BA (Hons) Film Production

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree. 

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has launched an Integrated International Foundation Year, based at UCA Farnham to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity.

This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated International Foundation Year

Launch Week
You’ll begin by taking part in a series of interdisciplinary workshops and seminars based around ideas generation, creative practice, and development. This week will help students develop their understanding of creativity and different sources of inspiration via different approaches, concepts, and mediums.

Encounters: Screen Fundamentals
You’ll learn the essential skills of documentary film production and go outside of your familiar surroundings to encounter new people and places. You’ll explore different approaches to factual filmmaking while investigating the ethical and practical issues of the representation of people. Working in a small group, you will undertake research leading to the production of a short film that presents a portrait of an individual or a group.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
The unit provides an opportunity for you to explore what is meant by equality, diversity, and inclusion and the implications of these concepts for creative practice. It will equip students to understand how our social identities (such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, disability, sexual orientation, and religion) contribute to the inclusion and/or exclusion of individuals in creative spaces.

Screen Storytelling
In this unit, you’ll explore the practice of screen storytelling, addressing the fundamental question: how do filmmakers go about telling stories on screen? At the core of this module is the analysis of fiction film to gain familiarity with core components of screen fiction storytelling - character, goal, journey, conflict and resolution. You’ll be challenged to write a detailed treatment for a short film, and make a short video essay that reworks an existing fiction film, to demonstrate your familiarity with the grammar of screen fiction.

Opportunity Week
This week will help you develop your understanding and appreciation for fast-paced idea generation while working within a team. You’ll work to create an idea, develop your concept and produce a short film in 24 hours.

Screencraft: Narrative Film
Working within a group, you’ll create an imaginative non–sync narrative fiction film, through the 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. Between you, you’ll also run an online blog that will be used to share the research that will inform the project.

Industry Presence
You’ll reflect on your learning throughout the first year of the course, beginning to prepare you for the world beyond university and in readiness for the second year of your degree. You will begin to build the foundation for your CV and online presence and to develop your confidence in presenting yourself and your work to the industry. You’ll work with the careers department, and undertake training in areas such as interview skills, sustainability in production and further your awareness of equality and diversity in film and television production.

Experimental Film
You’ll be introduced to key works, ideas and debates in experimental film, from the historical up to the present day. An emphasis is placed on the critical contribution this expressive filmmaking form offers to contemporary ideas in visual and material screen cultures. You’ll be challenged to produce a short experimental film with a research portfolio of visual material and the recording of the creative process informing this production.

ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are tiny pieces of individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across the university. Collectively they form a small fraction of your curriculum that is determined through your own personal choice and interest.

PLE Digital Outcome
In this unit you will collate a digital record, reflecting on your learning journey through the first year of your degree. You will be identifying key points and developments within all units undertaken. We are interested in seeing a detailed account of your academic, technical and creative progress and development.

Launch week
A series of interdisciplinary seminars and workshops on how to evaluate your own work and recognise your points of strength. This week will investigate how creative risk-taking, invention and experimentation helps to develop your work.

Fiction Filmmaking
You’ll take on responsibility for a crew role in the development and production of a short fiction film to a given brief. You’ll be required to engage with research, script and production development, to engage with potential festival strategies, identify your potential audience and participate at a professional level with onset protocols and project management.

You will also begin to develop collaboration and negotiation skills outside of the university environment through such activities as fundraising and securing locations as well as developing creative relationships with collaborators such as actors and composers.

The Conscious Practitioner
This unit aims to promote progressive values and attitudes to diversity and inclusion in creative practice. Students will have the opportunity to explore global perspectives and influences on creative practice, drawing upon interactions with varied identities, cultures, politics, and histories. The unit will explore how beliefs, values and attitudes drive behaviour and practices. Students will reflect on the development of their own creative influences, perspectives, practices, and sense of belonging as developing creative professionals in global and contemporary spaces.

Opportunity Week – Game Jam
This week consists of a series of interdisciplinary seminars, screenings, and workshops on creative game-building subjects through the lens of a ‘Games Jam’ event. You’ll see the possibilities and potential of what you could create in a short space of time, with the influence of their individual practises and subjects.

