BA Film & Television

Core modules include:

Introduction to Filmmaking

Through a series of workshops and small group practical projects, you will develop your technical and creative skills in filmmaking, and understand how research and collaborative communication are central to this process. You will explore key decisions in design and production, and how these are inevitably rooted in the cultural and socio-political contexts in which filmmaking occurs.

TV Studio Production

Working in groups, you will develop your critical and practical understanding of multi-camera television studio production. This module builds on Introduction to Filmmaking to focus upon the critical and practical skills and processes necessary for realising film/television productions in practice. You will bring together textual analysis, individual and group research and collaboration and devising processes in your development of film/television work, documenting your own practice. You will develop interpersonal skills necessary for creative group work and will be introduced to a range of basic technical skills.

Introduction to Scriptwriting

No creative practitioner can make an outstanding screen or stage production without advanced knowledge of storytelling. This is a practice module in which you will create original scripts for the screen or stage. Learning in this module develops your critical understanding of key storytelling issues such as narrative, character, dialogue, and place.  Scriptwriting practice will include both individual and collaborative forms of writing and rewriting. You will engage with discourses around scriptwriting emerging from screenwriting and playwriting studies, including projects for decolonising scriptwriting traditions.

Approaches to Television

In an era of intensified competition for audiences and technological innovation, the box in the corner has expanded to include a vast universe of televisual content that can be slipped into your pocket. In this module you will learn the tools to both analyse this wealth of programming and the industry that produces it. Considering contemporary developments alongside the extensive history of the form, it examines continuities rather than disruption. Centred on close analysis and critical reading, you will explore a range of exciting viewpoints and frameworks through which to approach television.

Approaches to Film

How do films tell stories, make meanings, and contribute to our culture? What questions can, and should, we ask of a film? This module includes a mix of cinema screenings, seminars and lectures, exploring a range of fiction and non-fiction films. Class discussions and assignments will challenge you to explore the meanings and cultural significance of moving images, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Optional modules include:

Comedy on Stage and Screen

This module gives you the opportunity to study comedy on stage and screen, encompassing film, television, theatre and stand-up comedy. You will engage with the relevant critical vocabulary and contextual knowledge to explore how humour is created, consumed and debated, across a range of genres and practices. Case studies may include classic and contemporary film comedies (for example, screwball comedy, black comedy); musical comedies (such as The Book of Mormon); stand-up comedy (for example, Ali Wong, Hannah Gadsby); sitcoms (such as Friends); or the work of specific creative practitioners (such as Joe Orton).

Please note that all modules are subject to change.

Core modules include:

Please note that students can select one of the following two core modules.

Creative Screen Practice

You will develop, shoot and edit a short film, documentary or television project in a creative team. Your film, documentary or television production will be rooted in research, and in the critical and theoretical concepts and traditions of industry practice you have encountered so far on the degree. You will explore key production roles and practices within the industry, and build your awareness and skill in processes of creative design and story development. You will focus in particular on the short film form informed by industry contexts, drawing on festivals, visiting speakers, and your own independent research.

Independent Critical Project

This module represents a major piece of independently researched written work, with a limited individual creative component. It provides you the opportunity to engage with an independently selected topic of interest, as well as enhances your independent critical thinking and self-directed study skills, while being guided by a supervisor. This module may be offered in place of the practical strand in Year 2.

Professional roles and Screen Industry Pathways

This module enables you to develop specific knowledge and understanding of a key creative or organisational role in the production of film and television. You choose one area of professional responsibility from this list: producing, screenwriting, directing, cinematography, sound recording and design, production design, editing. The module is focused on practice, with workshops to help you develop key skills and then collaborate on a professional-style studio shoot that will demonstrate core areas of essential knowledge, including on-set protocols, workflow and time-pressured creativity.

Film Forms and Cultures

This module will broaden your knowledge of historical and contemporary global cinema through screening a variety of exciting film forms. This will deepen your understanding of the relationships between films and their artistic, social and cultural contexts. The module includes art cinema and experimental in documentary, giving you the opportunity to engage with, analyse, discuss, research and write about a diverse range of carefully selected films and relevant critical/theoretical material.

Optional modules include:

Placements and Employment Skills

Through taught sessions you will gain relevant employment skills. You will then have the opportunity to apply these skills through self-directed study. You will either a) self-organise a placement to undertake in an industry or organisation of your choice or b) undertake a detailed examination of an industry, organisation or role of your choice. You will develop your approach to the written assessment supported by workshop discussion, and tutor and peer feedback, and in doing so will also develop your pitching and presentation skills. In the summer term of the previous year, a session will provide advice on how to secure a placement.

