BA (Hons)Film Production

Core modules

The Power of the Edit

This module introduces your to the creative, technical, and professional foundations of film editing and post production. You'll address real-world challenges such as shaping narrative and emotion through editing, maintaining continuity, managing complex media workflows, and delivering polished work to industry standards. Key themes include editorial decision-making, rhythm and pacing, montage and continuity traditions, and the use of sound and colour as storytelling tools.

The Shoot: Building Blocks of Cinematography

This module introduces you to the practical and conceptual foundations of cinematography, focusing on how visual decisions shape storytelling in professional screen production. You'll explore real-world challenges such as translating script to screen, working within technical and logistical constraints, and making creative choices under production pressures.

Screenwriting: From Idea to Page

In this module you'll gain a foundational understanding of how stories are developed for film and television, addressing real-world challenges such as audience engagement, industry conventions, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. You'll explore key themes including narrative structure, character development, genre, and the relationship between storytelling and contemporary screen industries.

Film Practice: A Personal Matter

This module provides the essential foundations for your journey as a filmmaker. Whether you're completely new to film practice or already have some experience, you'll be introduced to the core principles of film language, visual storytelling, production roles, and on-set protocol. You'll explore how ideas move from concept to screen, gaining an understanding of narrative, performance, and the collaborative nature of filmmaking.

Core modules

Intermediate Major Film 1: Preproduction

This module sets out the development of a short film project through an intensive, research-led preproduction process, establishing the creative and professional foundations for the Intermediate Major Film 2 module. You'll focus on developing, interrogating, and refining a film concept through preproduction, responding to the real-world demands of professional filmmaking and culminating in a clearly articulated, production-ready proposal.

Intermediate Major Film 2: Production and Post

This module focuses on the production and postproduction of the intermediate major film, guiding you through the practical realisation of a ten-minute short film developed in the Intermediate Major Film 1 module. You'll focus on translating preproduction plans into a completed cinematic work, responding to the creative, technical, and logistical demands of professional filmmaking practice.

Crafting the Scene

This module focuses on crafting cinematic scenes, examining how directorial methodologies directly shape mise-en-scène and artistic outcomes. You'll explore how theoretical, cultural, and political approaches to filmmaking inform framing, performance, lighting, sound, rhythm, and spatial design, and how these choices affect meaning on screen.

Optional modules

Please note: Not all optional modules are guaranteed to run each year.

Meeting the Brief: A Virtual Production Promo

This module examines promotional filmmaking as a key area of contemporary screen practice, focusing on how creative, technical, and strategic decisions are shaped by client briefs, brand identity, and audience engagement. You'll explore how storytelling, visual language, pacing, and tone function within commercial contexts to communicate meaning and value effectively.

The World: Cinematic Documentaries

This module aims to develop your understanding of contemporary documentary filmmaking as both a creative practice and a critical mode of inquiry. It responds to the significant transformation of documentary cinema since the early 2000s, during which the form has expanded beyond traditional informational models to embrace more personal, experimental, and aesthetically driven approaches.

Core modules

Diving into the Industry: Professional Practice Portfolio

As you prepare to enter the screen industries, understanding how to position yourself professionally is essential. In this module you'll analyse the landscape of career pathways within the film and screen industries, understand the tools needed to access them, and build a targeted portfolio that represents your professional identity. You'll practise pitching, developing a career plan, applying for funding, and curating an online profile. You'll also consider how your future role can contribute to a more sustainable and greener industry.

Final Major Film: Pre-Production

Your final major film represents the culmination of your degree and the most ambitious filmmaking work you will undertake at Solent. This module empowers you to realise the developmental foundation of a significant, meaningful, and professionally structured film project of up to 15 minutes. It is the first stage of a two-part journey where you'll take your idea from its earliest conceptual form through to a robust, well-researched, and strategically designed project ready to enter pre-production.

Final Major Film 2: Production and Post

Your final major film is the most significant creative undertaking of your degree, enabling you to realise a complex short film of up to 15 minutes that synthesises every skill, discipline and creative insight developed throughout your time at Solent. Across this module you'll work collectively within your established roles to bring your film into production, shape it through post production, and prepare it for distribution, festivals, and professional exhibition.

Optional modules

Please note: Not all optional modules are guaranteed to run each year.

Advanced Cinematography

Building on cinematography skills developed across earlier production-based modules in years one and two, this module advances your ability to design, lead and execute sophisticated visual strategies for narrative filmmaking. At this level, your cinematographic choices must be intentional, concept-driven and aligned with the demands of your final major film.

Advanced Postproduction

Building on the postproduction knowledge developed across earlier production-based modules, this advanced module focuses on the creative, technical and narrative decision-making required to complete a fiction film to a professional standard. As you prepare for your final major film, the ability to shape story, rhythm, emotional tone, and sonic identity becomes essential.

Advanced Directing

Building on directing principles introduced across production-based modules in years one and two, this module supports you in developing an advanced, personal and intentional directorial approach. At this level, the focus shifts from simply understanding directing to designing, leading and innovating a fully realised creative vision.