Course description

The highlights

• You'll be guided through all stages of the creative content-making process to complete a short film, documentary or full-length screenplay/script on this challenging course
  
  
• You will be taught and mentored by staff who are experienced in the film and TV industry and knowledgeable about its opportunities for employment and commissioning. They will use their extensive professional network to help you find opportunities and placements

• You will join a vibrant and supportive community of creative content makers, and be encouraged to experiment, take creative risks and find your talent and voice
  
  
• We have high-spec film-making equipment available for you to use, including RED and ARRI digital cameras and traditional celluloid or ‘35mm’ film.

What’s your story?

The world is always looking for new creative stories and this MA is designed to help you tell yours. We are looking for authentic and original voices who feel they have something new to say. In an industry that’s traditionally been dominated by young white men, we particularly welcome applicants from communities that have been historically under-represented on our screens.

This is a new MA for September 2021, but it builds on the success of Film Production at Derby and our previous MA in Writing for Performance, all of which have been highly rated. In fact, the latest Guardian league table placed us in the top 20 universities for Film Production and Photography (The Guardian University Guide 2021).

You can choose to specialise in film-making, documentary-making or scriptwriting, and under the mentorship of your tutors, you will gradually build the practical, aesthetic and technical skills needed to develop an original creative project. This could be a short film or documentary, or a script for a full-length film, television series, or play.

This MA also ensures you build up the commercial awareness and interpersonal skills you will need to succeed in the industry. For instance, we’ll cover pitching technique and how to articulate and sell your ideas.

You will explore the wider, more complex problems posed by content production as well, and develop theoretical understanding so you can appreciate the context (historical, social, commercial, environmental, international) of your own and others’ creative work.

A professional approach

During the Creative Project module in the final trimester, you will work through all the same stages that professional film-makers or scriptwriters do, to create your original film, documentary or script. On the Film and Documentary pathways, this process starts with pitching and progresses on to pre-production and filming, editing and finally sound design. Where possible, we encourage collaborative projects so that film-makers experience working together.  

On the Scriptwriting pathway, you will be supported to develop your story from initial short synopsis, through treatment, step outline and to first draft in the summer. Following a rehearsed reading with a professional cast, you will then continue with further drafting to complete the final full-length script.   

The highlight of this professional approach, is that Film and Documentary students will be able to showcase and present their completed work to an academic and industry panel, while scriptwriters will get the opportunity to experience a professional read-through facilitated by Derby Theatre. These valuable opportunities enable you to get feedback from professionals and reflect on your work, so you can make changes and improvements and find your audience.

How you will learn

You are initially taught through interactive lectures, seminars, workshops, and screenings. You will then learn and develop your craft in a practical setting through independent and collaborative creative projects, independent research, and study.

Sharing, developing, and reflecting on your learning with other students and staff is an important part of this Masters. You will have lots of opportunity to discuss and share your work, as well as debate issues, in a critically supportive peer network. If you are on the Scriptwriting pathway, you will also be allocated individual mentors to support your creative development.

Sessions on film and screen theory give you an academic platform that enables you to contextualise your work and scrutinise key debates in film and screen production. This will help you present thoroughly researched and well-presented pitches and is also essential if you want to move on to further academic study.

There will also be plenty of opportunities to attend local, national, and international events relevant to your pathway, such as film festivals, screenings, networking groups, and research seminars.

How you are assessed

There are a variety of ‘summative assessments’ towards the end of each module, including:

• your creative practical project (a film, documentary or script) or advanced research project
• academic writing
• self-assessments through reflective journals or essays
• proposals, and
• presentations.

As well as the summative assessments, we will be assessing you regularly during teaching sessions and one-to-one tutorials, checking that you understand theories and concepts and providing feedback. This is called ‘formative assessment’ and it does not affect your final grades.

Who you'll meet

The programme leaders for this course are as follows:

• Dr Christine Parker, Associate Professor of Practice in film, is a feature film screenwriter and director and has supervised feature scripts, as well as full length works for theatre, radio and television. She has also overseen thousands of shorts from script to production on an international stage.
• Barry Squires, Senior Lecturer in Film Production, is a freelance Focus Puller for the film and broadcast industry. He has worked on Peter Kay’s Car Share and for CBBC children’s drama, BBC Match of the Day and BT Sport.