Careers for Cinema & Media Studies Majors

What can you do with a degree in Cinema and Media Studies?

Visual media saturate the human experience. It’s no wonder that people who can understand and employ the tools of multimedia communication, including our alumni, are in demand across diverse fields. In addition to finding careers in film and media production, preservation and distribution, our graduates thrive in fields including technology, business and marketing, academia and the arts. They succeed because the skills they have mastered, from interpreting to maximizing the effects of multimedia communications, are essential to modern life and work. They flourish because they are future-ready, prepared to apply their skills to today’s mediascape and the media still to come.

Sample Alumni Job Titles Sample Alumni Employers
  • Assignment Editor
  • Digital Content Producer
  • Film Festival programmer
  • Film Publicist
  • Marketing Director
  • Product Designer
  • Professor
  • Social Video Producer
  • Script Clearance Analyst
  • Virtual Reality Producer
  • 20th Century FOX Television
  • Amazon
  • BBC News
  • Criterion
  • Electric Dream Factory
  • Facebook
  • Microsoft
  • Nielsen
  • Sony Pictures Entertainment
  • Stanford University

Alumni Profiles

  • There's a Job for That! — Take a quick quiz (only three questions!) to learn what College of Arts & Sciences alumni with similar interests have done since graduating.
  • UW LinkedIn — See career trajectories of UW graduates who studied Cinema and Media Studies as well as other fields.
  • Alumni News and Student & Alumni Spotlights — Read about the adventures of students from our department.

Internships

Through internships, Cinema and Media Studies students can earn academic credit while getting hands-on experience in film and media-related roles in a variety of industries. Students have interned around the world with organizations including KCTS and King 5 (Seattle), United Roots (Oakland), AIM TV Group (New York City), Immortal Cinema (Burbank, Calif.), and Kalahari Pictures (Cape Town, South Africa).

Career & Job Resources

University of Washington offers diverse resources to help students build the skills to launch their careers:

  • C21: Center for 21st Century Liberal Learning — Offers immersive learning experiences, partnerships both on campus and in the community, and a network of mentors to help guide students in the College of Arts & Sciences on the pathway toward selecting a major and preparing for a career after college.
  • Career & Internship Center — Educates and supports students as they explore and choose academic majors and career options, obtain and reflect upon career-related experiences, and develop professional presence and essential skills for workplace success.
  • Carlson Leadership & Public Service Center — Coordinates and connects students to community-based experiences in and around Seattle.
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