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Film and TV (Full-time) (BA Hons)

Swansea
3 Years Full-time
120 UCAS Points

Designed to provide you with the necessary creative abilities and professional skills relevant to working in the film industry, this course aims to give you an understanding of the many roles in the production process. The course provides a multitude of opportunities to create practical production work while providing you with the underpinning theoretical knowledge and understanding to thrive creatively.

A range of carefully designed practical film modules aims to give you an understanding of film form and the current film industry together with the creative tools and professional skills to realise your personal visions.

This degree provides a framework upon which you can build appropriate academic, artistic, technical and professional skills relevant to working in either the film or education sectors. It will provide you with an intensive series of practice-based modules that allow you to develop higher-order skills in directing, editing, writing and cinematography. There are also theoretical modules to help you consolidate the learning from your creative output. The course collaborates with a variety of professional partners and offers opportunities for students to work with live clients and on industry-standard briefs as part of their learning. We offer a variety of on-location opportunities for students to thrive in a degree experience that goes beyond the realms of the classroom.

“The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.” Francois Truffaut

Course details

Start date:
Study modes:
  • Blended (On-campus)
Language:
  • English
  • Bilingual
Institution code:
T80
UCAS code:
W610
Course length:
3 Years Full-time
Entry requirements:
120 UCAS Points

Tuition Fees 2023/24 and 24/25
Home (Full-time): £9,000 per year
Overseas (Full-time): £13,500 per year

Why choose this course?

01
UWTSD ranked 1st in Wales for Film Production & Photography (Guardian League Table 2022).
02
No portfolio required.
03
We welcome and encourage applications from media and non-media focussed courses such as English, psychology, history, communications etc.
04
In your final year, you work on an anthology feature film.
05
You will help run an international film festival.
06
You will be taught specific job roles in technical sessions (such as first assistant camera, production co-ordinator, researcher, studio director, etc.) to allow you to apply for jobs within your first term.

What you will learn

The chances of you becoming a great storyteller and filmmaker by just sitting in a classroom listening to lecturers talk for hours are not good. Instead, our thinking is, the quicker we get you out there, in the real world, the quicker you start to see how stories are shaped by locations and then the quicker you will become a mature filmmaker. By teaching in different locations, we offer a special learning experience, with an exciting and innovative blend of taught and practical sessions that take place at a variety of venues including cafes, churches and shops, bringing you closer to where stories are told. Our practice-based modules are taught in condensed two or four-week blocks one after another, mirroring the production process.

We also do not teach software or cameras in the traditional way either. Instead, workshops prepare you for the creative industry by teaching you within job roles and on location. You will learn what it means to be a producer, a director of photography or a first assistant camera through to directing short drama pieces.  All this is supported by teaching staff and technical demonstrators.

To learn how to communicate stories well, you need to understand and experience life. You need to experience the world with all its beauty, quirks, and complexities head-on. This means a mix of philosophy, psychology, communications, and maybe even a little quantum mechanics. To help with that, we offer an exciting and intensive blend of cross-discipline teaching and intense practice sessions. You will be challenged to take your learning from the classroom to out there in the real world - this is where the teaching really begins.

We are also one of the few UK Film Schools that offer our students the opportunity to run a film festival. The Copper Coast International Film Festival is a Swansea College of Art UWTSD student-run film festival that attracts interest from around the world, giving an insight into the wider film market and an understanding of what it takes to make an award-winning film. We are now in our fifth year and still going strong. 2022 will see an extra special festival, the best of the best: a retrospective of the first five years.

So here at UWTSD Swansea College of Art, you will be offered a student-focussed learning environment offered nowhere else. You will learn storytelling in all its forms over a coffee in a café, or a script reading in a graveyard, church, moor, beach… Location teaching and location learning are special. Our philosophy is simple — if you never leave the classroom, you will always remain a student and although we have never met, we know that you are not going to university to graduate as a student filmmaker, but as a professionally minded filmmaker, ready to conquer the world.

