BAFilm Studies
| Study location | United Kingdom, Egham, Surrey |
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| Type | Bachelor courses, full-time |
| Nominal duration | 3 years |
| Study language | English |
| Awards | BA |
| Course code | W620 |
| Entry qualification | High school / secondary education (or higher) Required: At least five GCSE passes at grades A* to C or 9 – 4, including Maths and English. The entry qualification documents are accepted in the following languages: English. Often you can get a suitable transcript from your school. If this is not the case, you will need official translations along with verified copies of the original. |
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| Language requirements | English IELTS: 6.5 overall (with 7.0 in writing and a minimum of 5.5 in all other subscores) |
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| Other requirements | At least 1 reference(s) must be provided. A motivation letter must be added to your application. |
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| More information |
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Overview
Interested? To learn more about this study programme, entry requirements and application process, please contact one of our consultants in a country nearest to you.
Programme structure
Year 1
Film, Television and Digital Histories
This module introduces you to film, television and digital media history with a particular emphasis on how and where digital media intersect and converge with these moving image forms. The module spans the late 19th century through to the current epoch of convergence media. You will consider how even ‘old’ technologies were ‘new’ at some point, exploring the relationship between technological, social and aesthetic developments in new media forms. This broad historical sweep provides you with a chronological knowledge to complement and contextualise the bespoke theoretical emphasis of other core modules in either Film and Television or Digital Culture.
Critical Theory and Textual Analysis
This module concentrates on how we study film and television, introducing you to key debates in critical theory. Over four distinct blocks of lectures and seminars, you will gain an opportunity to explore 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. Each method asks questions about the relationship between the intentions of individual film- and programme-makers and wider processes. Across the module you will study films and television programmes in close detail, examining one a week, thinking about the relationship between how something is achieved and what it means.
Introduction to Narrative
This module addresses patterns of narrative across different media (film, television, documentary, digital media). A variety of approaches to the question of narrative are taken, including: narrative structure; patterns and distinctions in storytelling methods and styles; point of view; the social and cultural context of narrative; adaptation; postmodern and open-ended narrative; issue-driven narrative; television’s live and drama narrative structures; transmedia and digital media’s narrative logics.
Screen Narrative – Theory and Practice
In this module, you are offered the chance to put your critical ideas about narrative and film into practice, by developing your own short screenplay. The module enables you to extend and apply your critical understanding of the governing principles of screen narratives in the context of first reading and critiquing screenplays before being given support in the preparation of your own creative work. Here, creative writing is fused with detailed textual analysis and theoretical discussion.
International Film 1 – Contexts and Practices
This module will introduce you to some key tenets of film theory and apply them to a selection of important pre- and post-war European and international films. It will familiarise you with the analysis of aspects of film style, genre and national and international contexts. The set films on the module will include canonical works from a century of cinema history, by filmmakers such as Joseph von Sternberg, Alfred Hitchcock and Pedro Almodovar, and significant examples of technique and style.
The Birth of Film
This module will introduce you to the early phase of film history between 1895 and the early 1930s, from the invention of motion pictures to the establishment of sound cinema. You will look at a cross-section of American and European films made during this phase, when film-making was largely national but the absence of the spoken word gave film a truly cosmopolitan dimension, with directors, actors and technical personnel moving freely across national boundaries. You will learn about the development of film as art (with its links to the Avant-garde) and also examine cinema as an entertainment industry in which genre (horror and crime films) helped to drive innovation.
Year 2
All modules are optional
Year 3
All modules are optional
Optional modules
In addition to these mandatory course units there are a number of optional course units available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course units that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new units may be offered or existing units may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.
Career opportunities
You will not only learn a range of key transferable skills across the degree but also underpin these with a thorough grounding in the history and theory of film and TV, and understanding of the economic and power structures behind media production – invaluable for careers in creative companies who want to look ahead to future trends.
The graduates have gone in to the film, television and digital production sector, a wide-range of jobs in the communications industries and careers in high-level research positions, such as for the House of Lords, Barclays Bank and more.