Barcelona.
The Pantheon of Queer Mythology is a fashion editorial produced in virtual reality. The fashion is a collaboration between a diverse ensemble of queer artists under Agudo’s creative direction, captured and showcased through the use of photogrammetry.These scenes are capsules of worship, conflict, love, and despair, and throw light into what it means to be queer today. These stories reference the important heritage of our queer forefathers, foremothers, and foreparents and these deities are the genesis of a new mythological archive of characters inclusive of spectral sexual and gender identities.
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR, Ainslee Alem Robson (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Ferenj. A Graphic Memoir in VR was an official selection of 2020 SXSW Festival and 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. It has since been touring festivals internationally, including Worlding Worlds at Mu Gallery in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and Cleveland Film Festival. Ferenj is a VR film in which guests are invited to inhabit a point cloud dreamscape. Here, home is a postspatial experience that is extended within the nonspaces of history, language, culture, music, and time. Ferenj is an immersive graphic memoir representing key moments from the director’s own "tezeta,” getting lost in liminality, learning how to make sense of her Ethiopian-American identity in the diaspora. This afrosurrealist VR film is an experimental form of emancipatory thought and resistance to othering, using photogrammetry to reclaim these spaces in the director’s own terms and redefine the boundaries between fragmented memories and the digital imaginary.
MOJO is a computer-generated music video that presents a future in which Afro-American values are "the predominant cultural model.” Vast machines operated by music producers move over a flood plain landscape, using bass notes from amplified music to vibrate bodies of water. These vibrations displace the water so that it irrigates the surrounding soil, watering plants distributed by seed-dropping drones. The music video portrays a world in which automation has removed the need for manual human labor and landscapes has become a platform for self-expression. African-Americans who were historically regarded as property or machines now use machines in the service of leisure and expression.
Bare Bones is an animated story of interpreting, extending, and questioning what makes us human and what makes our environment. It is not a hazard of life, nor an accident, nor a product of the imagination, but a strange in-between. An experience of ending. An experience that cannot be attributed to anyone, because it belongs to no one person. To see your world suddenly collapse is to have to reinvent everything or surrender, to reclaim your life or end it, to reevaluate your beliefs or deny them.
Last Choice is a hybrid documentary exploring Hikikomori, a condition of social-withdrawal prevalent among young men in Japan. Set during the deadly earthquake and the tsunami of 2011, the film follows a 'hikikomori' who for three years has locked himself in his room playing video games and now faces the dilemma of whether to leave or stay, which ultimately is also the choice between living or dying.
Valentine in Things City is a research and design project that imagines the future of post-human spaces like Google data centers and Amazon warehouses. Using the same artificial intelligence code that organizes logistics infrastructure, a fictional fulfillment center at the scale of a city has been procedurally generated. Things City is designed to accommodate only delivery drones, logistics bots, and packages as its citizens. Through the eyes of the city’s machines, we watch as a girl enters Things City on Valentine’s day searching for a lost package.
Vesak is a Buddhifuturist fiction built in a real-time game engine. The film is based on factual events of Buddhism Festivals that are reimagined in an alternative history. By developing a stylistic Techno-Chan aesthetic, the film explores the emergent relationships between technology and ritual against the backdrop of animism, nature, and quantified spirituality. Vesak is premiering online with the film and culture platform Nowness.
Current Affairs is an interactive VR experience that takes audiences on a journey into the depths of a plastic polluted ocean, where an octopus leads us to the unknown Pacific garbage island. Working with real time datasets that come live and direct from the deep sea, this immersive environment changes and responds to reveal the current geomythology of the plastic island and makes tangible the strength and pollution of deep sea currents. With the octopus we drift beneath the waves and confront the hidden consequence of our daily routines. But what is the plastic island, and does it really exist? Or is it just an anecdote to confirm our worst fears about overconsumption? A cloud drifting and floating through media spaces and digital forums? A society of objects created on a planetary scale, an accumulation of our cultural traces and artifacts.
