Film & Screen Studies at UCA

From silent movies to the modern era, British cinema to Latin American indigenous filmmaking, fiction to documentary, our BA (Hons) Film & Screen Studies degree course at UCA Farnham will take you deep into the wonder of film, television, and video games.  

This degree is aimed at those people who have a passion for the moving image, but are most intrigued by its contexts, theories, and histories. You will spend much of your time watching, analysing, and discussing a wide range of media and will be encouraged to develop your own research interests.  

With access to our purpose-built film studios and dedicated technical support, you’ll have opportunities to apply your knowledge to creative tasks, making short films and video essays, curating a festival, and creating blogs and posters. You’ll also be able to take creative electives from other courses to expand your understanding of film production, acting, music, or animation. 

Whatever your career ambitions, you’ll gain the expert critical and analytical skills to pursue your goals. 

Please note, there is no option to study this course with the Integrated Foundation Year or the Professional Practice Year.

Key information

Campus
farnham
Start date(s)
September 2025
Duration
3 years full-time
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Entry requirements
Tuition fees

Upcoming webinars

We offer a range of webinars throughout the year that Film & Screen Studies students may be interested in.


This includes subject talks, masterclasses, application proccess advice and student life guides. Check out our upcoming webinars and book your place today.

Accreditations, partners and industry connections

British Film Institute (BFI) logo

British Film Institute (BFI)

The BFI is a charity and the UK’s leading organisation for film and moving image. It promotes and supports British film from newcomers to established makers, and cares for the BFI National Archive, the world’s largest film and television archive.

ARRI logo

ARRI

ARRI is a leading designer and manufacturer of camera and lighting systems for the film, broadcast, and media industries. The ARRI Certified Film School accreditation is awarded to institutions that meet rigorous standards of technical excellence, creative education, and professional development.

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Discover the stories of our Film and TV students

Course
details

History of Film: Industry and Technology
You’ll look at the development of film within Europe and Hollywood to consider the creation of new filmic technologies, national film industries and their transnational connections. Key film movements such as German Expressionism and the French New Wave will be covered, together with some global examples.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
The unit provides an opportunity for you to explore what is meant by equality, diversity, and inclusion and the implications of these concepts for creative practice. It will equip students to understand how our social identities (such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, disability, sexual orientation, and religion) contribute to the inclusion and/or exclusion of individuals in creative spaces.

Television Studies
You’ll be introduced to a range of fundamental concepts essential to the understanding of television studies. It will connect television to the history of film, considering some of the central similarities and differences between these mediums.

Screen Theory
Through a range of theories, you’ll be able to deepen your understanding of moving image. You will read the work of foundational thinkers and consider the times and places from which they emerge, beginning to consider how certain theories respond to one another and intertwine.

Moving Image Analysis
This unit enables you to consider and understand moving images in terms of style and form, providing insight into both visual qualities and sound. You’ll also learn how narrative and character are constructed on screen, combining an understanding of how stories are created and presented through moving image.

Storytelling and Representation
You’ll develop a concept for a short film, applying your understanding of film theory, form and style. The emphasis will be on pitching a visual story exploring character with the aim of realising your ideas through a short script or film. The creative brief for this unit will also focus on issues of representation as introduced within the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity and Screen Theory units.

Core units

You will study the following core units:

National Industries And Local Filmmaking
You’ll build upon your understanding of the history of European and Hollywood cinema by connecting these industries to global film movements. Through case studies, you will deepen your knowledge of film as an international and transnational medium which is shaped by the geographical contexts from which it emerges.

The Conscious Practitioner
This unit aims to promote progressive values and attitudes to diversity and inclusion in creative practice. Students will have the opportunity to explore global perspectives and influences on creative practice, drawing upon interactions with varied identities, cultures, politics, and histories. The unit will explore how beliefs, values and attitudes drive behaviour and practices. Students will reflect on the development of their own creative influences, perspectives, practices, and sense of belonging as developing creative professionals in global and contemporary spaces.

Researching Non-Fiction
This unit provides a cultural, critical, theoretical and historical overview of the ways in which selected creators from a variety of international contexts have responded to real-life events. You’ll explore a range of non-fiction moving image texts that take real-life events as their starting points, including film, television and new media.

Film Festivals
This unit focuses on the development of the film festival, from their inception to the current landscape. This will consider the use of new technologies, the way films are marketed and circulated from an industry perspective and how festivals can be run sustainably, informed by current research in this area.

ATOM Activities
This unit is an extension of your Year 1 ATOM Activities.

PLE Digital Outcome
You’ll build your industry community and professional networking footprint, creating a digital folder evidencing that you are actively engaging in sustainable professional development. You’ll showcase current and newly established professional networks and identify common interests.

