The Georgia State program in Virtual Production and Visual Effects provides advanced post-production technology and content creation training for media professionals.
Housed at the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII), the program provides students access to the most advanced motion and performance capture technologies in industry use and opportunities to create multimedia content in virtual production tools.
Students will create polished, finished products through advanced coursework in video editing, game design, volumetric and motion capture software packages. A key focus of the concentration is its emphasis on the examination of real-time workflow models, including production work connected to LED and virtual previsualization technologies, which are available to students in the new CMII production studios.
The benefits of close industry collaboration and advanced production tools
The special effects used to capture performances for games and film/television are technologically aligning. For example, the software most commonly used in game design, Unreal Engine, was also used to accomplish virtual preproduction and animation work in the film Lion King, in The Mandalorian and Ford v Ferrari. The Creative Media Industries Institute trains students in the high-end content creation technologies now central to big-budget filmmaking and game development.
Is this graduate program for me?
The program is organized to meet the needs of industry professionals, responsive to Georgia’s growing demand for above the line qualified production and post-production professionals, in these categories:
- Mid-career film/TV production and post-production professionals, where training in advanced technology tools is useful as they undertake supervisory roles in production companies or need to retool for work connecting to virtual production.
- Industry professionals wishing to undertake new forms of work in the content creation industries, including, for example, workers who want to shift their work from a film-industry-focused career path into animation or game design, or vice versa.
- Early-career media professionals who wish to continue their production educations, where access to sophisticated industry tools facilitates portfolio building and early festival submissions utilizing state-of-the-art VFX. The unique technology advantages of the CMII program will, we hope, be especially attractive to students who received basic film training elsewhere and are looking to specialize in virtual production.
- Industry professionals who wish to shift into a higher education teaching career, for which the MFA provides a terminal degree qualification suitable for tenure-track employment in a university setting or teachers for whom the MFA enables an educational promotion path while equipping them to run educationally housed new media and film production centers.
- Newly graduating students with a passion for visual effects or virtual production and a desire to pursue an M.F.A.
We also welcome applications from individuals seeking mid-career transitions (such as veterans training for second careers and teachers shifting areas of instructional focus) and from applicants who are passionate about content creation who may not have had prior access to advanced technology tools necessary to launch first career-ready projects.
The M.F.A. in Digital Filmmaking offers two concentrations. The Visual Effects & Virtual Production concentration is offered through the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII). The Filmmaking concentration is administered through the School of Film, Media & Theatre. Applicants applying for the Filmmaking concentration should visit the School of Film, Media, & Theatre.
