Creative Digital Filmmaking

Entry requirements: Graduate with a good first degree

Fees 2010-11: Home/EU £5,250; International £8,300

Introduction

MA Creative Digital Filmmaking at Bucks is an applied offering designed to develop both technical and creative elements of filmmaking. The module content and teaching will enable students to further develop current employable skills sets relating to film and television production careers, and similar professional applications concerning web-oriented audio-visual content.     

Production-oriented content will include modules in digital cinematography, sound design, directing, interviewing and presenting, creative lighting and web-oriented filmmaking as part of a multimedia experience. Research-based modules will reflect in particular on visual literacy in the 21st century and future visual trends including narrowcast platforms (such as YouTube), the accelerated rate of change in visual media formats, audience's shifting expectations of media on demand and how practitioners have responded to the audiovisual milieu.

Course content

The lecturing staff who deliver the modules comprise a combination of industry based practitioners and leading academics from an array of research disciplines. Bucks recently invested approximately £60 million in a new building which houses state-of-the-art audio visual production studios. Students will use broadcast standard true HD digital cameras via a tapeless workflow which utilizes industry-standard editing and post-production software applications.

An array of industry partners and production practitioners have informed the development of this future-facing programme. Manufacturers and industry-based service providers such as CVP Mitcorp, Sennheiser, NEP Visions, Canon and Panasonic have assisted significantly in embedding currency of practice and technological insight. A crucial factor which motivates the development of key multi-disciplinary and collaborative skills concerns the inclusion of live briefs, which will enable industry-facing project based work to be included for assessment. These collaborations will include students from postgraduate programmes including advertising, creative industry management, audio technology, outside broadcast engineering, design, marketing and promotion.

Proposed modules include:

Visual Thinking in the 21st Century
A module in which people from different disciplines come together to discuss how our visual literacy is changing and discuss future trends. The module will discuss how new platforms such as youtube and the new accelerated pace of visual media in recent years have changed audience's understanding of the moving image and how modern practitioners should respond 
to the new audiovisual milieu.

Digital Cinematography
This module offers candidates the opportunity to engage with the latest techniques and tools in digital approaches to moving image using digital 35 mm approaches, and is aimed at those students wishing to significantly enhance their applied knowledge of film theory and at the same time understand how much of that theory can be applied using the new tools available.

Sound Design
This module will include ADR/Foley editing and recording, multi-track production dialogue editing, sound effects/sound design, mixing for film and TV (and the differences between them), creativity and the requirements above and beyond the technical and creative side to the job. Sound Design is generally regarded as making specialized sound effects for creatures/spaceships/sci-fi etc. Students will also develop their own sound design composition.

Film for New Media
This module explores the ways in which filmmaking can be part of a multimedia experience. Students will study innovative production formats that relate to current technology and look at ways in which they can utilise different media forms to compliment their film work. The focus will be on creating projects that work across media platforms and make use of complimentary artefacts to generate creative ideas that cross technological boundaries to reach their audience.

Interviewing, Presenting and Directing
A module concentrating on the skills needed to get the most out of real life situations. How do you construct an interview to get the answers you want? What interviewing styles are there and when would you use them? The module explores this through practical exercises and also looks at how you work with a presenter, and direct the shoot to get the look you want.

Research Techniques
The aim is to develop advanced core research skills required for students progressing through Masters and higher level coursework. The broad-based approach to teaching creates a functional platform for postgraduate R&D. This will also complement discipline-specific research, by enabling students to undertake self-initiated project work to MA, MPhil or PhD level.

Further information

As a postgraduate within this dynamic area, you will have gained substantial experience and a broad knowledge of the digital filmmaking industry, making you highly employable within this sector. This course is ideal if you have ambitions to move into an executive position of responsibility and management within key areas of this industry. Many postgraduate students have demonstrated career progression either within their own organisations or by moving to new opportunities. This course may be of interest to those already working in the industry and to those seeking to enter into an academic career.

How to apply

For more details, and to download an application form, please visit our 'How to apply' web page.

Find out more

Tel: 0800 0565 660

Email: advice@bucks.ac.uk