BA (Hons)
Creative Media
Program
Overview
The BA Creative Media programme is designed to address the long-felt needs of media and creative industries and is developed and delivered in partnership with them. The degree course will develop students’ creative potential through an innovative curriculum that encourages them to become critical, reflective practitioners aware of the challenges and opportunities of contemporary media work.
On successful completion of the programme of study, students will emerge as socially aware, technically-skilled, and, above all, critically reflective creative media practitioners. A Creative Media student will be able to work as an entrepreneurial problem-solver, able to listen, analyze, suggest and construct business solutions in a range of commercial and not-for-profit environments. Key to Creative Media is its blending of technical skills, aesthetic understanding, strong creative abilities and critical approaches to media texts, audiences and professional practices and the ability to apply this combination of skills in an industrial context. The degree will equip students for work in a range of creative media industry settings.
Year 1
Creative
Photography
This module will develop the student’s digital photography skills, as they devise a creative photography concept and deliver an individual creative portfolio. Using accessible technology, including mobile phones, students will gain an awareness of the principles of creative photography, such as focus, colour, composition, angle, exposure and shutter. This essential foundation will enable storytelling through photography, and help students to develop creative vision as a content creator. Critical self-reflection is an inherent part of this module, and the creative practice will engage with the practice of case-study photographers, as well as critical perspectives on photography. Developing awareness of the work of a range of photographers, working in different modes, will serve as inspiration, and enable the student to shape and contextualise their own work within a broader field.
Short Film
Drama
The module will introduce students to basic use of lighting, camera, audio and editing technique and practice. The module will more broadly cover the process and workflow of media production. There will be an emphasis on storytelling and narrative structure as applied to fiction based drama. You will view, discuss and analyse media to gain an understanding of the use and practice of these production techniques to craft an engaging narrative.
Digital Content
Creation
The module aims to expose students to creative approaches to management and a managed approach to creativity, which can be transferred and developed to different scenarios across Levels 5 and 6. Students will examine a number of small, creative digital content creation case studies, exploring models and tools of creative enterprise that can be applied to their individual enterprise interests and portfolio plans.
The module encourages students to think strategically, commercially, and creatively about the challenges of different media and creative enterprises and the broader issues facing them, be they in film, media and publishing, using this knowledge to develop awareness for where the opportunities for innovative digital content creation currently exist.
Storytelling for Content
Creation
This module will help you enhance your creative skills to become a critically aware and resilient content creator. You will develop skills that allow you to create content for a range of audiences and contexts. We will consider varying approaches across branded content, Youtube channels, social media, podcasting or music videos. Throughout the module, you will be introduced to a variety of models of creativity that will help you to develop focused responses to creative briefs. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron is required reading and underpins the module.
The module will help you to develop your own creative voice as a practitioner, providing you with the tools for analysing, presenting and making creative work. Furthermore, you will develop your confidence in presenting your ideas for peer feedback. As a result you will build up a personal portfolio of creative work which will showcase your creative voice and form the summative assessment for the module.
Digital Practice
Digital Practice introduces the production of a variety of digital media (text, still and moving image, audio). It examines the use of digital media, and its platforms (TV, web, mobile, console) in a variety of cultural and social contexts in an attempt to form an understanding of how we consume, and rely on, digital media today. Derived perspectives and ideas will inform the production of a collection of digital media artefacts that demonstrate a range of practical skills and creative approaches, as well as engagement with the complexities of the digital world.
The aim of this module is to provide grounding in digital media processes and techniques, to ensure you are well equipped to contribute to professional media-rich project that respond to the digital world. You work on a number of practical projects producing digital artefacts (e.g. a poster ad, non-linear story, video series) that will engage both individual and collaborative working practices.
The module builds on FTV4004-20 and further develops your skills in the use of lighting, camera, audio and editing techniques. However, the emphasis in this module is on documentary storytelling (in contrast to FTV4004-20’s focus on fiction). Skills will be further developed in terms of narrative construction and filming and editing of sequences.
The module will cover the differences and similarities between fiction and non-fiction narrative construction. You will develop an understanding of documentary storytelling and ways of creating a narrative thread through contextual study and practical work. Editorial judgement and its application in all phases of production is key. The role and practice of good team working and dynamics will be highlighted.
Year 2
Everyday
Media Making
Everyday Media Making explores the premise that media making can:
-
empower people through connecting
-
expose, challenge and critique dominant cultures
-
provoke different ways of thinking/seeing
-
embody participatory practices
Taking inspiration from the activist DIY Media, Maker, Hacktivist, Craftivist, socially engaged and iconoclastic art movements of the past 100 years, this module encourages thinking beyond the typical limits of mainstream media content and production. The starting point for this module is that media making should no longer be treated as a special case or an extraordinary activity. As David Gauntlett argues in Making is Connecting (Polity 2011), ‘we are seeing a shift from a ‘sit-back- and-be- told culture’ to a ‘making-and-doing culture’ ’. This spirit is manifested in networks and tendencies from craftivism and eco-activism to networks such as Wikileaks, Adbusters, Occupy and Anonymous all using everyday media to challenge the dominant Read Only culture.