Rick Farin (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Director & Digital Artist at Actual Objects
"Soon after graduation from the Fiction and Entertainment program I co-founded Actual Objects, an experimental creative studio of artists, architects, and creative theorists who use technology to develop critical work about the changing world around us. AO is now known for its provocative work for artists and clients like Marine Serre, Hood By Air, Travis Scott, Nike, MoMA, and Yves Tumor, among many others. AO specializes in creative direction, music videos, fashion campaigns, album covers etc. -- and we are currently in production on our first set of short films. The studio now also employs a group of recent Fiction and Entertainment graduates who apply their knowledge of game engines, animation, and film to our varied project work."
Andrew Hu (Fiction and Entertainment '21)
Environment Artist at Blur Studios
"Within the Fiction and Entertainment program I developed an animated short film titled 'Redspot', a speculative narrative that explores social media ethics in our society through the eyes of a content moderator. Across the development of the project I was able to engage directly with artists in the animation/video game industry, build a strong portfolio and enhance my technical skills - from modeling, texturing, rendering and compositing. This helped me achieve my goal of moving into a full CGI animated production company.
Following graduation, I started my professional career at The Third Floor as a pre-vis compositor for the feature film, Thor Love & Thunder and Shazam Fury of Gods. After that, I’ve been working at Blur Studio, a Los Angeles production company specializing in CGI animation and design. Renowned for creating triple-A game cinematics and animated series. I’ve had the chance to contribute to projects like Love, Death & Robots, Call of Duty, Valorant, and many others."
Christian Pepper (Fiction and Entertainment '20)
Set Designer
"One of the real values that the Fiction and Entertainment (FE) program provides is a broad cross-section of what paths are open in the entertainment industry. FE isn't just tool learning, and it's not just a film school. It's like a sandbox program, and it puts you in the dirt learning real industry methods and techniques (compositing, game engine workflows, etc.). Colleagues that I interact with everyday are often taken back by the exposure that an outside program like FE is able to provide in just a single years' time.
After graduating I began work as a studio assistant for Lucy McRae, helping produce multiple exhibitions, short film projects, and sculptural pieces. Additionally, the FE program connected me with a production designer who helped set me up with my first official position in film and television in the art department for the HBO television show Perry Mason. After the HBO project I was able to join the union as a Set Designer working for Production Designer of The Batman, James Chinlund, on Darren Aronofsky's 'Postcard From Earth' which premiered at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas."
Lu Te-Hsing (Fiction and Entertainment ‘18)
Creative Director at Unit9
"Fiction and Entertainment is an ambitious program that focuses on the future of media and storytelling, unlike any other academic approach I’ve seen before. With the resources and support the program provides, each of us established individual workflows that correspond specifically to our projects. The numerous guests from different disciplines come in weekly, exposing us constantly to the latest trends and technologies. To seek the balance between ideology and practice, we learn different tools as languages to communicate with mentors and use in the industry. It’s a program worth investing in for those who are fluent in techniques yet not satisfied with traditional forms of practice, and those who have strong visions and a passion for developing their own personal projects.
During my time in the program, I developed the short film Last Choice. The project explores “Hikikomori,” the phenomenon of social withdrawal prevalent in Japan, through the lens of fiction and documentary. Last Choice won Best Direction and Best North American Short Film in the Asia South-East Film Festival, and it was nominated for the LA Independent Showcase, New Filmmaker NY Film Festival, Docs Without Borders Film Festival, Asian Film Festival Of Dallas, and the Houston Asian American & Pacific Islander Film Festival.
After graduation, I started working for UNIT9 as a junior creative director. UNIT9 is an international production company that produces interactive experiences, including AR, VR, gaming, film, installations, and immersive theater. We work closely with teams from Nike, Vice, Tinder, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Starz, Gucci, Chanel, Pandora, Netflix, Snapchat, Oculus, and many other companies that are interested in unexpected and unique productions."
