Filmmaking BA(Hons)

This module is the springboard for your longer-term exploration of postproduction skills and techniques including picture cutting, sound design, colour grading, and the application of artificial intelligence in the creation of film and video. The aim is to achieve foundational competence in postproduction practices as you discover your greatest strengths and passions therein.

This module introduces you to vital debates on the production and reception of contemporary visual culture. Interdisciplinary in nature and approach, you will explore the subject with reference to a wide variety of images and artefacts, applying your learning to your subject specialism. The module introduces you to the importance of independent research, critical thinking and informed opinion. You will learn to recognise and appraise key conventions and contexts and apply that knowledge to your creative practice through discussion and in written formats that recognise the breadth of styles deployed by today’s creative practitioners.

The module introduces you to foundational and experimental creative practices in image-making and filmmaking: mentored time and space in which to make multiple pieces of work that expand your frame of reference as a budding moving image professional. Evaluation of your work is a regular formative part of the module, and of your final summative submission. The individual and collective aims are to build upon your existing aptitudes, discover new strengths, challenge prior assumptions, and solidify your foundation as an audio-visual storyteller.

This module aims to broaden and strengthen your grasp of moving image specialisms and professional practices through the creation of a short fiction film. Working in a production group, you will conceive, propose, and refine a project for production. Intensive film genre and specialist role research will support the preproduction, production, and postproduction of the collaboratively completed short fiction film: a proving ground and catalyst for your creative, technical, and professional development to come.

This module aims to expand and enrich your capacities across multiple departments in documentary and commercial short form as you progress through your moving image specialisation journey. Through the collaborative development and production of a short nonfiction film project – documentary or commercial short, the choice is yours – you will explore new contexts and skillsets, e.g. crafting documentary and commercial treatments and pitch decks, writing incisive and narratively cohesive interview questions, prepping a commercial shoot, lighting and framing an interview setup, and much more. 

As you progress toward your final year, this module aims to help you refine your professional practice and evolving suite of individual moving image specialisms through the creation of your first project intended for external (e.g. film festival) audiences. Following a pitching and greenlighting process, you will collaborate with a production group on said film across research and development, preproduction, production, postproduction, and distribution strategy.

This module is your sandbox for creative exploration and constructive risk-taking. You will investigate current and historical experimental techniques, aiming to develop a well-informed lens through which to anticipate and apply emergent moving image practice. The goal is to consciously pursue challenges beyond your current comfort zone to serve your wider development as a moving image professional ahead of your final undergraduate year. 

Building upon your first undergraduate year exploring the moving image, this module aims to help you chart your bespoke course for creative and professional development on and off campus. With support from staff and student colleagues, you will decide upon a set of potential long-term specialist career routes. Craft and industry research will complement active industry engagement and pursuit of entry-level work experience opportunities. You will complete the module with a flexible, industry-informed plan to grow and refine your specialist profile(s) and professional network to best serve your long-term goals.

In this module you will examine contemporary cinema as a global media industry, with a particular emphasis on the processes of globalisation and circulation that allow film texts to become meaningful far outside the contexts in which they were made. While the global dominance of Hollywood is central to this, cultural influences, values and meanings flow in multiple directions. You will develop knowledge of key theories in film and global media studies, including theories of globalisation, cultural hybridity and exchange, national identities, and imagined communities. By focusing not only on the films themselves, but on their production, distribution, promotion and reception, the module provides you with a detailed understanding of how and why cinema spreads around the globe, and the tensions this cultural flow creates at a political, social, economic and cultural level.

This module is the creative engine room of your final undergraduate year. With your specialisms honed, and your collaborative relationships with your colleagues firmly in place, you will develop and deliver excellent short form cinema of any genre that can engage external audiences (e.g. film festivals) and serve as a calling card for all students involved. Following the selection of projects for production, you will negotiate your role(s) in discussion with academic staff and the rest of your new production team(s). Lectures, seminars, and production team meetings will guide you and your group(s) through a professional and accountable process as you craft the work that will serve as the capstone of your undergraduate filmmaking.

This module will introduce advanced concepts, theory and practical skills in the use of a broad range of equipment used for recording and mixing sound for Film and Television. The focus will be on Sound Design, Foley, Sound Effects, Dialogues recording and editing, track lay, and mixing in stereo and surround. Practical experience of location sound recording will be gained and will form an integral part of the module and its assessment. You will develop your ability to track lay, synchronise and edit audio along with video in a DAW and develop advanced post-production editing and mixing techniques. Discussions of the theoretical, philosophical and creativity aspects of the area will underpin the module content in lectures.