You’ll explore further innovation, technique, and technology in production, distribution and exhibition of a fully functioning and playable video game.

Documentary
You’ll undertake a documentary journey that reveals unexpected realities about the world we live in. Integral to this is the exploration of cultural, critical, theoretical and historical contexts in which selected filmmakers from a variety of international contexts have responded to real-life events. Working in groups you will research and produce an original documentary project. You’ll develop your documentary understanding through a variety of camera, editing, idea and research lectures. Before your production is greenlit, you’ll pitch your idea in front of a panel and produce a sizzle reel that shows proof of concept of your film idea.

Live Brief
From a set industry brief from either a commercial client or a charitable organisation, you'll work alone or in small production teams to understand and identify the needs of the brief, plan all aspects of the project and its unique needs, and fully address the requirements of the client.

ATOM Activities
This unit is an extension of your Year 1 ATOM Activities.

PLE Digital Outcome
You’ll build your industry community and professional networking footprint, creating a digital folder evidencing that you are actively engaging in sustainable professional development. You’ll showcase current and newly established professional networks and identify common interests.

Elective units
You'll also undertake two elective units across the year - choose from:

• Applied Skills for a Sustainable Media Industry - UCA is a founder member of the albert Education Partnership from BAFTA, which brings together Film and TV course providers from across the country and empowers their students to consider and help alleviate the screen industry’s impact on the climate crisis. Upon successful completion of this unit, you will achieve certification as an ‘albert Grad’, signalling your achievement of highly employable skills for a sustainable industry.
• Audio World Building - Sound design can have an enormous impact on any moving image project. This unit will encourage you to explore the way sound can be used to underpin action, describe the unseen, establish an environment, set a tone, depict a mood or even to directly elicit an emotional response from an audience. 
• Cinematography - This unit is essential if you want to develop yuor skills in visual storytelling and creating compelling visuals for film and video. By taking this unit, you will learn the principles of cinematography and gain hands-on experience using industry-standard equipment to create professional quality visuals.
• Consent, Intimacy and Stage Combat - This unit focuses on the fundamental skills and principles required for performing effective, believable, and safer intimacy and unarmed (hand to hand) combat for stage and screen.
• Film Production - This unit is designed to provide learners with practical skills and knowledge in film production, with a focus on collaboration, professionalism, and self-reflection. The unit will culminate in a group film production project, where learners will have the opportunity to apply their skills and knowledge.
• Immersive Production - You will explore cutting edge and future focused technology to gain a broad comprehension of the expertise and skills required if you want to delve further into immersive media production. The unit will enable you to get a strong understanding of where the production industry is heading and allow you to pitch a concept using these technologies for a television production brief.
• Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Music and Theatre - This unit encourages interdisciplinary collaboration between Music, Acting & Performance, and Design for Theatre & Screen to plan, rehearse and deliver a live performance piece to an audience of peers and the public. This project puts music performance at the centre of the collaboration. 
• Loops and Micro Format Films - You’ll discover the creativity and versatility of the simple animated (or live action) loop for use on your website as a showcase to promote your own work or engage your ‘brand’, and create three loops to upload to your websites or use in social media for self-promotion.
• Motion Capture & Green Screen - Motion capture is a technique used to capture the movements of actors or objects in digital form. Green screen is a technique used to composite two or more images or video streams together by replacing a specific colour (usually green or blue) with another image or video stream. In this unit you’ll learn about how both these things can work in the VFX industry.
• Physical Theatre Production - You’ll work together with students from a wide range of courses to make a live physical theatre production. This could be further augmented by animated material or filmed material. TV or film students may also be involved capturing or streaming the performance.
• Postproduction Editing - This elective unit is essential if you want to become proficient in the art of post-production film editing. Using industry-standard software - Avid Media Composer (Davinci Resolve, and Premiere Pro) – you’ll create a professional quality scene and have analysed and evaluated professional editing and sound design workflows.
• Prestige Television - Starting with the claim that television reaches more people than any other cultural form, this unit examines and articulates the meanings of ‘Quality’ and ‘Prestige’ as they relate to Television, and why these genres of ‘Prestige’ have become dominant.
• Screen Writing - You’ll be introduced to a range of creative writing skills and, in particular, the highly visual medium of writing for film and television. You will view and compare the work of some of the industry’s most accomplished contemporary screen writers, learn how to present and format a script and write your own story outline for a short film, series or screenplay.
• Shakespeare Festival - In this unit you will stage an abridged version of a Shakespeare play in an outdoor festival setting at sites around UCA Farnham campus. A director will help you shape the play and actors, composers and designers will work together to rehearse and run the festival events. 
• TV in the Age of Digital Disruption - This unit examines and critically interrogates the changing dynamics of television production, distribution, textual analysis and audience engagement in an age of ‘digital disruption’, particularly following the rise of streaming services.
• Verbatim - You will explore Verbatim texts and performance practices including ‘headphone’ theatre and documentary theatre practices. The unit will culminate in small group films/performances using the practical techniques studied.
• Virtual Production - Virtual production has emerged as a cutting-edge technology that revolutionizes the way film and television productions are made. You’ll gain the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to use virtual production tools and techniques to create immersive and interactive digital content.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment

