Film, Television and Digital Production

Core Modules

• Introduction to Media Practice 1

  In this module you will develop an understanding of creative thinking across both fiction and non-fiction audio-visual content creation. You will look at the key creative roles in production, and work in small groups to make both a short documentary and undertake TV Studio production. You will participate in a range of creative and technical skills workshops, with sessions delivered by experienced professional as well our world-leading staff.

• Film, Television and Digital Histories

  In this module you will develop an understanding of film, television and digital media history. You will look at how and where digital media intersect and converge with these moving image forms, examining media from the late 19th century through to the present. You will consider how even 'old' technologies were 'new' at some point, and analyse the relationship between technological, social and aesthetic developments in new media forms.

• Critical Theory and Textual Analysis

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the key debates in critical theory. You will look at a range of different methods in studying film, television and digital media, including artistic achievement and critical interpretation, close textual analysis, ideological analysis, national cinema, and psychoanalysis. You will examine the relationship between the intentions of individual film and programme-makers and wider processes. You will consider films and television programmes in close detail, analysing the relationship between how something is achieved and what it means.

• The Creative Industries

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how creativity is constrained and enabled by the industrial logics of the creative industries. You will focus on film, television and digital media, exploring issues such as economics and financing, pitching and commissioning, policy and regulation, copyright, formats and global trade, ratings and audience measurement, branding and marketing, digital production logics, and production cultures. You will also consider a number of important industry-oriented research skills, such as interviewing, market/demographic analysis, locating and interpreting legal documents, and archival research.

• Media Arts Dissertation
• Media Research Project

Optional Modules

There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.

• All modules are core

• Directing Screen Fiction
• Screen Documentary
• Cinematography
• Interactive Storytelling
• Animation and Visual Effects
• Screenwriting
• Producing Film and Television
• Creative Digital Arts
• Creative Social Media
• Creative Post Production
• Film Theory: Hitchcock and Point of View
• Post-Classical Hollywood
• Television Histories
• Modern European Cinema
• Contemporary Chinese Cinemas
• Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference
• Modernism and Avant Garde Film
• Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema in a Transitional Frame
• Digital Aesthetics

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the core concepts of the digital age, looking at how today's computer networks, devices and infrastructure underpin nearly all forms of aesthetic, cultural social and political life. You will consider the concepts of technicity, affective turn, digital subjectivity and extended mind, creative expression and participation in the digital era, amateur production, free software, fun and politics, self-organisation, media archaeology and sonic architectures. You will examine the systematic challenges brought about by digital change and critically interpret and analyse digital phenomena.

• The Creative Industries

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how creativity is constrained and enabled by the industrial logics of the creative industries. You will focus on film, television and digital media, exploring issues such as economics and financing, pitching and commissioning, policy and regulation, copyright, formats and global trade, ratings and audience measurement, branding and marketing, digital production logics, and production cultures. You will also consider a number of important industry-oriented research skills, such as interviewing, market/demographic analysis, locating and interpreting legal documents, and archival research.

• International Film 2: Readings and Representations

  The module is divided into two parts, the first exploring crucial issues of filmmaking, film studies and the ‘transnational’ from the perspective of largely contemporary Latin American cinema, the second focusing on a range of European films from the 1970s to the present. The introductory two weeks of the module will introduce students to these concerns; the final two weeks of the module will bring both parts together and establish some conclusions (for example, what, if anything, constitutes a ‘European’ or ‘Latin American’ or ‘transnational’ film).

• Cinema in France

  This year-long module examines key examples of French cinema from its beginnings to the present day, focusing on the avant-garde and surrealist films of the 1920s, social realist films of the 1930s, the New Wave which began in the late 1950s, and its ‘postmodern’ legacy in the 1980s followed by a return to realism in the new millennium. The module entails close, critical analysis of film style, though no prior knowledge of film theory is required.

• Representations of Childhood and Youth in Modern German Culture

  Childhood and youth - the formative periods in our lives - are obviously crucial for individuals, society and culture. They are also contested and controversial concepts. Children and adolescents have long been the subject of social, familial and educational pressures against which they have often rebelled in an attempt to assert their individuality and develop their own identities. This module introduces you to a range of literary and cinematic responses to the lives of children and young people in the context of the German speaking countries from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing on a range of classic and recent texts and films, it explores the historical contexts of the theme and considers the social, political and ethical issues involved in the representation of young people and of institutions such as the school and the military.

• 20th-Century Mexican Visual Arts and Film

  During the module attention will be devoted to analysing samples from early Twentieth century Mexican visual arts. Students will study the Mexican Mural Movement and will analyse the work of its most prominent members. Attention will be paid to the works of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. The first part of this module will also cover the photographic works of Edward Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tina Modotti, Mariana Yampolski, Araceli Herrera and Graciela Iturbide. During the second part of this module students will be introduced to some of the most significant cinematic works from Mexico’s century of filmmaking. Students will analyse some of the most important filmic genres from a wide range of directors and periods in Mexican cinematic history. On this module students will be introduced to some areas of film theory and will learn how to apply theoretical concepts to a reading of Mexican visual arts and films.

• Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spanish Film

  In this module students will study films from the last twenty years in Spain. The films selected will in different ways express representations of identity in Spain. We will explore issues such as national and regional identities, linguistic diversity and national identity, Spanishness, cultural memory, history on screen, urban versus rural experience, cultural diversity, immigration and the portrayal of gender within new family paradigms.

• Rebels, Revolution & Representation in Latin America

  On this module students will examine the ways in which critical historical moments in Latin America have been represented visually in a global context. We will explore how political unrest in Latin America has been memorialised by both filmmakers and photographers, with the aim of re-thinking how global imaginaries concerning the rebel and revolution have been constructed in film and photography.

• Postwar Italian Cinema: the Auteur Tradition

• Directing Screen Fiction
• Screen Documentary
• Advanced Screenplay- Major Project
• Producing Film and TV
• Cinematography
• Transmedia
• Creative Digital Arts
• Creative Sound Design
• Advanced Digital Media Communications

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the theoretical debates around digital media. You will examine the use of various publishing platforms and strategies for digital and social media, assessing non-linear narrative forms and interactive story-telling from a creative and critical perspective.

• Contemporary British Cinema 1
• Digital Cultures
• Film Aesthetics 1: Issues of Interpretation and Evaluation
• Psychoanalysis and Cinema
• Film, Television and the Holocaust

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 has been represented and responded to across a range of both fictional and non-fictional media. You will look at the specific theoretical debates surrounding how the Holocaust can or should (or should not) be represented in art and popular culture. You will consider the role of mass media in constructing both popular and elite relationships to historical experience, and in documenting history.

• Media Technologies
• See This Sound - Audiovisuology
• Cinephilia
• 360º Cinema
• Political Cinema: From Eisenstein to Youtube
• The Poetics of Contemporary Television
• Contemporary British Cinema 2
• Film Aesthetics 2
• Transnationalism, Diaspora and Globalisation in Contemporary Film
• Text and Image in France: from Cubism to the Present
• Ethics and Violence: Murder, Suicide and Genocide in Literature and Film
• National Socialism and the Third Reich in German Film and Visual Culture from 1933 to the Present
• Shooting History: Dictatorship, Terror and Crime in Italian Film
• Horror Cinema in the Hispanic World
• Contemporary Mexican Cinema
• Seducing the Nation: Spanish Film 1940s to 1980s