Elective units

There is a choice of elective units available and more details of the units available will be provided to you once on the course. Examples of elective units from previous years include:

  • Applied Skills for a Sustainable Media Industry: UCA is a founder member of the albert Education Partnership from BAFTA, which brings together Film and TV course providers from across the country and empowers their students to consider and help alleviate the screen industry’s impact on the climate crisis. Upon successful completion of this unit, you will achieve certification as an ‘albert Grad’, signalling your achievement of highly employable skills for a sustainable industry.
  • Audio World Building: Sound design can have an enormous impact on any moving image project. This unit will encourage you to explore the way sound can be used to underpin action, describe the unseen, establish an environment, set a tone, depict a mood or even to directly elicit an emotional response from an audience. 
  • Film Production: This unit is designed to provide learners with practical skills and knowledge in film production, with a focus on collaboration, professionalism, and self-reflection. The unit will culminate in a group film production project, where learners will have the opportunity to apply their skills and knowledge.
  • Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Music and Theatre: This unit encourages interdisciplinary collaboration between Music, Acting & Performance, and Design for Theatre & Screen to plan, rehearse and deliver a live performance piece to an audience of peers and the public. This project puts music performance at the centre of the collaboration. 
  • Prestige Television (based at Maidstone TV Studios): Starting with the claim that television reaches more people than any other cultural form, this unit examines and articulates the meanings of ‘Quality’ and ‘Prestige’ as they relate to Television, and why these genres of ‘Prestige’ have become dominant.
  • Screen Writing: You’ll be introduced to a range of creative writing skills and, in particular, the highly visual medium of writing for film and television. You will view and compare the work of some of the industry’s most accomplished contemporary screen writers, learn how to present and format a script and write your own story outline for a short film, series or screenplay.
  • Verbatim: You will explore Verbatim texts and performance practices including ‘headphone’ theatre and documentary theatre practices. The unit will culminate in small group films/performances using the practical techniques studied.

Engagement, Reception And Criticism
You’ll build upon your understanding of the ways in which films are produced and distributed so you can consider in greater detail how they are received. You’ll develop in-depth knowledge of key concepts such as cult cinema, audience studies and professional film criticism and engage with ongoing debates surrounding our engagement with the moving image.

Preparation For Dissertation
This unit will build upon your independent research skills as developed in Researching Non-Fiction and prepare you for your dissertation. You will take your research skills and apply them to a topic of your choice within film and screen studies which will form the basis for your dissertation in the second semester.

Future Of Screens
This unit will bring together the topics of film production, distribution and reception and add to this a consideration of the future of the moving image by exploring cutting edge technologies and developments. You’ll work together to shape the direction of the unit and explore your own choice of moving images via student-led screenings and seminars, and showcase your understandings with a creative project with an open brief, and a written essay.

Dissertation
Your studies culminate with the formation and realisation of your dissertation. This is a substantial period of sustained, individually negotiated research on a subject related to the contextual and/or theoretical concerns of your discipline or chosen area of practice, towards the provision of structured written argument.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Course specifications

Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.

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Fees & funding

Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2025/26

  • BA course: £9,535

Tuition fees - 2025/26

Tuition fees - 2025/26 entry

  • BA course: £17,500

Please note: The fees listed on this webpage are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources. Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of the Course Information Document for more details of the costs you may incur.

Facilities

Our facilities include two purpose-built film studios with dedicated technical support; sound editing, 7.1.2 surround sound mixing, as well as digital and analogue editing suites. Software includes Avid Media Composer, Symphony, Baselight, Nitris and Pro Tools. Production kit also includes high-end cameras, lighting and sound kit, which is available on campus from the Equipment Hire Department on site. Extensive libraries featuring books, DVDs, other notable recordings and archival material.

Launch the Virtual Tour

Film studio, UCA Farnham

Sound studios, UCA Farnham

Virtual Production & Motion Capture Studio, UCA Farnham

Library, UCA Farnham

Career opportunities

Our industry connections include:

  • Avid
  • Kodak
  • BKSTS
  • BECTU
  • NAHEM
  • Envy
  • The Royal Television Society
  • The Guild of Television Cameramen
  • Tangram Post Production
  • Warp Films
  • Working Title
  • BBC
  • Picture Productions
  • Paramount Pictures
  • ITN
  • Mainframe
  • Big Minded TV

We've hosted a number of visiting lecturers, including:

  • Alex Garland, novelist, screenwriter, film producer and director of titles including The Beach, Ex Machina, Dredd, Sunshine and 28 Days Later
  • Barrie Vince, editor of Get Real, A Private Function and Moonlighting
  • Gustavo Costantini, Argentinian sound designer, musician and Professor of Sound Design at the University of Buenos Aires
  • Joe Martin and Danielle Clarke, director and producer of documentaries Win a Baby, Going Straight, Scientologists at War and Britain's Young Soldiers
  • Julie Noon/One World Media – Julie made Syria's Torture Machine, The TA and the Taliban, and Cooking in the Danger Zone
  • Philip Ilson, director of the London Short Film Festival
  • Sean Bobbitt, cinematographer for films including 12 Years a Slave

As well as coursework, our students are supported in external projects and have made professional-level film work for organisations including:

  • Alive & Well
  • London Life
  • Royal Marsden Hospital
  • Sailability
  • The March Foundation
  • Who Needs Heroes

Our students have undertaken work experience on major blockbuster films and award-winning features, such as:

  • Lilting
  • The Favourite
  • Snow White and the Huntsman
  • Thor: The Dark World
  • Anna Karenina
  • Game of Thrones 

Graduates of our Film & Screen Studies go on to develop their careers under several different roles. These include:

  • Film journalist
  • Film and media critic
  • Film festival programmer
  • Film historian
  • Film publicist
  • Lecturer

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.

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Entry & portfolio requirements

We’ll need to see your portfolio for this course:

  • UK applicants: We will invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person.
  • International applicants: We will ask you to submit an online portfolio. 

View Film & Screen Studies portfolio advice

 

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