Film and Television: Theory, Culture and Industry MA.
Our innovative MA in Film and Television builds on its prestigious heritage as the longest running degree programme of its kind in the UK. We aim to equip you with wide-ranging skills, knowledge and critical awareness to meet your career aspirations in sectors in which moving images play a central role. Our curriculum incorporates an exciting variety of learning and teaching activities designed to foster your capacity for researching and rigorously analysing different aspects of film, television and moving images. You will have the opportunity to develop key skills for communicating about and with moving images across a range of contexts and platforms. You can choose to have a broad-based learning experience in film, television and moving image, or you can specialise in moving image curation and screenwriting via our suggested pathways.
The core teaching team consists of members of the University’s Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design. The course has close links with the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), the leading research centre in the UK for arts and design, whose members include internationally renowned filmmakers, film and television theorists and historians, and moving image artists and curators. We combine research-enhanced teaching with classes delivered by film and television industry and moving image art professionals, in order to make sure that you develop skill sets and the full range of critical awareness that are in demand and to deliver an exciting learning experience for you.
Course content:
The course combines core and optional taught modules. The design and delivery of our taught modules draw on CREAM’s research excellence in documentary, Asian and European cinema, moving image curation, and television history. The coursework requirements for some modules are research essays or a combination of research essays and research-informed blog posts and presentations. Other modules require a broad range of research-informed professional modes of writing such as a screenplay treatment, a curatorial proposal or an exhibition review. You will also undertake a substantial piece of independent research as a major part of your MA studies. In order to provide you with the flexibility to undertake a piece of independent research suited to your career aspiration, the final project module offers you the choice between writing a traditional dissertation or completing a theoretically-informed professional project such as a curating a film programme, writing and producing a series of themed blog posts, or writing a long-form screenplay.
Modules:
The following modules are indicative of what you will study on this course.
The course is taught in two modes: full-time and part-time. Full-time Postgraduate students study 180 credits per year. For the award of MA in Film and Television: Theory, Culture and Industry, you must complete two core taught modules, four optional modules and a 60-credit final project module, for a total of 180 credits. Core modules provide you with a set of key skills for the theoretical, critical and reflective understanding of moving images. Optional modules give you the freedom to choose areas of specialisation. The course leaders can advise on which modules best fit your interests. You have the choice to pursue specialised interests through your choice of optional modules and coursework assignments. If you are not sure which optional modules to choose or fit your interests best, or which types of final project work to produce to best develop your area of specialisation, you should discuss this question individually with the course leaders and you should aim to do so early on in the academic year.
The course structure includes two suggested pathways for those wishing to specialise in film programming and moving image curation, or in screenwriting.
You will be able to choose among the following modules:
- Cinema Distribution and Exhibition (option)
- Contemporary Issues in Moving Image and Screen Studies (core)
- Documentary Aesthetics, Sites and Spectatorship (option)
- Film Programming and Moving Image Curation (option)
- Final Project (core)
- Key Concepts in Film, Television and Moving Image (core)
- Introduction to Scriptwriting (option)
- Longform Screenplay Preparation and Short Documents (option)
- Modern and Contemporary European Cinema (option)
- Researching Histories in Asian Cinema (option)
- Television Art: Aesthetics and Quality (option)
