MFA Advanced Film Practice

In a series of seminars and tutorials, you will work on your presentational and pitching skills, and on the development of a short fiction film project. During the first trimester, you will select a project to work up into pre-production.

In the second trimester, emphasis will be on continued script development, pre-visualisation and team working relationships in pre-production; attaching talent in front of, and behind the camera, and story interpretation by key creative members of the team: producer, director, actor, designer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. You will break down your scripts in production management terms, creating budgets, schedules and production plans.

Taking advantage of the Screen Academy’s series of screenings and master classes, you will conduct both a study of a film maker or movement, and a professional practice case study, that are pertinent to your own practice.

Depending on your specialism, and the appropriateness and availability of a suitable placement context, your case study may consist for instance of a block or day release professional placement in a workplace, on a film shoot in your relevant department or in development on a project with a writer or producer. If not it will consist of a original research into a key process within film-making that is relevant to your practice, and will involve original research including interviews with accomplished professionals.

You will get an overview of the different departments and associated professions involved in film production from conception to exhibition through the Screen Academy’s season of lectures and seminars from visiting professionals. This will enable you to examine team-working and the division of labour in the light of your own specialism and career plans.

Together the critical and professional practice strands inform a series of exercises designed to help you experiment with and enhance your creative practice, in parallel with the development and pre-production of your project. This process will occur in parallel with the Screen Academy’s individual industry mentoring programme.

Further information

The module gives an overview of production and post production roles and processes in writing, producing and directing in fiction, and documentary film making.

For directors the emphasis is on shooting techniques, and on working with actors and crews, and on creative post-production, including editing, sound design and use of music.

For producers, the emphasis is on line-producing the shoot, the management of post production, its routes and options, and on finding the audience - marketing and promoting the film.

For writers, the task will be to develop a feature script from a premise or outline to a revised second draft, with an emphasis on in-depth structural and character development, dialogue writing, and polishing.

The focus of the reflective report is determined by the students' own project(s) and specialism(s) as they have developed over the entire programme. Students will have been encouraged to maintain a reflective journal throughout the programme which will help them to site their reflection in the context of their overall career development, and to refer it to their PDP, and to their self assessment essay from the Critical and Creative Practice module from T1 & 2.

Further information