Documentary

This module introduces you to some of the key issues in documentary, exploring both film and television, with the opportunity to put some of these ideas into practice. Through a consideration of documentary form, argument, authorship, representation and ethics, you will develop an understanding of the form’s position as social advocate, educator and entertainer. You will also consider how the form has evolved to play with and challenge traditional expectations of realism and blur fact and fiction. This will equip you with the skills to engage with documentary’s complex and sophisticated engagement with the real. Through a case-study format, you will approach key theoretical concepts through discussion, close analysis and brief practical exercises.

Television and Contemporary Culture

This module deepens your understanding of television form, industry and the complexity of the medium and its programming. It provides the tools to critically engage with issues of representation and identity, explores industrial concerns (who has the power to make television and how does that impact how and what stories are told) as well as global production and trade of television. It considers different approaches to television storytelling and representations of the world around us through a selection of television genres and forms, which may include reality TV, documentary, period drama and sitcom.

Please note that all modules are subject to change.

Core modules include:

Please note that students can select one of these core modules.

Advanced Film/TV Project

In this major creative project, you will collaborate in groups to produce a piece of film or television work, building upon your understanding of film and/or television theory and practice in earlier parts of the degree. Each group will have collaborated to devise and begin pre-production of the project in a previous module. Here, you will enter production and post-production, culminating in screenings of the projects as part of the Department’s Festival.

Dissertation

This module represents your major piece of independent work, the culmination of your critical writing on the course. As such the module aims to test your ability to apply accumulated skills and knowledge to an area of individual interest in an extended essay on a topic not directly taught on the course, and which is initiated and developed independently but under supervision. You will have the opportunity to develop core skills related to your dissertation through taught classes in the autumn and spring terms.

Creative Research Project

A major piece of independent research with a creative component (realised individually or in pairs), which builds on practical work in any of the disciplines of film, theatre and television in earlier years of the degree. The written work will be carried out individually. Projects can include, for example:

• a script (any medium)
• desktop documentary
• video essay
• filmed demonstration/experiments (max. two minutes)
• storyboard
• a theatre design project with one realised element
• performed fragments/experiments (max. 15 minutes)
• performance lecture.

Each creative research project will need to be approved by the Department before commencement and will be allocated a supervisor. Supervisory meetings may be individual or, where appropriate, in groups, where individual work in progress may be shared.

Optional modules include:

Development and Pre-Production

Collaborating in groups, you will develop and begin pre-production on a piece of film or television work, intended to be produced in the spring term. Alongside supervision, each group will devise and prepare for the project with necessary documentation, likely to take to the form of scriptwriting, storyboarding and set design plans.

Commercial and Community Filmmaking

In this module, you will develop your professional practice by collaboratively developing a creative project for and with a particular community or client. You will work in creative teams to make a short film/video output in response to a brief set by community partner or commercial client. Taking on specific creative roles within your teams, you will undertake research to develop critical and practical understanding of local/global issues, build relationships with local communities or commercial clients, and apply participatory and/or collaborative methodologies to your creative work.

You will develop a range of professional and creative skills through the collaborative filmmaking process, including opportunities to meet community partners or clients for project ideation, planning and development, design and facilitate workshops, and successfully create and deliver practical outputs. You will explore areas of specialism within and new approaches to short form filmmaking, while simultaneously engaging with the ethical dimensions of community participation and professional collaboration.

Performance & Design: Site, Scenography and Installation

Performance & Design will explore the scope and potential of theatre and performance design by investigating historical and contemporary approaches to scenography. In a mixture of practical and critical workshops, you will study the creative application of the visual, aural and spatial elements of design through a rich array of performance environments and a dynamic range of innovative and international performance practices, from digital experiments to site-specific performances. The module will support you in analysing the practice of pioneering designers (such as Jocelyn Herbert and Josef Svoboda), facilitate collaborations with the National Theatre Archive, and enable masterclasses on contemporary approaches to design with visiting designers and/or scholars.

Practice as Research

It is a practical theatre module and focuses on making research-led creative work. The integration of other mediums, such as film, installation and digital work will be welcome. In small groups, you will make practical responses to a series of research-led case studies. You will also extend your knowledge of craft, technical, performance and creative skills.

