BMus (Hons) Composition for Screen

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Launch
Your Launch Week for Year 2 is an intensive course on narrative composition.

Composition and Sound Design 1: Composing in Time
This unit advances your practical understanding of music theory and composition and introduces you to the field of sound design and Foley. You’ll study advanced musical concepts pertaining to the composition, organisation, and perception of music in time.

You’ll also reconsider the recording studio as environment for capturing non-instrumental sounds to augment Foley and sound design in a post-production environment.

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

Opportunity
A series of talks, masterclasses and workshops from industry professionals; All year groups.

Composition and Sound Design 2: Composing in Space
This collaborative unit is intended to bring together your combined skills in music theory, composition, recording, and sound design in a group project. You’ll work to a brief to produce an original soundtrack for moving image. As a collaborative team, you will be expected to organise your time and plan efficient use of recording spaces and technical resources.

Placement / Live Brief
For this unit you will be required to research, negotiate and undertake a self-initiated work experience placement opportunity or other professional interactions within a business appropriate to the music, sound or media industries such as a “live brief” or collaboration with a student from another course. This placement or “live brief” should be designed to meet your own aspirational and identified developmental needs.

ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are small pieces of individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across UCA, and offer a flexible, impactful learning experience. They expand your creative horizon by accessing learning topics that would not otherwise be scheduled on your course specific timetable.

PLE Digital Outcomes
The PLE Digital Outcome is a purposefully edited, self-directed record of your constructive, engagement with and presence on, digital media platforms across the year.

Elective units

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

Farnham

The following electives are available at UCA Farnham:

• 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.

Maidstone

You can also choose from the following electives offered 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.

Launch
Your final Launch Week is about listening and sharing. Each day we will listen to an important and significant musical work in its entirety together. 

Dissertation
The Dissertation is documentation of a sustained academically rigorous argument. This is normally through a written and referenced piece of writing, as might appear in a peer reviewed journal. It may be possible to do a multimedia submission, depending on your area of focus. You will develop and research an area of enquiry from which your question and title are formed. You are responsible for the topic, but it will be discussed and negotiated with your course tutor. 

Music Business
The Music Business unit will enable you to develop strategies, plans and pragmatic information needed for your next steps in the music business. The unit combines general knowledge on contracts, fees and rights with bespoke mentoring.  Taken together, you will create a dossier, which evidences the steps taken to prepare yourself for the future

Opportunity
A series of talks, masterclasses and workshops from industry professionals for all year groups.

Final Major Project
The Final Major Project is a culmination of your skills, passions and creativity. You will develop, in coordination with the unit leader, a brief for your project.  If you are working as part of a wider collaborative team, then a defined role within the group will also be negotiated. The brief and role description set the parameters in which you your final major project will develop. It should be ambitious but achievable and framed within how you want to promote yourself as a composer, musician or music producer.  

Alongside the project, you will be compiling a showreel of work to showcase your compositions thus far. The unit and year will finish with a “festival” which celebrates the compositions and projects completed for this unit. 

BSc (Hons) course - Year 2*

The standard entry requirements* for this course are:

• 120 credits from a relevant degree (at level 4)
• Certificate of Higher Education (CertHE)
• Higher National Certificate in a relevant subject

And/or Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL)

BSc (Hons) course - Year 3*

The standard entry requirements* for this course are:

• 240 credits from a relevant degree (120 credits at level 4 and 120 credits at level 5), with a minimum of 55% overall
• Foundation Degree in a relevant subject
• Higher National Diploma in a relevant subject

And/or Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL)

In recognition that you may already have a relevant professional qualification, or appropriate working experience in the relevant industries, APEL may be accepted for entry on to the course. This will be based on the partnership articulations and will be assessed on a case by case basis.

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. 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.

BSc (Hons) course Year 2 / Year 3 entry

The entry requirements for these courses will depend on the country your qualifications are from, please contact our International Admissions team to discuss your application: [email protected]

Portfolio requirements

You will be required to submit a portfolio for review. Further information on specific portfolio requirements and how to submit your portfolio will be sent to you after we have reviewed your application.

English language requirements

To study at UCA, you'll need to have a certain level of English language skill. And so, to make sure you meet the requirements of your course, we ask for evidence of your English language ability, please check the level of English language required:

• English language requirements