Ina Chen (Fiction and Entertainment ‘20)
Unreal Engine Supervisor at DNEG
"During the program I had the chance to work on ideas that span
across various industries both conceptually and techinically. I was able
to use the resources and spend quality time developing projects that
are artistically driven and have personal value to myself, while
exploring mediums that are helpful for my professional paths. This
allowed me to truly use the program as a playground and I was able to
land on projects and jobs I was interested in upon graduation.
I
have been working for VFX studios and experiential creative studios on
Virtual Production projects as well as Final Pixel projects using Unreal
Engine. The flexibility of the software itself plus diversity of
knowledge I gained from Fiction and Entertainment has allowed me to be
working smoothly across industries and project types including but not
limited to Music Videos, TV, Feature Films, Documentaries, Concert, Art
Exhibition and Festivals, namely Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman, Aku
Art Basel Miami, Maroon 5, Icelandic National NYE VR concert with Sigur
Ros, as well as Commercial and VFX projects where I worked closely with
Beatsaber/Oculus, NOWNESS, HYPEBEAST, NIKE and many others."
Paul Krist (Fiction and Entertainment ‘16)
VFX Compositor at Framestore
"Every short film that I made at SCI-Arc pushed me to learn new tools to better tell a story. We travelled through India with the studio and I worked with local actors and producers to develop a speculative fiction set in a hybrid Los Angeles and Mumbai cityscape. We developed skills in both traditional in-camera cinematography and digital visual effects. Ultimately, through the studio I developed the knowledge and professional connections that helped me to get a position as a compositor at Framestore in Los Angeles. Here I had the opportunity to not only work on some Hollywood blockbusters like Marvel’s Thor Ragnarok but Framestore also allowed me to work in their London HQ where I gained more experience on TV shows like Black Mirror, Virtual Reality Rides, feature films and commercial work before coming back to Los Angeles again. Now I supervise everything from Superbowl ads to Virtual Production Shoots for feature films while using the latest technologies and collaborating with directors, producers and some of the most talented artists to create beautiful images and tell fantastic stories."
Ricky Runfola (Fiction and Entertainment '22)
Concert Visual Designer & 3D Artist
"The Fiction and Entertainment program gave me the space room to experiment as I developed skills as a 3D generalist while simultaneously introducing me to various career paths open to me within the film and entertainment industry. Guest lectures and internal mentor sessions gave me a better understanding of the landscape of studios that work in concert visual design, allowing me to create a body of work that helped kick off my professional career as a freelancer working on concert visuals and music videos.
During my first full year working in concert visual design after graduation, I was able to establish relationships with studios such as IMMANENT and Raw Cereal. While working freelance for IMMANENT, I had the opportunity to help with Unreal Engine environments and modeling for SZA's SOS Tour, create custom 3D assets in Blender, Zbrush, and Substance Painter for Ashnikko's Weed Killer Tour, as well as help with visuals, rendering, and color correction for 50 Cent's European leg of the Final Lap tour. With Raw Cereal, I had the chance to create visuals for Matchbox Twenty's Slow Dream Tour. Each and every project had very different demands that varied across the spectrum of a 3D generalist workload, and my experience in the Fiction and Entertainment program gave me a great foundation to tackle each design challenge."
Dana Shaviv (Fiction and Entertainment '22)
Senior Visualizer at BMW Group
"In Fiction & Entertainment the sense of community goes beyond the academic realm - it's a tight-knit family and a network that propels each member toward success. Opportunities are actively created and shared within this family, fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. The caliber of guest mentors and networking opportunities is unparalleled. We have access to an unparalleled network of guest mentors, individuals who open doors for us into the entertainment landscape and share candid, unfiltered insights and experiences. The flexible curriculum allows each student to delve into their own individual interests and career aspirations. The holistic approach of F+E helps us develop the skills to carry out projects from start to finish—from concept and storytelling to production using state-of-the-art 3D technologies.
