Unlike most traditional liberal arts colleges, the Tisch School of the Arts gives first-year students the opportunity to begin their professional training during their first semester. Students in the Department of Photography and Imaging explore the city and the darkroom. In Film and Television, students begin creating stories through sound and images on videotape, photographs, and multimedia in one of the most production-intensive departments in the world. In Dance, students are at the barre from the first day of the term until the day before commencement. First-year Drama students spend three full days a week at one of eight renowned studios, training their bodies, voices, and emotional and imaginative skills; they spend other days taking courses that expand and deepen their understanding of theatre and performance. Dramatic Writing students begin their studies by creating new worlds on the page and reading about others created by the best writers, from Shakespeare to Kushner. In the Cinema Studies program, students begin their studies by learning the history of visual media while developing the tools to dissect films, television, and popular culture.
