BA (Hons) Television Production

Delivered at UCA Farnham, UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Launch
This intensive production primer exposes you to a fast turn-around experience that mirrors many TV industry environments. Accentuating collaborative skills, it will test your flexibility and resilience as you respond in small groups to a prescribed commissioning target and changing external conditions. At the end of the week, teams will pitch their outcomes for the chance of winning the hypothetical commission.

Screen Stories
You’ll be introduced to the fundamental structure, tropes and mechanisms that are common to human stories and that influence the content we watch. Expressed through enquiry into diverse global examples, you will interrogate your response to these narratives, arriving at a clearer sense of your own dramatic voice, while applying screenwriting craft for yourself. By researching ideas, developing them into a defined story concept and expanding this into an original short screenplay, you will examine the process through your own writing.

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 you 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.

Digital News
You will be introduced to the role of the media and its influence on the narratives we develop for understanding our social world, taking perspectives on the future, and the importance of journalistic storytelling. You’ll be required to research, plan and produce a short news or current affairs item for multi-platform transmission. Working as a group, you will write, visualise and strategise your production, taking into account the demands of broadcasters, expectations of global audiences, landscape of regulatory compliance and technicalities of distribution.

Opportunity Week – Aspirations
Opportunity Week introduces ATOM Activities – see below - while challenging students to research a career path and route to industry that may guide their forward journey. Using your findings, and the findings of your peers, you’ll build a career map that expands your awareness of available careers across activities such as scripted and unscripted, craft and technical, editorial and production, sales and exhibition.

Script to Screen
Building on the experience of the Screen Stories unit, you’ll now focus on the interpretive and collaborative skills required to translate script to screen. Adopting one or more significant head-of-department roles, you will contribute to the realisation of a longer, more detailed dramatic short film from an existing screenplay. Directing, cinematography, production and sound design, casting, editing, effective planning and working to a tight schedule will be critical to the project.

Unscripted: Factual Entertainment
Factual entertainment is a broad category that has emerged to command huge global appeal, with successful formats traded and remade the world over. You’ll be challenged to research and devise a high-concept, unscripted proposal in response to a commissioner brief. This calls for ideas that grab attention in the broadcast schedule but also cut through on streaming platforms. It is an opportunity to think outside the box and invent the next genre-busting format that reflects contemporary concerns of large sections of the population in enlightening, entertaining and accessible ways.

Personal story
You’ll reflect on your first-year achievements, recalibrate ambitions for industry and set the targets that will help to achieve them. You’ll develop an online showcase for your individual aptitudes and experiences and be supported to devise a Personal Development Plan that clarifies your way forward. Together, these two elements comprise your Personalised Learning Experience (PLE) digital outcome.

ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are tiny pieces of individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across the university. Collectively they form a small fraction of your curriculum that is determined through your own personal choice and interest.

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Launch
To launch Year 2, you’ll share the result of your summer projects and be tasked to choose one of several exploratory mini briefs. Here you will flex your production skills in unique and experimental ways before screening the outcomes in a course-wide event at the end of the week.

Documentary
You’ll develop and create a short film documentary. The unit calls for an understanding of producer, client and audience expectations, and the ability to represent complex factual ideas in an engaging manner. Key skills will be required, including research and interview techniques, shooting strategies, storytelling and scripting for factual programme making. In the process you will develop your teamwork, research, political and aesthetic awareness, critical analysis of audiences, consideration of on and off-screen representation, presentation skills, promotion, and enterprise.

The Conscious Practitioner
This unit aims to promote progressive values and attitudes to diversity and inclusion in creative practice. You 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. You 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.

Live Production
Live and ‘as live’ production is a cornerstone of commercial television output. This unit challenges you to develop a detailed pitch for a live studio pilot. A commissioning panel will then ‘green-light’ the idea considered to have the greatest potential, before a creative team is formed from across the cohort to develop the concept through to live stream and record.

The unit provides opportunities for cross-course and external collaboration with other media related disciplines. For example, set and costume design, make-up and hair, music and graphics all contribute to the outcome. This collaboration promotes negotiation and creative teamwork that simulates the interdisciplinary character of professional production.

Opportunity Week
This opportunity week gives you the chance to discover and explore a new aspect of production and the skills required within the specialism. Including masterclasses and guided research you will undertake personal development within a specific field of expertise.

Professional Story
Building on the Personal Story unit at the end of year 1, this unit extends your early career research into the world of professional employment. You’ll undertake a short work placement, internship, or client brief, and using these experiences complete a work experience report, and update your online presence.

Your revised showcase will evidence your PLE Digital Outcome, refining your ambition and redefining your offer to industry ahead of your final year.

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

PLE Digital Outcomes
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

You will study two of the following elective units across the year.

Maidstone

The following electives are available at Maidstone TV Studios:

• Immersive Production: You will explore cutting edge and future focused technology to gain a broad comprehension of the expertise and skills required if you want to delve further into immersive media production. The unit will enable you to get a strong understanding of where the production industry is heading and allow you to pitch a concept using these technologies for a television production brief.
• Prestige Television: 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.
• TV in the Age of Digital Disruption: This unit examines and critically interrogates the changing dynamics of television production, distribution, textual analysis and audience engagement in an age of ‘digital disruption’, particularly following the rise of streaming services.