Since graduating, I have co-founded a worldbuilding-based production house called RAWx, along with three friends from my F+E cohort. In parallel I now work as a senior visualizer at BMW Group Designworks, I explore the visual and narrative world of conceptual ideas and flesh them out as short films for the Rolls Royce, BMW, and Mini brands."
Enrique Agudo (Fiction and Entertainment ’19)
Media Artist
"Fiction and Entertainment was the stepping stone between what just stayed as an idea and the materialization of what I always wanted to do. I developed technical skills unlike ever in my career in architecture and came to have a precise understanding of an industry that I was too intimidated by to ever consider jumping into. It was a year in which I developed a carefully crafted, deeply researched, design fiction project and executed it to the standards of the VR industry worldwide. After developing the project at SCI-Arc, my work evolved into The Pantheon of Queer Mythology, a short VR film that was selected for Tribeca Film Festival 2020, as well as Geneva Film Festival, Cannes XR Finalist, Strasbourg Film Festival, Fivars VR Film Festival, and many others. It has allowed me to begin working relationships with other filmmakers and developers making VR and be featured in press outlets such as Interview Magazine, 032c, and Vogue Spain. If I could have the resources, the professional input, the creative and technical guidance, and institutional support to develop my work now like I did in my time at the Fiction and Entertainment program at SCI-Arc, I wouldn't blink twice at the opportunity."
Shuruq Tramontini (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Creative Tech Director
"Throughout my academic career in architecture, I continuously found myself battling for creative control both in terms of developing a work but also the discussions that would unfold around it. I came to Fiction and Entertainment finding genuine and student-led discussions - looking at the essentials of today's contemporary global society and rethinking our complex times in new and provocative ways. Through the discourses and the overall dynamic that the studio offered, I got knee-deep into a world where I was able to set my own parameters. The discourses and dynamics of studio life helped shape these ideas with me, and the profound technical knowledge I gained helped me create them!
Soon after my graduation I got a 3D modeling job for Ian Cheng on his new work Life After Bob. Fiction and Entertainment prepared me to lead discussions, work independently and design with an artistic and visual sensibility. My role on the project evolved and continued all the way through to final installation at The Shed in New York. I was part of the weekly production meetings with responsibilities for the overall art direction of the project and the overall world design and am credited as the Lead Unity Artist and Lead Environment Artist. In parallel to Ian Cheng’s project I was also the Lead Artist for the development of the new indie game Commonhood, directed by Jose Sanchez. I was responsible for the overall aesthetics, the environments, the character design and level design. Having constructed a solid network of professional creatives both within the program itself and after graduation helped me into another high profile project with Ivaylo Getov, who is a creative tech director working with established artists. We are now developing an art project for celebrated artist Pierre Huyghe. My role is the Creative Tech Director. Jumping straight into both these roles after graduation has laid the foundations for my professional career and development that incorporates a strong knowledge of technical workflows, creative problem solving and design investigation."
Orin Torati (Fiction and Entertainment '22)
Creative Director/Realtime 3D Artist
The SCI-Arc Fiction and Entertainment program at SCI-Arc provided me with the chance to develop a body of work rooted in my passions. Offering a distinctive space for research, creation, and experimentation, the program effectively and thoroughly propels all students into the industry. Shortly after graduation, I found opportunities in various freelance roles as a 3D generalist and Unreal Engine artist. Working with studios like Actual Objects, founded by F&E's Rick Farin and Claire Farin, I contributed to projects such as concert visuals for artists like Joji, PinkPantheress, AG Cook, and Girl in Red, as well as music videos for artists like XO and TStewart. Concurrently, I served as an animation supervisor for HBO's Random Acts of Flyness, collaborating closely with the show's director and actor Terrence Nance, among other talents. Additionally, I held a position as a Junior Creative at VTPro, contributing to Maggie West's 2023 Coachella installation.
