Though I took this as a GE class, I genuinely enjoyed many of the concepts taught. The course work is light with a few creative exercises, but the end of the quarter with the 2 take-home finals and the final project was highly writing-intensive and took a decent amount of time to complete. The professor is very clear and has engaging lectures, and I actually enjoyed critically thinking about films and being exposed to new ways of thinking.
tldr: The professor is well-spoken and lectures well, the course work is easy, and the finals are lots of writing but not too bad.

Lectures: pretty fun to watch; usually start by going over some concepts or vocabulary and then shows us some clips; nice quality lectures too

Assigned readings: the textbook is pretty interesting. Supplemental readings are fun too, but they can be a bit long and difficult to read

Assigned films: tends to be older films but they're all quite enjoyable.

Quizzes: tests whether you watched the film and the lectures. Doesn't really go into readings too much.

Discussion forums: Required to post a 200-400 word response each week and comment on 2 classmates' responses. Overall pretty enjoyable process and I enjoyed it.

Creative exercises: required to do 2 of these out of 5 choices. They are pretty fun, but I would recommend looking at the prompts early because some are definitely more challenging than others.

Overall: pretty fair class that widened my perspective on film. I would say it does take a bit of time to watch the films and do the readings to actually enjoy the class, but it's well worth it.

Fun GE. Each week you usually watch 2 movies, read 2 chapters, take 2 quizzes and write a discussion post. You could probably take the quizzes and write the discussion posts without reading the textbook or watching the movies/lectures. The lowest two quizzes and lowest discussion grades are dropped, so it's hard to mess up your grade. The final is a six-page paper on a movie of your choice. The professor and TAs are very nice and the class is asynchronous. 10/10 would recommend.

As a first-year student looking for interesting GEs, this class was definitely a great choice. I LOVED this class! I will say that some assignments are a bit time-consuming but if you plan ahead and try your best you should do fine. Our assignments and quizzes were typically due every Tuesday and Thursday and discussion posts/responses were due typically every Sunday. There was no midterm or final exam but there was a final paper. This paper was a film analysis about 6-7 pages long. I enjoyed doing this over an exam and think it better demonstrated my understanding of the material than an exam would have. Professor Trice is such a knowledgeable professor and, even though the class was asynchronous, her lectures were engaging and easy to follow. My TA, Iftin, was also very responsive and it was evident that she has a true passion for the material. Overall, I think if you just do all of your work in a timely and thoughtful manner you should be fine.

I would highly recommend this class to anyone. It was super interesting to learn about film techniques and it has changed the way I view any films in my own time.
The class consists of two quizzes per week that are pretty easy, especially if you just do them right after watching the lecture.
There was one discussion post per week that got easier as the class went on because you get used to a format and exactly what the TA is looking for while grading. You respond to two peoples posts by every Sunday which is basically just free points if you meet the word requirement. Depending on your TA these could be and easy 10/10 or it may be a bit harder. For mine as long as you answered every part of the prompt and met the word count you were usually fine.
Throughout the course you do two creative exercises that take only a bit longer than the average discussion post to complete, and I found them quite entertaining to do. I would only suggest you choose which creative exercises you want to do early so you can plan around other classes and choose the ones that most interest you.
There are multiple options for the final such as a paper or video essay. You have a lot of freedom on your topic so as long as it's something that interests you it basically writes itself.
I wouldn't recommend buying the textbook. You only need it a couple times and an older edition of the book is available as a pdf that is just fine.

Took this class asynchronously and the workload was only a lot because you had to watch a full movie (2+ hours) twice a week + the corresponding lecture + the readings, but it's honestly easy to plan ahead for because everything is posted from the very beginning. I feel like I learnt a lot from this class and watch movies more critically. I very much enjoyed Professor Trice's lectures and recommend this GE!

The actual work was very easy, but the workload was a little over the top and it was incredibly annoying and difficult to track how many assignments you needed to do. There were literally like 10 categories of assignments and they were all really involved, and then it would be like: do 8/10 of this assignment, 15/21 of this assignment, etc etc. Some of the films were really good, some were painfully boring. Completely doable for anybody, but deadass don't take this class just "for fun," only take it if you really are interested in film and want to add the minor. Grading was hella harsh too, despite my class getting a new TA in the last three weeks of the quarter. Prof Trice is also incredibly rude over email, shes kind of strange and also isn't really focused on teaching "intro to film/tv," shes interested in teaching much more niche sociopolitical topics related to film....one week she makes you watch an interview with a director of one of the films you watch and another week an interview with a UCLA film alum...Both are painfully awkward to watch because of how strangely she interviews and interacts with him.

Overall, its fine. If you love film, you'll get through this class. If you don't care that much, you're gonna be pissed you're putting this much work into a GE.

I loved this class and thought the content was super interesting. The workload was not too bad especially taking it over summer and this class got me interested in becoming a FTV minor.

The concepts in of itself ae not too complicated in this class, so you don't really have to love film or know anything about it. It is asynchronous, so you can do most of the work on your own time besides the discussion sections, which basically were just a presentation each time on the topic of the week (you only have to do it once). Lecture times were pretty inconsistent, and so would workload, like some weeks you would have like two readings and one movie, another time you would have like three movies and a lot of reading, so it varies, but because she posts everything at once after the 2nd week you can sort of chip away at it on your own time. Quizzes are not too bad, they're just about stuff she says in lecture but sometimes they have really niche questions, and they're not worth a lot of points overall. Big points are the discussions, the projects, and the final paper. Those can be kind of hard because they're sort of dependent on your ability to care about what you are learning about instead of just ingesting it, and also dependent sort of on who is grading. Professor Trice herself never interacted with us, but she was clearly pretty well versed in all this stuff. Sometimes it can feel just like busy work, but I wouldn't say any of it is incredibly mentally taxing, so it isn't the worst GE in my opinion.

This class was extremely tough. Do NOT be fooled by the old grade distributions from 2020 and the years prior. I consider myself a decent student, and getting an A in Fall 2023 was a lot of work and dedication. I'm all for hard classes with a big workload, but the problem is the material itself wasn't the hard part, it was the assignments surrounding the material. The weekly quizzes ask the most random and specific questions about the hour's worth of recorded lecture material, like "How did Professor Trice describe this one random director that had nothing to do with the actual lesson?" Thankfully, the quizzes are 10 questions with a 30-minute time limit, which allows you to go back to the lectures and search for the oddly specific answers. But still, it's unnecessary, stressful, and feels like a waste of time searching through an hour of recorded lectures trying to find the exact moment the professor gives the answer. You know, that's how I can best describe the class, a waste of time. The material itself is fine, but the class feels like it was deliberately created to be harder than it needs to be, forcing the student to dedicate a ton of time to taking notes about pointless details and constantly checking canvas to ensure they aren't missing one of the random 8+ assignments due a week. Overall, I would not recommend this class unless you have no other choice.