Farnham

You can also choose from the following electives offered at our Farnham campus:

• Acting Through Song: You’ll learn and develop skills relevant to character and narrative-driven musical performance, rehearsing and performing a sharing that may include selected sequences from a play or plays with music or musical theatre.
• 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. 
• Cinematography: This unit is essential if you want to develop yuor skills in visual storytelling and creating compelling visuals for film and video. By taking this unit, you will learn the principles of cinematography and gain hands-on experience using industry-standard equipment to create professional quality visuals.
• Consent, Intimacy and Stage Combat: This unit focuses on the fundamental skills and principles required for performing effective, believable, and safer intimacy and unarmed (hand to hand) combat for stage and screen.
• 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. 
• Loops and Micro Format Films: You’ll discover the creativity and versatility of the simple animated (or live action) loop for use on your website as a showcase to promote your own work or engage your ‘brand’, and create three loops to upload to your websites or use in social media for self-promotion.
• Motion Capture & Green Screen: Motion capture is a technique used to capture the movements of actors or objects in digital form. Green screen is a technique used to composite two or more images or video streams together by replacing a specific colour (usually green or blue) with another image or video stream. In this unit you’ll learn about how both these things can work in the VFX industry.
• Physical Theatre: You’ll work together with students from a wide range of courses to make a live physical theatre production. This could be further augmented by animated material or filmed material. TV or film students may also be involved capturing or streaming the performance.
• Postproduction Editing: This elective unit is essential if you want to become proficient in the art of post-production film editing. Using industry-standard software - Avid Media Composer (Davinci Resolve, and Premiere Pro) – you’ll create a professional quality scene and have analysed and evaluated professional editing and sound design workflows.
• 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.
• Shakespeare Festival: In this unit you will stage an abridged version of a Shakespeare play in an outdoor festival setting at sites around UCA Farnham campus. A director will help you shape the play and actors, composers and designers will work together to rehearse and run the festival events. 
• 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.
• Virtual Production: Virtual production has emerged as a cutting-edge technology that revolutionizes the way film and television productions are made. You’ll gain the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to use virtual production tools and techniques to create immersive and interactive digital content.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Launch

Shared across the School of Film, Media and Performing Arts, this week consists of a series of interdisciplinary seminars, screenings and workshops and focuses on ground-breaking creative work that has surprised, shocked, and changed the way we view the world.

You’ll specifically be preparing a presentation/screening event at the end of the week, which provides the platform for outcomes from Year 1 and 2 launch weeks. This will include management of the venue, audio/visual technology and awards.

Critical Contexts

You’ll explore a research topic that is meaningful to your final year practice, and you’ll present it in the form of a structured written argument, a video essay/ presentation or research project targeted at informing the development of your practice.

Concept Development

This unit challenges you to focus your practice through the development of a viable production concept that can either stand alone as a development project or be taken into production through the subsequent units. At the end, you’ll pitch your project to a Development Executive and receive professional feedback. The outcome will be a production bible that demonstrates consideration of all necessary creative and logistical variables.

Opportunity Week

Your final Opportunity Week is a moment to project ahead to graduate destinations, building on the career-focused experiences of the course to consider the professional self once more.

Final Major Project – Pre-Production

Having created an original concept and witnessed the pitching others, you now have the choice to either prepare your own development concept for production in the next unit, or join a preproduction project that is in need of your skills. Whichever you choose you’ll work on a detailed pre-production package appropriate to your chosen role that demonstrates your readiness for the task.

Final Major Project – Production

This final unit brings together all the creative and critical experiences of the course, challenging you to demonstrate innovative and sophisticated engagement with a suitably ambitious major project.

Working individually or in teams, you’ll produce a highly refined and professional outcome that is ready for distribution to a defined audience - managing the project, developing and deploying advanced creative methodologies and production skills appropriate to your role/s.

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

BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 112 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
• 112 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.  

Portfolio requirements

For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. If you would prefer to upload a portfolio digitally, there is also the option to submit it online via your UCA Applicant Portal. 

You don’t need to have previous experience of video making, but we do want to see evidence of creativity and original thinking. This can be in the form of one or more of the following: videos, photographs, scripts, creative writing, sound recordings, journalism, online content and general media work. Further information will be provided once you have applied.

View more portfolio advice

BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements for these courses are one of the following:

• 32 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Pass, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
• 32 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.  

Portfolio requirements

For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. If you would prefer to upload a portfolio digitally, there is also the option to submit it online via your UCA Applicant Portal. 

You don’t need to have previous experience of video making, but we do want to see evidence of creativity and original thinking. This can be in the form of one or more of the following: videos, photographs, scripts, creative writing, sound recordings, journalism, online content and general media work. Further information will be provided once you have applied.

View more portfolio advice

*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades -  in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.