Launch
Through interdisciplinary seminars, screenings and workshops, Launch Week focuses on ground-breaking, creative work that has had surprised, shocked, and changed the way we view the world. This will help you see the possibilities and potential of what you could create and achieve in your final year.

Extended Research Project
Emphasising the personal development of critical writing, you’ll research and complete an independently generated and illustrated Extended Research Project.

Final Major Project: Pre-Production
You’ll take on pre-production tasks relevant to your crew roles for the Final Major Project unit. You will also successfully contextualise these roles and the projects for life after graduation, building on technical, collaborative and professional skills you have learned so far.

Opportunity Week
This week comprises a series of interdisciplinary lectures, seminars and workshops centred around life after graduation. This week will help students develop their understanding of the creative industries, working professional environment and what they can expect after graduation.

Final Major Project: Realisation
You’ll further develop your chosen role(s) and complete the projects started in the Final Major Project: Pre-Production unit through production and into post-production and final screening. You are expected to work with a high degree of professionalism in a crew role(s,) and be challenged to further your technical and creative skills throughout.

For the assessment you will be expected to complement the on-screen work with an individual portfolio containing a critical reflection, documenting the strengths and weaknesses of the project work and your contribution, demonstrating the ability to contextualise your work in wider screen culture, and a contextual, creative and technical research folder.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Tuition fees - Jan 2024 entry

UK students:

• Integrated Foundation Year - £9,250
• BA course - £9,250

EU students:

• Integrated International Foundation Year - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
• BA course - £9,250 (see fee discount information)

International students:

• Integrated International Foundation Year - £16,950
• BA course - £16,950

Tuition fees - Sept 2024 and Jan 2025 entry

UK students:

• Integrated Foundation Year - £9,250
• BA course - £9,250

EU students:

• Integrated International Foundation Year - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
• BA course - £9,250 (see fee discount information)

International students:

• Integrated International Foundation Year - £16,950
• BA course - £17,500

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850 (UK students) and £3,390 (International students). You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules. 

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources.

Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

You'll find everything you need to know for your level of study on our scholarships page.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of your Course Information for details of the costs you may incur.

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.

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.

BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 112 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
• 112 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.  

Portfolio requirements

For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. Further information will be provided once you have applied.

More portfolio advice

BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 32 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Pass, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
• 32 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply. 

Portfolio requirements

For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. Further information will be provided once you have applied.

*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades -  in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.

BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The entry requirements for these courses will depend on the country your qualifications are from, please check the equivalent qualifications for your country:

• Non-UK equivalent qualifications

Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.

Portfolio requirements

You will be required to submit a portfolio for review. Further information on specific portfolio requirements and how to submit your portfolio will be sent to you after we have reviewed your application.

BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

For these courses you need to have completed 12 years of schooling (with good grades) and show strong evidence of your ability to successfully complete the programme and progress onto your chosen degree.

Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.

Portfolio requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio.

English language requirements

To study at UCA, you'll need to have a certain level of English language skill. And so, to make sure you meet the requirements of your course, we ask for evidence of your English language ability, please check the level of English language required:

• English language requirements