Film BA(Hons)

In the first year of your Film degree, you'll be introduced to the fundamental principles of filmmaking as an art form, industry and cultural object. You'll have the opportunity to get to grips with a variety of skills and craft specialisms and start to think about the wider contexts of film culture and business. The focus of the first year is on laying the groundwork through collaboration, project development and the innovative and groundbreaking moments in film history, helping you to gain a deeper understanding of the filmmaking process and its results. Live briefs, set in a similar mode to those found in the contemporary film and creative industries, will prompt your work. You'll also have the chance to visit an international film festival.

Modules

Production Cultures 1

This module will introduce you to the creative, technical, organisational and interpersonal skills that are central to successful film production. A series of weekly tasks will develop your knowledge of the language of cinema, while encouraging networking within your cohort. Film is a communal, collaborative art and the final project will be completed by crews of six students working in defined industry roles – writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor and sound designer – to produce a short film.

Production Cultures 2

This module will extend the creative, technical, organisational and interpersonal skills developed in Production Cultures 1 to encompass budgeting, design, marketing and film distribution.

Cultural Contexts

In this module, you'll begin thinking of film studies as an intellectual and academic discipline through the study of key approaches to theory, criticism and modes of analysis.

Industrial Contexts

This module foregrounds a range of contexts, both historical and contemporary, to consider how industry, audience, and film texts are inextricably bound together in film and television industry practice.

You'll build on your interests and passions by embarking on specialist pathways - focusing your learning and cinema knowledge in an environment that recognises and embraces the medium’s changing nature. These pathways include gender and representation, experimental film, short and feature film screenwriting, environmental cinema and all aspects of production and post-production. We also offer the opportunity to engage in placements at NBC/Universal Hot House programme.

Modules

Skills Development 

Identifying your own interests, you'll develop skills in a chosen specialism – sound design and editing, editing and post-production, producing, screenwriting or cinematography and art direction – and showcase your growing understanding of collaborative practice, professional processes and industry contexts.

Creative Delivery 

Building on Skills Development, this module allows you to deploy and evolve skills and competencies in applied filmmaking practice from the conception of creative ideas through project development and production to delivery.

Projects developed and created for this module will go through an industry-style pitching process (not assessed) that will ensure they're significantly imaginative, practicable and aligned to professional practice.

Genre 

This module aims to develop your understanding of the role genre plays in film industry and culture, both historically and contemporarily, and how the idea of 'the cinematic' is closely connected to genre and has spread in influence to other modes and forms of media entertainment.

Cinema of Experience

This module will inspire you by offering contemporary cinematic examples and conceptual frameworks to situate film and serial narrative/documentary forms in wider cultural, social, political and global contexts, such as gender, race, class and sexuality.

In your final year, you’ll continue your work in exploring the wider contexts of film culture and cinema through a dedicated module exploring the voices of The Other. If you’re interested in postgraduate study, you may choose to undertake a dissertation in a cinematic subject area related to your interests. Pursuing filmmaking practice, you’ll immerse yourself in a year-long project of creative cinematic endeavor. You’ll channel your learning into a cinematic object, such as a narrative or documentary film, an experimental film or feature-length screenplay. This year is even more closely aligned to industry practice than the previous, with professionals choosing the work that you’ll create and sitting on assessment panels to judge its development. The artefacts assessed will reflect, in form and content, contemporary film and creative industries practice. 

Modules

Pitch Deck 

Through this module, you'll become immersed in film practice. Assessment will reflect professional creative industry processes, contexts and cultures, resulting in an ambitious, innovative and complex cinematic project.

The Other 

This module opens your eyes to the potential offered by digital technology in cinema. Starting from a historical perspective, you'll be invited to appreciate the creativity of the under-/less privileged and to recognise cinema as a potent and flexible medium of expression and communication for all backgrounds and cultures.

Dissertation 

Focusing on academic study, you'll develop high levels of subject expertise and intellectual autonomy as you originate, research, and write a dissertation in an area of your choice.

Sales Deck

This module reflects professional creative industry processes, contexts and cultures. As a result, you'll work on an ambitious, innovative and complex cinematic project that could propel you into a career in the film, television and combined creative industries.

Why study an Integrated Foundation Year route?

If you’re taking on a new subject that you haven’t studied in depth before, have been out of education for a while or have a non-standard educational background then an Integrated Foundation Year degree may be the right choice for you. It is a four-year degree with an Integrated Foundation Year to start, which allows you to explore the primary elements of your subject before progressing on to the remaining three years of the BA(Hons) degree.

What you'll learn

If you choose this pathway, you'll study five core modules in your Foundation year. These are all designed to help you explore the foundational elements of your subject. You'll gain relevant technical skills, learn to experiment and take risks, develop an understanding of professional practice, have opportunities to work across disciplines and collaborate with other students on live project briefs.

Modules

Explore

You'll begin your foundation year by working collaboratively with others to explore themes of the future. You'll take risks, experiment through play and be supported to break through barriers.

Technique

You'll take subject-specific workshops and develop essential technical and practical skills in your area of study. You'll also enhance your analytical and organisational abilities.

Apply

You'll work with your peer group to think beyond discipline by addressing a societal or global issue. You'll then showcase your work to your peers and deliver and accompanying evaluation of your process.

Industry

You'll enhance your creative and practical skills in your subject specialism by responding to typical industry briefs, underpinned by focused research and experiments. You'll also gain industry insights through guest lectures and workshops.

Launch

You'll develop your unique identity in your specialism through the production of a self-initiated body of work. Your final project will be the bridge to your next year, fully supported by evaluative reviews and critical analysis of the work you have created.

After the Foundation year, you progress into Year One of the full three-year degree, equipped with a deeper knowledge of your subject, a clear understanding of your strengths, and develop a practical and technical skillset and the confidence to excel in your chosen subject.

The Integrated Foundation Year pathway for this course is new for entry year 2023 and subject to validation.