Advanced
Digital
Practice
This module builds on the programme’s emphasis on helping students to become critically engaged, and socially conscious, multi-platform digital content creators. It aims to consolidate their practical, contextual and critical learning from Level 4 and develops upon the study of key debates and practices that students undertook on modules including Digital Practice and Your World Your Media.
The module will lead students through a critical and practical examination of contemporary digital cultures, digital practices and dissemination platforms. It will also explore new models for digital storytelling and content production, as well as case studies of diverse creative media practices, helping students to develop a contextual grounding for their own practical work.
This module explores the theory and practices of participatory arts and media, focussing on the latter. Henry Jenkins (2016) a key writer on participatory cultures notes that at a time of eroded public trust in core institutions and mainstream media increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few conglomerates, ‘grass roots media’ is ‘being deployed as the tool by which to challenge the failed mechanisms of institutional politics’.
The module reviews this premise and explore its antecedents through:
-
A wide ranging contextual account of participatory arts and media practices from intangible cultural heritage to access TV, community radio, web2.0 and citizen journalism.
-
A study of participatory creative practices in the context of community based media-making in the region.
-
A critical conversations with a range of individuals, organizations and experiences in different social and cultural contexts real-world engagement with participatory media production.
Visual
Effects 1
The aim of this module is to provide an introduction to digital effects and animation processes and techniques, to ensure you are well equipped to begin to contribute to a professional film, television and digital production environment. You will work on a number of practical projects producing artefacts (e.g. a sting (animated logo), a digital film composite, a green screen shoot and motion graphics) that will engage both individual and collaborative working practices. You will be equipped with the fundamentals to research and develop an idea for creative practical solutions within this environment.
You will develop the knowledge and skills to explore the animation and digital effects ‘pipeline’ so that you can successfully plan, administrate and deliver digital effects and animation artefacts for yourself and in collaboration. You will learn about the broader contexts and histories of visual effects and animation.
Commissioning
Content Creation
This module aims to give students an understanding of commissioning in the media and securing freelance employment. We will look at:
-
How does a film or TV series get commissioned?
-
How does a director get a freelance job directing a music video or commercial?
-
How does a designer pitch their ideas to a client?
The module will enable students in various different areas of specialism to understand how to communicate their ideas visually and verbally to secure commissions or employment. Students will conduct individual research in this area and we will look at various case studies such as the series bible for Netflix’ Stranger Things to see how they pitched that idea to Netflix as well as other real world examples. Students will create a similar visual document, either for their own idea or responding to a live brief, and the module builds towards a pitch to an industry panel.
Promotional
Media
Examining the role of promotional media materials such as trailers, idents, social media, movie reviewers, ARGs, branded leisure attractions, PR, and the type of online user-generated content circulating between and beyond the main media products of creative industries, this module investigates the role of such promotional media on informing audience behaviours and fandoms amongst contemporary audiences. Stressing dialogues between the academic study of promotional media and the practical application of these concepts, this module examines both industrial practices of promotional media and sites of promotional audience engagement. Students will also learn to reflect on successes and failures of marketing campaigns.
Students will apply strategic, research-informed understandings of promotional media to real-life campaigns, working on live industry briefs while learning to conduct rigorous audience research, develop user journeys, and brand media materials.
Year 3
Creative Media Enterprise
This module requires you to extend your knowledge of your creative media specialisms by taking your interests out into the “real” world via negotiated project work. You will undertake enterprising project work with clients normally involving a team of 3 – 5 members.
This module provides experience of developing and delivering a creative media project in an interdisciplinary, collaborative and client-focused context.
A team of students from diverse specialisms will create a solution for an actual client on live media projects.
This module examines the media and creative industries in terms of working practices; funding and entrepreneurial business opportunities; national and regional industry contexts and generating and developing ideas.
Throughout the module you will reflect on industry developments and practices through guest speaker sessions and your own research. These reflections will be linked with your own professional practice. You will gain experience of identifying relevant areas of inquiry and conducting research into them, of presenting your ideas and being able to showcase your employability attributes.
Digital Innovation and Enterprise
This module will focus on professional digital media innovation practice and aims to connect with best practice approaches used today within the digital production industry.
The module aims to connect with identifying best practice methodologies for creating innovative digital products as well as the requirements for successfully marketing that product utilising a variety of industry techniques to develop an innovative cross-platform marketing strategy. It engages with branded content marketing and multi-channel transmedia marketing, developing your existing skills in creating innovative content within media practice across film, web and social.
Personal Project
This module can take a variety of forms – from experimental practice within a creative specialism through to work created as part of an experiential learning experience or arising from a live brief.
This module allows you to work individually on independent projects. This module requires you to be inventive and to explore their own resources in designing and completing a personal project representing a full 40 credits’ work.
