Drama and Film Studies

Course overview

This degree gives you the opportunity to develop your creative talents in and drama and film. It benefits from outstanding facilities for performance, as well as from our industry-standard resources for digital video and 16mm film production, alongside professional tuition in screenwriting and film journalism.

Course content in both subjects provides an excellent balance between theory and practice, allowing you to engage with essential critical and aesthetic approaches to film and drama, and, to apply those creatively to a range of practical projects in both areas. This is a challenging and stimulating course of study that will take you from the close study of texts and films, to the analysis and practice of performance and film production.

The course provides opportunities to screen or perform your work on and off-campus, to undertake commissioned work, and to engage with the film and theatre industries through self-generated work placements, encouraging the development of critical knowledge alongside transferable and vocational skills.

You will take half of your degree from drama and half from film studies.

Module guide

Year one core modules

• Approaches to Contemporary Theatre
• Introduction to Film and Cinema

Year two core modules

• Making Performance
• Live Art and Performance
• Theorising the Specular and Classical Hollywood Cinema

Year three core modules

• Major Project in Drama or Film Studies

Year one optional modules

• Introduction to Performance (Recommended)
• Performance Analysis (Recommended)
• Visualisation, Research and Storyboarding (Recommended)
• Film and Genre
• Introduction to Video
• History of Cinema
• Anglia Language Programme

Year two optional modules

• Writing Drama
• TV Drama Production
• Directors and Directing
• Film, Identity and Globalisation
• Documentary Film Theory
• 16mm Film-making
• Introduction to European Cinema
• Independent Cinema: US and Beyond
• Video Documentary
• Animation
• European Cinema and Identity
• Anglia Language Programme

Year three optional modules

• Devising Performance
• Enterprise in the Creative Arts
• Contemporary Drama
• Art, Music and Performance
• Special Subject (Theatre)
• Reviewing New Drama
• Arts Administration
• Principles of Dramatherapy
• Film Art
• Film, Modernity and Postmodernity
• Creative Practice in Film & Video
• Working in Film
• Avant-garde Film and Experimental Video
• Multiplexed: Contemporary Popular Cinema
• Anglia Language Programme

Assessment

Assessment is carried out via a very broad mix of methods including critical essays, reports, oral presentations, studio and public performance, an individual major project plus a range of practice-based research techniques.

As part of your learning you will be encouraged to seek work placements and to generate commissioned work in a range of modules. These form part of the assessment where undertaken. You will also be required to give critical evaluations of creative work undertaken and in 'crits' where you will present and defend your own work. Each year you will undertake Personal Development Planning (PDP) which encourages reflection on progress to date and the achievement of transferable skills and knowledge.