The Storyteller

(10 credits)

Investigating Spaces

(20 credits)

Contemporary Challenges: Making a Difference

(20 credits)

Ways of Thinking

(10 credits)

Applied Storytelling Practice 1

(20 credits)

Learning in the Digital Era

(20 credits)

Textual Practices 1

(10 credits)

Ways of Perceiving

(10 credits)

Changemakers: Creativity and Value Creation

(20 credits)

Research in Context

(10 credits)

Learn to Love Solitude

(20 credits)

Designing the Story

(10 credits)

Applied Storytelling Practice 2

(20 credits)

Changemakers: Building your Personal Brand for Sustainable Employment

(20 credits)

Textual Practices 2

(10 credits)

Research in Practice

(10 credits)

Graduate Project Pitch

(20 credits)

Graduate Project

(40 credits)

The Film Festival

(20 credits)

Independent Project

(40 credits)

Course Page Disclaimer

  • We listen to student feedback and insights from industry and from professionals to ensure that course content is high-quality and up-to-date, and that it offers the best possible preparation for your future career or study goals. 

    For this reason, there might be modifications to the content of your course over time, to keep up to date with changes in the subject area or in the sector. If a module is no longer running, we’ll make sure to keep you informed, and work with you to choose a different suitable module.

testimonial

Staff

Our People

You will be taught and supported by a wide range of professional staff and teams here to help you get the university experience you are looking for. Our teaching staff were ranked 2nd in Wales for assessments and feedback (NSS 2023) meaning the comments you get back from your work will help you learn. Our commitment to your learning has seen our students us as Top 10 in the UK for Lecturers and Teaching Quality. Find out more about our academic staff who teach across our courses. 

Accommodation

example of student bedroom

Swansea Accommodation

Swansea has a huge student population, and the variety of accommodation available will leave you feeling spoilt for choice. Various purpose-built student accommodation providers provide accommodation in Swansea, and the accommodation team can guide you through your options. It will offer ongoing support throughout your time as a UWTSD student.

Further information

  • We welcome applications from individuals from a wide range of backgrounds from English, photography, design to psychology to science to media.

    To assess student suitability for their chosen course we arrange interviews for all applicants at which your skills, achievements, and life experience will be considered.

    Qualifications are important, however, our offers are not solely based on academic results. If you don’t have the required UCAS points then please contact the courses admissions tutor or email artanddesign@uwtsd.ac.uk as we can consider offers to applicants based on individual merit, exceptional work, and/or practical experience.

    Our standard offer for a degree course is 120 UCAS tariff points. We expect applicants to have a grade C or above in English Language (or Welsh) at GCSE level, together with passes in another four subjects. Plus we accept a range of Level 3 qualifications including:

    • Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, plus one GCE A-Level in a relevant academic subject
    • Three GCE A-Levels or equivalent
    • UAL L3 Extended Diploma in Art and Design
    • UAL L3 Applied General Diploma and Extended Diploma in Art and Design
    • UAL L3 Diploma and Extended Diploma in Creative Practice: Art, Design and Communication
    • UAL L3 Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production and Technology
    • BTEC Extended Diploma in a relevant subject
    • International Baccalaureate score of 32
    • Other relevant qualifications can be considered on an individual basis

    Interview information

    The most important thing that we will expect to see at your interview is a strong passion and enthusiasm for storytelling in Film & TV. There is no need for a portfolio. If you have one, then great, but we treat the interview as the main test of your suitability for the course and its demands. You will be given a small film to watch beforehand and from that we will structure our interview. The structure of the interview is designed to allow time for you to ask questions about the course to ensure it is the right course for you and that you are the right student for us.  

  • All assessment is based on 100% practical coursework.

    Students are expected to demonstrate their understanding in the form of practical project work. All practical work is project and portfolio based.

  • Our students have access to a diverse range of equipment and resources, which in most cases are sufficient to complete their programme of study. We provide the basic software and cameras necessary for students to develop their practical work within our extensive workshop sessions and on location.

    You will need to buy a 1TB hard drive and suitable clothes for outside learning.

  • You may be eligible for funding to help support your study. To find out about scholarships, bursaries and other funding opportunities that are available, please visit our Bursaries and Scholarships section.

  • Students can also take up the opportunity to study for a semester in Europe, the USA, Canada or Malaysia. These are exciting opportunities for you to expand your worldview through experiences with new cultures and people.

  • Our alumni have found production roles across the film & TV industry, with recent graduates working on projects such as Mission Impossible (4, 5 and 6), The Grand Tour, His Dark Materials, Paddington 2, Brissic, Guardians of the Galaxy, Outlaw King, Bancroft, Doctor Who and many, many more.

    Other graduates have landed jobs with established industry heavyweights, including BBC, Sky, Amazon, MPC and Milk VFX. Many past students have also found success as freelancers or creating their own production companies.