Adaptations across Stage and Screen

You will explore contemporary practices of adaptation in performance and on screen through a series of creative experiments and case study analyses. You will also examine the politics and the disruptive potential of adaptation as a process. Areas of exploration may include: relocating narratives in time and space, intercultural adaptation, queer adaptations, cultural appropriation, transposing stories across form and genre, retelling stories. You will be able to specialise in the discipline of your choice (film, theatre, television), thinking about adaptation in relation the particular area of practice that interests you.

Identity, Agency, Advocacy: Diversity and Representation in Film, Television and Theatre

In this module, we explore questions concerning diversity and inclusion that are currently receiving much high-profile attention and debates in a number of different contexts, within and across film, television and theatre. We undertake close analysis of screen and stage representations that pertain to the complex interconnection of issues such as class, disability, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality. We combine our intersectional approach with an examination of relevant industrial, political and socio-cultural contexts and debates, and we explore how diversity and inclusion work intersects with the process of making. We pay particular attention to different kinds of minority and/or marginalized identities, as well as the efforts made by campaigners and advocates to push for equitable and meaningful representation. Films, programmes and plays to feature on the module may include: Fresh Off the Boat; Get Out; Goodbye CP; Jubilee; Kiss, Marry, Kill; The Slave; Transparent.

Independent Essay

With the agreement, support and feedback of an academic supervisor, you will independently shape your own research project. You will choose a focused aspect of the film, theatre and/or television industries that is of special interest to you, and that you have questions about. In dialogue with your supervisor, you will develop these questions, and plan the best way to conduct research into your area of special interest, so that you can find out what you want to know. You will write critically about your research journey and your research findings in a 5000-word essay.

Television: Exploring Fictional Worlds

This module explores the immersive nature of television fiction storytelling in both long-form and limited construction. Television’s fictional worlds can span years, shifting and changing across their lifetimes or be told in their entirety over a short serial. They are constructed and explored through creative decisions pertaining to the use of camera, performance, post-production, and so on. Through a set of case studies we will explore a selection of programme in depth, each covered in two to three weeks of teaching. Looking at a selection of episodes (or a whole run for short serials) we will explore these fictional worlds from different angles, which can include aesthetics, storytelling, social and cultural contexts, marketing and distribution, audiences and fandom, production and industry contexts. Genres may include but are not limited to telefantasy, soap, melodrama, crime drama, period drama (these are subject to change based on staffing availability).

Cities on Screen

The city has long been a favoured subject of the cinema, which has shaped, influenced, mythologized, and invented the city. Television’s representation of the city, both its interiors and exteriors, has helped bring the world into our homes. This module explores film and television’s encounter with the city through a series of city case studies. It explores iconographic cinematic cities as well as less familiar spaces worldwide. It explores humans’ relationships with the city, the everyday routines, the struggle to survive and the flights of fantasy. This module will consider how the city is intertwined with class, race, migration, labour, architecture, geography and nation, along with wider concerns of space and place.

Contemporary Documentary

The module examines some of the fundamental issues in recent and current documentary film-making for film and television. The module does so by exploring a number of case studies that, individually and collectively, consider documentary in terms of the aesthetic diversity and complexity of existing practice, and particular attention will be paid to the relationship between production process and aesthetics as well as politics of representation. The case studies are drawn from both Anglophone and non-Anglophone contexts, and may include: animated documentary, Chinese documentary, docudrama, documentary and authorship, documentary and poetry, ethnographic documentary, mockumentary, and observational documentary.

Cinema, Spectacle, Technology

Cinema has a long tradition of seeking to guarantee its market share through the spectacular, but the spectacular is also frequently derided as just entertainment, unworthy of sustained examination. In this module we will explore the ways in which film style, technology, economics, narrative and culture intersect at key moments in the history of spectacular cinema. We will also study how spectacular cinema has been understood and responded to, looking at key debates in film scholarship, film criticism, and in mainstream and trade press.

World Cinema: Creative Peaks

World Cinema: Creative Peaks looks at film history and geography through a democratic and inclusive approach. Rather than separating Hollywood from the rest of the world, it frames world cinema as a polycentric phenomenon with peaks of creation in different places and periods. Instead of establishing primacies and hierarchies, it identifies common tropes and cross-pollinations beyond national and cultural borders. Focusing on new realist movements and new waves from around the world, the module will analyse productions from France, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Iran, as well as from the Inuit and other indigenous populations, demonstrating how they compare and inter-relate.

Please note that all modules are subject to change.