Film Production BA (Hons)

During this year, you’ll be introduced to the world of moving image, exploring practical, theoretical and ethical issues associated with the representation of people or places using visual and sonic media.

You’ll explore screen storytelling, understanding how filmmakers tell their stories and producing factual and fiction films.

Encounters
This unit allows you to explore the practical, theoretical and ethical problems associated with the representation of people or places using digital media. Working in groups, you'll undertake research leading to the production of a short film which presents a portrait of an individual, a group/organisation or a place. Working as an individual, you'll undertake research leading to the production of a digital online photographic portfolio which represents a portrait of an individual or a place.

Stories for the Screen
You'll explore the practice of screen storytelling focusing particularly on the role of the screenwriter. It addresses the fundamental question: how do we, as filmmakers, go about telling our stories on screen? At the core of this unit are writing workshops, through which you will gain a foundation in the skills needed to work with screenplays effectively, whatever role you seek to perform in the filmmaking process. You'll also be challenged to make a short film, rotating roles within a production group in order to further explore the translation of a script to screen.

Screen Craft 1
This unit will familiarise you with a basic knowledge and understanding of production and postproduction practices and develop your understanding of the function and structure of film narrative. Working within a group, you'll be involved in creating an imaginative non–sync narrative film. You'll see the project through an entire production process, beginning with the development of story and script, creating characters through writing and working with actors, and creating an appropriate story world through camera, production design and sound.

Screen Studies 1
You'll be introduced you to a range of fundamental concepts essential to the understanding of international moving image history and theory. Through exploration of a range of narrative and non-narrative moving image forms from around the world you will gain a historical overview of their development. You will also be introduced to some of the key theoretical approaches used in analysing moving image texts that also takes into consideration their specific contexts of production and consumption.

During this year you will be able to choose a pathway onto one of seven key roles - screenwriting, producing, directing, cinematography, editing, sound or production design – which you’ll be encouraged to develop throughout the production of a short fiction film. You’ll also develop your knowledge of film history, and initiate and work on a factual film project.

Production Roles
You'll consider the different roles on a film production and choose one to explore in more depth through a series of workshops and small project work. The key areas for you to choose from may include screenwriting, producing, directing, cinematography, editing, sound, production design and visual effects.

Short Film Production
In this unit you will have the opportunity to take on responsibility for a crew role in the production of a short fiction film to a given brief. You will be required to take on a crew role whilst making a fiction production and develop your technical skills in this area.

Creative Documentary
You'll examine storytelling within the documentary form, which will encourage you to undertake a documentary journey that reveals unexpected realities. Through collaborative working, you'll gain confidence in understanding the stories and kinds of storytelling that are appropriate to documentary filmmaking.

Screen Studies 2
Providing a cultural, critical, theoretical and historical overview of the ways in which selected filmmakers from a variety of international contexts have responded to real-life events. A selection of fiction and non-fiction moving image texts that take real-life events as their starting points will be explored and a range of relevant theoretical and interpretative approaches will be employed to analyse their production and consumption.

Study Abroad (optional)
This optional unit will allow you to spend a period of time in an overseas educational institution. 

The final year is a combination of work on your graduate film portfolio and self-directed work on an individual Extended Research Project.

You’ll complete your studies with support and guidance through your development of a professional profile and positioning yourself in the wider film and television community.

Filmmaking Portfolio
You'll develop your knowledge and technical skills in film production to a level that will enable you to work creatively and professionally at the end of your course. The unit offers you an opportunity to define your intended area of film practice. This is a portfolio unit in which you will work on more than one project and through negotiation with your teaching staff, you will balance two or more roles in order to fulfil the weight of production work required.

Extended Research Project
Emphasising the personal development of critical writing in consultation with teaching staff, this unit aims to offer a supportive opportunity for the research and completion of an independently generated and illustrated Extended Research Project.

Projections
This final unit is designed to encourage you to reflect on your learning throughout the course. In preparing for the world beyond university you’ll need to polish your CV and your online presence as well as to develop your confidence in presenting yourself both online and in person. You'll also prepare your previous project work for presentation at screenings and festivals by developing a festival strategy and all associated promotional materials.

This course offers the opportunity to study abroad for part of your second year. To find out more about studying abroad as part of your course please see the Study Abroad section:

• Study abroad information

Our industry connections include:

• Avid
• Kodak
• BKSTS
• BECTU
• NAHEM
• Envy
• The Royal Television Society
• The Guild of Television Cameramen
• Tangram Post Production
• Warp Films
• Working Title
• BBC
• Picture Productions
• Paramount Pictures
• ITN
• Mainframe
• Big Minded TV.

We've hosted a number of visiting lecturers, including:

• Alex Garland, novelist, screenwriter, film producer and director with titles including The Beach, Ex Machina, Dredd, Sunshine and 28 Days Later
• Barrie Vince, editor of Get Real, A Private Function and Moonlighting
• Gustavo Costantini, Argentinian sound designer, musician and Professor of Sound Design at the University of Buenos Aires
• Joe Martin and Danielle Clarke, director and producer of documentaries Win a Baby, Going Straight, Scientologists at War and Britain's Young Soldiers
• Julie Noon/One World Media, Julie made Syria's Torture Machine, The TA and the Taliban, and Cooking in the Danger Zone
• Philip Ilson, directs the London Short Film Festival
• Sean Bobbitt, cinematographer of 12 Years a Slave (amongst many others).

As well as coursework, our students are supported in external projects and have made professional level film work for organisations including:

• Alive & Well
• London Life
• Royal Marsden Hospital
• Sailability
• The March Foundation
• Who Needs Heroes.

Our students have undertaken work experience on major blockbuster films and award-winning features, such as:

• Lilting
• The Favourite
• Snow White and the Huntsman
• Thor: The Dark World
• Anna Karenina
• Game of Thrones.

Our graduates have worked in various roles on big budget productions, including:

• James Bond
• Black Sheep
• Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan
• Loki
• Sex Education
• Mission: Impossible
• Rogue Nation
• Star Wars: Episode VII
• Thor: The Dark World
• Fast & Furious 6
• Anna Karenina 
• Pride.

A number of our graduates are working for range of high-profile organisations, such as:

• The BBC
• ITV
• Channel 4
• RSA Films
• The Challenge Network
• Roast Beef Productions
• Art4noise
• Channel 5
• E4
• Splice Media
• Blindeye Films
• Flex Film
• Passion Pictures
• Seventh Art Productions.

The types of roles our graduates go on to achieve include:

• Director
• Editor
• Producer
• Production designer
• Camera operator
• Sound designer
• Location manager
• Location sound recordist
• Independent film maker
• Screen writer
• Distributor
• Exhibitor
• DIT operator.