Media Production Degree

Program Overview

Solent's Media Production degree prepares students for multi-skilled careers in media content creation. The program emphasizes storytelling through video, audio, photography, and online media, with a focus on emerging practices and real-world learning. Graduates are well-positioned for careers in photography, video production, podcasting, and social media marketing, with a strong foundation in storytelling and industry-standard skills.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

Solent's media production degree is designed to enhance content creation skills and prepare students for a multi-skilled media professional career. The forward-looking curriculum emphasizes video, audio, photography, and online media. Students will explore emerging media practices to tell stories in new and immersive ways. With industry-standard facilities, experienced faculty, and a focus on real-world learning, graduates are well-positioned for hands-on work in media content creation, including photography, video production, podcasting, and social media marketing. The program's core focus is on storytelling in a contemporary media environment, exploring questions about how stories are told using different media and how audiences experience stories across various platforms and channels. Students will explore these questions through photographic, audio, video, and online production modules throughout the course.

Outline:

Foundation Year

• Provides creative, technical, and study skills for the undergraduate degree.
• Upon completion, students can progress to the three-year BA (Hons) Media Production Degree at Solent.

Year One

• Producing: Selling Stories: Generating, shaping, and presenting fresh ideas in the form of a pitch.
Exploring story structure, terminology, and media content analysis.
• Audio: Live Stories: Developing technical skills and knowledge through practical work in a team, creating and delivering a live radio/podcast-style program to an audience in real-time.
• Photography: Stills and Stories: Telling compelling stories through photography, from pre-production theming and research to technical elements of the camera, framing, image editing, and post-production.
• Creating Your Brand: Understanding the media industry, finding a place within it, and creating a personal brand through design, graphics, and self-reflection to enhance and amplify creative voice.
• Post-Production: Editing Stories: Learning essential editing skills, exploring digital editing techniques and software, and understanding aesthetic strategies for editing choices in different contexts.
• Video Production: Stories for Clients: Following a brief, telling engaging stories, managing projects through conception, pitching, and delivery.
Responding and adapting to feedback, developing creatively and iteratively in service of the client vision.

Year Two

• Your Brand Online: Establishing a strong foundation for an industry career, researching the profession, developing a focused online presence, and creating a creative portfolio that shapes brand perception.
• Documentary Video Production: Studying principles, traditions, and evolution of the documentary, exploring ethical considerations of working with real subjects, and creating a documentary as part of a small production team.
• Photographing Communities: Developing a community-focused photographic project, refining concepts, planning the project, exploring documentary approaches, location lighting and capture, and learning to edit, enhance, and present material for maximum impact.
• Producing for Online Platforms: Developing content careers for today's media landscape, combining entrepreneurial creative ideas with the ability to research, market, and sell them effectively to a chosen platform and targeted audience.

Optional Modules (Year Two)

• Social Media Marketing: Investigating the production and management of online content, from audience identification to measurement objectives, considering technical, logistical, regulatory, ethical, and editorial aspects of a social media campaign.
• Drama Production: Managing Projects: Developing, planning, and implementing a team creative project from script to screen.
Focusing on pre-production as a project management process, exploring narrative concepts and storytelling strategies, and developing leadership and practical production skills.

Year Three

• Final Major Project: Demonstrating all learning outcomes, working in photography, video, audio, or mixed media to conceptualize, pitch, research, develop, and ultimately produce a signature creative statement.
• Media Work: Exploring career paths in media work after graduation, polishing portfolios, and discussing major industry issues.
• Producing for Social Media: Learning practical, logistical, and interpersonal skills to make stand-out social media campaigns around a short drama production, including pre-production, production, and post-production, along with social media strategies, goal-setting, and client liaison.
• Future Stories: Exploring immersive, participatory, interactive, and experiential media technologies, telling stories in fresh and engaging ways.
Collaborating with team members in an agile and iterative process to develop, prototype, and test ideas.

Optional Modules (Year Three)

• Media Events: Designing, pitching, and organizing a small-scale media event, raising industry profile and expanding professional network, developing project management, leadership, communication, and teamwork skills.
• Contemporary Photographic Practice: Investigating characteristics of contemporary photography through theoretical study and extensive practice, creating an innovative body of work that explores and reflects personal interests and enhances photography skills.
• Mobile Audio Storytelling: Building an aurally rich sonic landscape, devising strategies for communicating an immersive audio narrative in a mobile app environment, using specialist software, equipment, and technologies to create an innovative, functioning mobile audio experience.

Assessment:

Students will be assessed through a combination of:

• Assignments
• Practical activities
• Individual presentations
• Group presentations
• Coursework
• Final major project

Teaching:

The program utilizes a unique, creative, and applied approach to teaching. The curriculum is informed by the latest theory and aims to transform students' lives.

Careers:

Graduates are well-positioned for careers in media content creation, including photography, video production, podcasting, and social media marketing. The program's focus on employability ensures that graduates are fully prepared for the world of work.

Other:

• Students will undertake 100 hours of work experience as part of the Work Experience module.
• The program is ranked 11th in the UK for student satisfaction in communication and media studies (out of 91 institutions) (Complete University Guide 2025).
• Students have access to extensive media loans, including high-end video and audio equipment, cinema and DSLR cameras with an extensive range of lenses, professional-grade lighting equipment, and a full stock of accessories.
• Students can work with in-house creative agencies to gain valuable real-world experience.
• The program offers live briefs and media take-overs where students provide media content production and online social media marketing for a range of real clients.
• Guest speakers include film directors, ideas gurus, and podcasters.
• Students participate in trips to exhibitions, film festivals, and events.

• UK, EU (settled status) and Channel Island full-time fees: £9,250 per year
Fees will increase for year 1.
• International full-time fees: £16,125 per year