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When Professor Denise Mann was a film student, an arts education was a bit narrower than it is today.

“I understood a great deal about how movies were made in a hands-on way, but I had no sense of how those experiences related to the complexity of the Hollywood industry,” Mann said. “I learned how the contemporary industry worked on my own. I wish a series of courses had been available when I was a student that treated this as a subject of study.”

Things have changed since then. For a number of reasons, more and more classes are being offered at UCLA that deal with specifics of the entertainment business, and not just at the graduate level, as one might traditionally expect.

“The entertainment business is our curriculum,” said Professor Richard Walter of the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. Many classes at UCLA, such as those Walter teaches on screen writing, acknowledge the presence of an entertainment industry that is more spread out and varied than ever before.

Some professors have even gone beyond peripheral recognition to make the industry the main focus of their courses. Mann exemplifies the increasing emphasis on the entertainment industry in undergraduate classes at UCLA. As head of the Producer’s Program at the School of Theater, Film, and Television, which yields a master’s of fine arts, she has overseen many graduate students as they learn more about the industry through coursework and internships. Mann also teaches Film and Television 184 (Overview of Contemporary Film and Television Industries), in which she makes undergraduates familiar with as many aspects of the entertainment industry as possible.

“I’m dealing with the Hollywood studio system, the role of talent agencies, current functions of independent producers,” Mann explained. “I introduce students to what the development process is like. I go into how marketing works. I do a case study by showing how the movie ‘Se7en’ was marketed. I do a segment on distribution.”

Mann teaches the course during the summer. It is also being offered now for the first time in an innovative online form, which will be conducted through online lectures and chat rooms. Her focus with the undergraduate class is to inform students about the present by linking it back to the past.

“With (Film and Television) 184, the idea is to bridge the gap between a traditional historical survey class and contemporary industry practices,” she said.

By looking at the history of the industry, Mann said that students can get a better understanding of Hollywood today.

This connection between current and former incarnations of the entertainment industry is also important to Anthony Seeger, an ethnomusicology professor who teaches Ethnomusicology C182/288, titled “The Music Industry.” In the undergraduate as well as the graduate version of the class, Seeger explores both past and current issues and crises in the music industry. He believes, like Mann, that looking back at the entertainment industry can help students have a clearer vision of its possible future.

“If you have a historical understanding of the industry, you get a perspective that allows you to understand and even anticipate what’s going to happen,” Seeger said.

He pointed to music piracy as an example where learning about the history of the industry can help illuminate present issues.

“Although companies are raging about crises, there have been previous crises,” he said.

Classes on the entertainment industry are perhaps most useful for career-minded students. Mann said that she feels part of her job is to alert undergraduates to some of the lesser-known professions in the film business; the more knowledge the students have about the industry, the better prepared they will be to work in it.

“Often, students only think about directing, for example, and they don’t realize there are thousands of people in other jobs, like development, finding material, working with writers, finding something they can attach talent to,” Mann said. “I feel like my job is to expose (students) to all these different parts of the industry they may not know exist. Most of my students have always wondered if (film) is the career for them. They’re getting some pragmatic tools on how the industry works.”

For Richard Walter, teaching with the entertainment industry in mind can help reverse commonly held, incorrect perceptions of the business.

“The biggest hoax (of the film business) is that you must choose between two alternatives: between something that’s entertaining, or something that’s personal, that you care deeply about, that will be much more satisfying for the soul of the filmmaker. Look at ‘Star Wars.’ It’s a movie that seems to be about making money, but is a deeply personal story,” he said.

Today’s mass culture is so large and diverse that it is difficult to fully understand a medium of art without knowledge of the industry that makes it a part of that culture. UCLA’s courses on the entertainment industry attempt to provide a necessary link between process and dissemination, between how a film or album is made and how it gets out into the public eye. It is easier than ever, especially at UCLA, to study the industry academically before entering it professionally. But some lessons never change.

“The best marketing strategy is good writing,” Walter said. “If you follow your passion, if you follow your heart, even in mass media, it’s not only smart art, it’s smart business too.”