Level: Undergraduate
Study Mode: Full-time/Part-time
Duration: 3 years (full time), 6 years (part time)
Application: via UCAS (full time), Direct to College (part time)
Application Deadline: 15 Jan 2010
UCAS Course Code: W620
Institution Code: H18
Validated By:
Filmmaking is a thrilling and diverse field. In the early twenty-first century, filmmaking means more than just your average two-hour multiplex movie.
Our BA (Hons) Film and Screen Media Design is a degree course for aspiring creatives interested in the wide range of formats and platforms now available for producing and exhibiting compelling, entertaining and meaningful work.
The course is about developing strong concepts for stories. It’s about developing inventive and dynamic viuals, and gaining an understanding about how filmmaking can make use of a range of new creative approaches.
It combines the disciplines of moving image, animation, photography, graphics and illustration. With screen media the impulse is to encourage students to think beyond the TV and cinema screen. Thinking small screen, thinking of filmmaking for galleries, museums and mobile phones are all part of the course’s ambitions.
The course at HCA benefits from connections with Screen West Midlands, the Borderlines Film Festival (the UK’s largest rurally based film festival and a platform for festival screening of our work), local and regional media practitioners, agencies and production companies.
Click here to view how our students are working with Borderlines Film Festival
Click here to view student work online at vimeo.com
Throughout the course students will develop their understanding of the digital film-making process across a diverse range of formats, through practical and reflective work. In turn, this is enhanced and enriched by presentations and input from guest speakers and visiting lecturers.
Recent guest contributors to our course include independent filmmakers; production and development staff from Screen West Midlands (the UK Film Council’s regional film agency) and BAFTA nominated filmmakers working in feature filmmaking.
Students on the course undertake work around screenwriting, narrative and conceptual development, production and post-production. Students also have the opportunity to explore what it takes to market a film and pursue funding.
Year One
During the first year of the course students will develop an understanding of the fundamental demands of film and screen media design and creativity. Students will engage with screenwriting for documentary and fiction and the function of other development processes for media, such as storyboarding and pitching projects across a range of moving image formats. Throughout Year One, production work will be complemented by a supporting Cultural Studies lecture programme. This lecture series serves as something of a ‘creative tool kit’ which explores and challenges the role of the Media Arts within the social, cultural and political framework of the Western world during the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
Year Two
Year two aims to provide a range of specialist skills and knowledge by exploring the role that moving image takes within society and the creative industries using short film drama, documentary, advertising, music video and various online content. Year two also provides the opportunity for students to apply their knowledge and skills to ‘real’ screen media briefs by responding to competition projects and appropriate commissions.
An ongoing process of reflecting on the process remains central to the work and is enhanced by the study of narrative and visual style through the discourse module. Throughout Year Two, students are encouraged to become more sophisticated in their creative thinking and application of filmmaking by using resources and approaches to storytelling across the range of formats and genres.
Year Three
The final year of the course provides a platform on which students are able to fully integrate and apply their knowledge and skills as rigorously as possible. Additional emphasis is placed on research, critical thinking and the production of creative work for the purpose of building a graduate portfolio, demonstrating work across the range of disciplines and production roles. The final year also offers opportunities for work placements locally and regionally.
In year three the dissertation module requires students to investigate an appropriate film or moving image subject from a critical perspective, in order to underpin understanding of theoretical models, and support understanding of their filmmaking and moving image practice.
Students with a BA (Hons) in Film and Screen Media Design are well placed to pursue careers in creative industries such as:
Advertising
Music video production
Short film production
Broadcast
Scriptwriting
Publishing
Community arts
Online content production
Media arts administration
Minimum age 18
Successful portfolio interview
200 UCAS Tariff Points
Mature Students with related experience
English as a second language: IELTS score 6.0 or equilavent on enrolment
All applications to our Full Time Higher Education courses should be made via UCAS – for more details on how to apply, click here