Contemporary Media Practice

Your first year is concerned with establishing core media production skills, and supporting your transition into higher education with skills in research and analysis of media culture. Alongside technical workshops in all course media (moving image, interactive media and photography) you will develop practical projects around given themes. These projects introduce key skills in conceptual development and encourage your creative abilities. Subjects of study include:

• Skills in the core media for Contemporary Media Practice: moving image; photography; digital and interactive media; studios and equipment; editing and post-production; professional working with actors, locations and media content.
• Practical projects; creative working and developing ideas; pitching; group and solo working.
• Media Explorations: experimental practices, exploring the traditions and futures of the core media.
• Introduction to Contemporary Media Theory: the core theory essential to an understanding of contemporary media, culture and arts.
• Media Representations: theories and practices of representation in the arts and media.

Credit Level 4

The second year opens out the range of possibilities available to you in both practice and theory. We ask you to develop skills and knowledge of specific media in depth, but also to engage with the frontiers of interdisciplinary media practice. This allows you to begin to develop your distinctive interests through a selection of media, themes and production methods. We also require all students to undertake work experience in the second year. Subjects of study include:

• Media Frontiers: practical work that explores and tests the boundaries of current media, choosing from moving image, photographic and interactive media.
• Convergent Media: responding to the varieties of convergence in producing and consuming media through a practical project.
• Live Projects: work experience, commissions, curating and live events.
• Critical Perspectives on Media: advanced approaches to the analysis of media, leading to a focus on a chosen media tradition.
• Research and Synthesis: developing your own interests in theory and analysis, leading to defining a subject for your final year dissertation or extended research essay.

With options available that include:

• Transmedia Practices – exploring related practices and traditions, such as animation, sound design, software art, and motion graphics.
• Scriptwriting for Media: writing for film, television and emerging formats.
• Art/Science Collaboration: projects developed with students from disciplines such as Psychology, Biosciences and Computing.
• Creative Encounters: working with students from other Media, Arts and Design disciplines.

Credit Level 5

By your third year you are sufficiently experienced and skilled to determine your own themes, and sustain substantial and high-level work over a longer period. Your Final Project and Dissertation are the culmination of your studies; typically our students create short narrative films, documentaries, interactive projects, photographs, installations, and many other hybrid forms. This work is then given a public exhibition/screening. Subjects of study include:

• Exploration and Pre-Production: you conceive a large scale final year project, and take that through pre-production planning.
• Major Project: your culminating practical work on the course.
• Dissertation or Extended Research Essay: where you apply theory and critical approaches to a subject of your choice, with rigour and in depth.
• Professional Launchpad: professional networking, mentoring, planning a career and preparing to promote yourself.

Credit Level 6