Film, Television and Moving Image MA

Program Overview

The Film, Television, and Moving Image MA program at the University of Westminster is designed to equip students with a wide range of skills, knowledge, and critical awareness to meet their career aspirations in sectors where moving images play a central role. Pathways suited to career aspirations give students the flexibility of a learning experience suited to their career aspirations. The course combines core and optional taught modules, with teaching enhanced by experienced film, television, and moving image art professionals.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The Film, Television and Moving Image MA is an innovative program that builds upon a long-standing tradition as one of the UK's longest-running degree programs in its field. The program aims to equip students with a comprehensive skillset, knowledge base, and critical awareness to excel in careers where moving images play a central role. The curriculum is designed to foster research and analytical skills, enabling students to critically examine various aspects of film, television, and moving images. Students will develop communication skills related to moving images across diverse contexts and platforms. While not a film production course, the program offers a broad-based learning experience in film, television, and moving images, with specialization options in moving image curation or screenwriting. CREAM's members include internationally renowned filmmakers, film and television theorists and historians, and moving image artists and curators. The program combines research-enhanced teaching with classes delivered by film, television, and moving image art professionals, ensuring students develop the skills and critical awareness in demand by the industry.

Outline:

The program is structured around core and optional taught modules. The design and delivery of the modules draw upon CREAM's research expertise in documentary, Asian and European cinema, moving image curation, and television history.

Course Structure:

• Full-time and Part-time Options: The course is offered in both full-time and part-time formats.
• Part-time Study: Part-time students complete 180 credits over two years.
• Module Requirements: Students must complete two 20-credit core taught modules, four 20-credit optional modules, and a 60-credit final project module.
• Pathways: Students can choose between a theory-based pathway or a combined theory-practice experience through two suggested pathways:
• Curation Pathway:
This pathway focuses on film programming and moving image curation, exploring the theory and practice of curation with guest speakers, site visits, and practical projects. It covers the history of film curation, from cinemas to galleries, film festivals to streaming platforms.
• Screenwriting Pathway: This pathway teaches students how to develop compelling characters and original stories for fiction films, television dramas, and web series.
Students produce pitches, treatments, and screenplays, learning how preparatory documents like beat sheets and step outlines can structure their ideas. The pathway combines creative emphasis with written screenplay analysis and encourages students to situate their work within the industry context.

Core Modules:

• Key Concepts in Film, Television and Moving Image: This module introduces key terms and major theoretical discussions in film and television studies, exploring concepts like genre, authorship, narrative, spectatorship, ideology, realism, and sound in relation to moving images.
• Contemporary Issues in Moving Image and Screen Studies: This module examines recent theoretical developments and contemporary debates in screen studies, exploring how our experiences of moving images have changed in the digital age.
It engages with theoretical works reflecting on the transformation of moving image production, circulation, and spectatorship.
• Final Project: This module allows students to independently research an aspect of film, television, or moving images.
Students design and develop their projects with supervisory support and within a structured timetable. They can choose between completing an academic dissertation or a theoretically informed professional project, such as curating a film program or moving image exhibition, writing and producing themed blog posts, or writing a screenplay.

Option Modules:

• Cinema Distribution and Exhibition (recommended option for Curation Pathway): This module explores the historically variable circumstances surrounding the production, dissemination, and viewing of moving images, examining different infrastructures, spaces, contexts, platforms, and institutions of moving image distribution and exhibition.
It introduces key theories of distribution, spectatorship, and exhibition.
• Film Programming and Moving Image Curation (recommended option for Curation Pathway): This module examines the roles of film programmers and moving image curators in film culture and art, exploring the considerations and practices involved in programming films or curating moving images.
It introduces core professional research skills in making film exhibition programs or curating moving images in non-cinematic contexts.
• Advanced Screenplay Preparation (required option for Screenwriting Pathway): This module provides students with practical experience in planning a 30-minute screenwriting project or a series concept and producing necessary documents, such as a short pitch and a treatment.
It places key creative issues within the context of professional script development and industry practice.
• Introduction to Screenwriting (recommended option for Screenwriting Pathway): This module introduces the screenwriting pathway, providing students with practical experience in writing a short script and a theoretical understanding of screenwriting practice, professional context, conceptual approaches, and form.
• Asian Cinema: Time, History, Memory: This module introduces key theoretical and methodological issues in Asian cinema in relation to questions of time, history, and memory.
It explores how film scholars, film industries, and film texts construct or represent time, memory, and history.
• Contemporary Television: Diversity, Aesthetics, Platforms: This module examines contemporary fictional television programs, including "quality" drama and comedy from the US and UK, with a focus on programs distributed by cable, satellite, and internet platforms.
It explores the aesthetics and representational strategies of such programs, especially their representations of diversity, and their address to their audiences.
• Documentary Aesthetics, Sites and Spectatorship: This module surveys documentary film aesthetics and theoretical issues concerning sites of documentary film exhibition and spectatorship.
It explores the historical role of non-fictional film, analyzes the form and content of historical and contemporary film/moving image examples, and considers the ethical, social, and political debates and implications of documentary film.
• Modern and Contemporary European Cinema: This module maps the development of a European cinema culture from the post-war period to the present day.
It considers the place of cinema in the rebuilding of national identity after the war and examines the growth of an art cinema.

Assessment:

The program utilizes a variety of assessment methods, including:

• Practical Assessments: Presentations, podcasts, blogs
• Coursework: Essays, in-class tests, portfolios, dissertation

Teaching:

• Teaching Methods: The program emphasizes active student learning through lectures, seminars, workshops, problem-based and blended learning, and practical application where appropriate.
• Faculty: The teaching team consists of members of the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries, including experienced film, television, and moving image art professionals.
• Guest Speakers: The program features guest speakers from the moving image and culture industries, and arts and media sectors, sharing their expertise and insights into current practices and future developments in the field.

Careers:

Graduates of the Film, Television and Moving Image MA have pursued careers in:

• Film and television distribution
• Marketing
• Arts administration
• Doctoral research
• State-funded arts bodies
• Culture and media industries
• Independent arts sectors

Other:

• Industry Links: The program has strong links with key London exhibition and research venues, such as the BFI Southbank, LUX, and Close-Up Film Centre, as well as key critics, theorists, curators, and festival programmers.
• Westminster Employability Award: The University's Westminster Employability Award provides graduates with the opportunity to formally document and demonstrate their personal and professional development activities and achievements.
• Facilities: Students have access to a wide range of facilities, including dedicated project spaces, London Gallery West, and industry-standard screenwriting software, Final Draft, available at the Harrow Campus.

UK Fees:

£1,100

International Fees:

£1,900