In parallel with my individual career trajectory, three friends from F&E's 21-22 cohort and I co-founded RAWx, a production house centered on worldbuilding. In my role as a hands-on creative director, I both led and worked on various projects for clients such as NEOM, Wired Japan, Havoc Content & R&R Partners, Happy Medium, Jennifer Chen's 'No Evil,' and POSTPOSTPOST.
Jeremy Kamal (Fiction and Entertainment ‘19)
Filmmaker & Creative Director
The Fiction and Entertainment program gave me the time and space to work on a project that directly aligned with my interests. It was a unique space to create something unapologetic and sincere. What I valued most was being taught how to apply my background in both architecture and landscape architecture toward broader cultural mediums. The program helped me leverage my past education and turn it into an asset in nontraditional practices such as storytelling and entertainment.
Since graduating I've worked as a visual artist with Actual Objects on a number of projects from CG fashion films to music videos and album covers for clients including Marine Serre, The North Face, Trippie Redd, and Yo Gotti. Additionally, I've become a Sundance New Frontier Lab 2020 fellow working as creative director with director Kordae Jatafa Henry (Fiction and Entertainment ‘18) on a project entitled Earthworks. Currently, I'm continuing to creative direct Earthworks as a member of the ONX fellowship in New York as well as preparing to join SCI-Arc as teaching faculty for a studio course in 2021.
The Fiction and Entertainment program has been a great way to explore how to bring together my multiple unique interests and create a niche for myself. My time in the program helped me develop a language, approach, and workflow unique to my background and skillset. My experience at SCI-Arc as a space that intersects with philosophy, films, video games, story, and architecture, continues to be essential' to the work I do now, and I still make use of the indispensable community of advisors, peers, and faculty I met here.
Eva Huang (Fiction and Entertainment ‘17)
Production Designer
"My time with the Fiction and Entertainment program provided a technical and professional breakthrough that still deeply impacts my practice. They are incisive educators that guided my work from speculative architecture to real-world filmmaking. I cannot thank them enough for sharing their community and guidance.
Right after graduating, I interned at the Sundance Documentary Fund before becoming a screener for Sundance Film Festival's VR submissions. I now freelance as a production designer and producer. This year, I started my own production company with a client list that includes Google, Netflix, Interscope, Dead Oceans, Capcom, Adobe, and Sony. In addition to the commercial clients, I have a narrative feature film in late development with Andrew Thomas Huang.
The full production pipeline from concept through post that I learned in the Fiction and Entertainment program absolutely enabled me to tackle fantastic projects early in my career. The program taught me invaluable skills that I use on a daily basis; I build digital concepts for VFX, design physical sets, storyboard narrative scripts, and pitch to industry professionals."
Rohini Jadhav (Fiction and Entertainment ‘18)
Production Designer
"The Fiction and Entertainment program at SCI-Arc is one of a kind program that merges architecture with entertainment. While I had a passion for films and a highly specialized skillset from architecture, I had no prior understanding of filmmaking or knowledge of how to apply my skills into this field. During my year at SCI-Arc, I mastered additional new skillsets and under the guidance of diverse experts from different states of filmmaking, I developed my own short film that highlighted the long-lasting repercussions of the Fukushima disaster.
The exposure to different styles of filmmaking, interactions with industry experts, and practical applications in my own project honed me for the next step post-graduation—getting my foot in the door of a highly competitive film industry in LA. Since my graduation, I have worked in art departments on a Netflix animated film, an HBO pilot generation, and even a feature currently being optioned to studios. I have had the privilege of working closely with renowned production designers like Oscar-nominated Guy Hendrix Dyas, Inbal Weinberg, and Lauren Fitzsimmons. I am also a participant in the highly selective Art Directors Guild’s Production Design Initiative and have designed and art directed multiple short films since.
The program is a great way to explore the multiple facets of designing for films, video games, AR/VR, and finding your niche before you seek out jobs in the extremely competitive entertainment industry."
