An extraordinary lecturer and a knowledgeable showrunner who's always willing to share his industry insights. His film selections can be meh, but the quality, digestibility, and practicality of his presentations make up for them. Most assignments rely on close reading of films rather than research, which was really refreshing in this department.

mcnamara is one of the best profs i have had so far. very interesting lectures and great film choices. he cares a lot about his students and making the industry less daunting. the course itself was very easy and i enjoyed showing up, graded only on attendance, midterm paper, and final paper. both papers are straightforward and easy to write.

Mr. McNamara is a great professor; I love his teaching style and lectures. He makes the course interesting, but he is giving out a massive amount of information. His lectures are dense, and the papers are graded strictly, pretty unfair I would say.

He means so much to the film department at UCSB. Can say there is a lot of respect and love for this man.

Very knowledgeable. Lectures have all the materials you need for writing papers, which is basically all your grade consists of. He posted slides/lecture notes which kind of made going to lecture unnecessary, even though he was a good lecturer. Very tough grader -- he wanted us to get better as the papers went on, but seemed a bit unfair sometimes.

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