Fariba Shafiee (Fiction and Entertainment ‘18)
Concept/3D Artist
"Throughout my time in the Fiction and Entertainment program, I developed an episodic film titled House of Eyes, a series of three stories on the city of Tehran and its invisible infrastructures of surveillance. With this project I built up my VFX skillset from digital concept art to pre-visualization animation techniques and final cinematography and post production. These techniques built on my architecture background and came together as a body of work that provided me the opportunity to work in Pixomondo Studio—an international VFX company. As a digital artist in Pixomondo, I have been working on blockbuster projects in a range of roles such as a designer on Star Trek, a 3D modeler on Westworld, and as a concept artist on other short animations and music videos.
For me the most compelling aspect of the Fiction and Entertainment program was the interdisciplinary discourse that helped establish a comprehensive knowledge across a range of storytelling mediums such as animation, game design, VR, and short films. This knowledge is developed in weekly discussion between high profile instructors, guests, and students along with technical skills workshops. I believe if someone, regardless of their background, wants to explore cutting-edge forms of entertainment through new technologies of storytelling, speculation, and world building then Fiction and Entertainment is the best program to put that desire into practice."
Sarah Villareal (Fiction and Entertainment ‘17)
Producer
"The studio helped me to cultivate the skills I learned in architecture as a vehicle to explore my interests as a designer and filmmaker. The guidance, dedication, and tireless tutelage I received from Liam Young and Alexey Marfin instilled a determined work ethic and sense of wonder in me; giving me the tools to visualize and realize my short film Neville—a story that follows an autonomous lawn mower doing its daily rounds in a post-human, special economic zone of downtown Los Angeles. The curriculum’s rich exercise in world building, development of speculative narrative through research and story boarding, and intimate workshops with leading film professionals were an invaluable opportunity to learn and gain access to one on one feedback from the best. I submitted my film to the Sundance Film Festival and through the professional network I met in the program’s design lab I am working as a researcher on an upcoming documentary series for a major network. This program is truly inspiring and a mind-blowing experience. It opened up real opportunities to pursue a future as a filmmaker."
Pierce Myers (Fiction and Entertainment ‘17)
Design Researcher
"The Fiction and Entertainment program is an invitation to the forefront of storytelling. Students of the program gain an intimate understanding of emerging workflows while also learning how to tell compelling stories, a combination of skills which other programs can’t offer. Fiction and Entertainment’s broad focus on worldbuilding allows students the opportunity to focus on any point of the process that they choose including modelling, animation, game design, writing, and concept development. The course has positioned me perfectly for work in the field of creative direction. I now have a comprehensive knowledge of emerging narrative mediums at a technical level and understand the ethical urgency associated with mediating the future. Working in futurist writing and narrative development I feel confident in my ability to steer projects and move culture in a desirable direction. Through connections established in the program I am now currently working with worldbuilder and award-winning production designer Alex McDowell on a new project that involves embedding narratives in a near-future context for an immersive installation, and I have begun preliminary work with Netflix and the New York Times on a documentary project."
Khevna Shah (Fiction and Entertainment ‘17)
VFX Compositor
"As part of the Fiction and Entertainment program, I made the short hybrid documentary The Endless Market. The film is based around the design of a fictional tower that forms an archive of stories from an important market in Mumbai that is now threatened by gentrification. My architectural approach to the project gave me a different perspective towards a particular place, its people, and its culture, but it was with the guidance of Liam Young and Alexey Marfin that I learnt how to speculate and visualize an alternate world within this existing context. In the year-long course I have learnt and developed a completely new pallet of skills. The curriculum gave us the opportunity to learn from and receive feedback at every stage of the process from some of the great professionals in the industry. Furthermore, it enabled us to make connections and work with them in the future. After graduation I worked with production designer Alex McDowell on a worldbuilding project imagining the city of tomorrow and the urban possibilities of driverless cars. This program opened up innumerable possibilities for me and definitely added a great deal to my skillset. I then got a compositing internship with the visual effects studio Framestore before getting full time compositing jobs at some of the worlds most significant post production studios, first at MPC and now with DNEG."