This BA has been designed to get you into the diverse film industry, bringing together both theoretical and practical learning.
You’ll be following in the footsteps of a long list of decorated alumni, the likes of which have gone on to work on the latest Star Wars productions, for Disney, the BBC, set up their own companies and continued their studies at the National Film and Television School.
Year on year, our students produce outstanding, industry standard films that are distributed across many short film festivals including Dessert (North Hollywood Film Festival, best thriller, 2019); Natia (KinoFilm, Best Student Short, 2017), Natia (Underwire Film Festival [BAFTA recognised festival], Best Film in the Under 25 category, 2017); Potty the Plant (Learning on Screen award for best student film, 2018); Chopsticks! (Learning on Screen award for best student film, AND Special Jury Prize, 2019), as well as many Royal Television Society awards.
You’ll have our state-of-the-art facilities at your fingertips to help develop your own creative identity and produce your best possible work, including: a TV production studio designed by Sony, post-production suites for editing, colour grading and sound editing, a sound dubbing studio for mixing Dolby Atmos, studios for recording ADR and foley, and a motion capture and greenscreen virtual studio. You will also have access to our equipment loan store, The Kit Hub, where you can borrow a vast range of cameras, lighting and sound kit.
As we head up the UK-wide Creative Campus Network, you will benefit from information and opportunities from our industry contacts. In addition, we are partnered with Film London, ScreenSkills and the GLA Creative Academy to provide you with free access to additional industry-recognised resources and training. Our partnerships with Avid, Canon and others mean that you'll benefit from top equipment and development opportunities to help you with your future career. Middlesex University is fortunate to be surrounded by film studios, with which we have established relationships allowing our students to find work placement and experience opportunities. Several of our students have worked at the London North Studios, as runners/marshals or set builders with Brandon B whose video work is seen by millions around the world.
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Across the three years, you’ll learn about the complete film-making process by making films and cover a range of production roles, post-production, scriptwriting, cinematography, and direction, informed and/or co-designed by professionals working in the film industry.
A film degree can open a lot of doors and we’re here to help you find the right career path with employability support embedded into the course from day one. Graduates of this course work in a variety of departments, including film production, live studio production, research, camera, sound, art departments (including set building) casting, and post-production.
We help you undertake critical analysis and evaluation of screen language to help you understand all the tools that are available to you as a filmmaker. You will learn and use digital technologies and creative processes to develop your technical competencies.
We co-designed the curriculum with industry and community partners, so you will undertake projects and briefs that will turn heads when you go into the industry. There is a strand through the programme for us to focus on your personal development including diagnostic explorations to identify development goals and trajectory; strengths, developmental needs. You will have a dedicated advisor who will help you select relevant activities and micro-credentials that best suit your desired trajectory into employment.
Sometimes you’ll need a little bit of extra support during your studies and we ensure that you get it. That’s why you’ll have access to our technicians, industry professionals ready to help with your projects and provide support in specialist facilities.
In this module you will apply narrative and aesthetic insights to your own production work and develop audio-visual literacy to understand effective storytelling on screen. You will underpin filmmaking practice with particular reference to the aesthetics of cinematography, mise-en-scène, sound, performance and editing and will develop creative techniques to generate screen stories and format structures.
In this module you will experiment with a wide range of production roles and craft skills in preproduction, production and postproduction and respond to briefs and practice-based and problem-based learning to develop creative and technical practices. You will be encouraged to be resourceful and creative in the process of filmmaking and develop an interest in the creative, technical and management possibilities of areas of production.
In this module you will gain an understanding of the processes, etiquette, protocols and roles involved in professional film/tv production and foster values of safe working, sustainability, equality, diversity and inclusion into production practice. The module promotes and raises awareness of a variety of transferable professional and personal skills (aka ‘soft skills’) and facilitates appropriate behaviours, such as collaboration, collegiality and cooperation.
In this module you will explore the capacity of film/tv as a form of communication and apply storytelling techniques and production skills to deliver group projects in response to briefs. You will consider production decision-making for a range of different types of screen production, contexts and audiences and provide experience with different genres and formats.
This module fosters critical enquiry into the specific ethical and philosophical issues around filmmaking practice. It will motivate you to engage with current political, social, cultural and ideological realities through their filmmaking work and awaken the excitement of exchanging ideas through film language. You will develop critical awareness when planning and writing scripts and concepts and communicating ideas through pitching and/or presenting.
This module will allow you to explore the aesthetic possibilities of work that is creative in the application of production and craft skills and will guide and inspire you to find your preferred production roles/interests and further develop practical skills in specialist roles. It will advance your knowledge and experience in production and craft skills and develop your understanding of undertaking, documenting and presenting pre-production, production and post-production workflow.
This module aims to further your understanding of the business of screen productions and generate knowledge about contexts within which an emerging filmmaker/content producers can build a career for themselves, e.g., the freelance sector. You will learn about the value of ‘personal branding’ and self-promotion and promote and facilitate your own sense of agency, by supporting professional development through tailored Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshops.
This module teaches you how to creatively interpret briefs, develop and realise high-quality work; strengthen skills in specialist roles through making work together; cultivate the skills necessary to face technical and production challenges and further develop effective team working skills and professionalism in practice.
This module allows you to consolidate an understanding of specific theoretical frameworks and to reflect critically on the relationship to your own practice. You will be encouraged to consider filmmaking as “praxis” (or a process based on the interdependence of theory and practice) in order to enhance your appreciation of film form and context and extend the skills necessary to research and pitch ideas professionally, utilising screen language in the pitching process.
This module will increase your depth of understanding in your chosen specialist role and you will be supervised to professionally prepare a major project. You will advance your skills in these specialist roles to help you apply sophisticated comprehension of industry practices to your projects. You will learn to hone your professionalism when creating developmental materials to communicate ideas and work-in-progress.
Learn about finding useful and fulfilling work in the screen industries and develop research and practical skills in relation to preparing for employment and/or setting up a production-related business. Further develop and utilise ‘soft’ skills, such as team dynamics, crisis management, negotiation and mediation and develop a short/mid/long term career plan post-university.
Develop high-level critical and practical skills to explore film/tv/screen media in creative, ambitious and innovative ways; provide an environment that reflects current industry processes and conditions when bringing a major project to realisation. Manage a major project with a clear sense of purpose, audience and context and learn the skills and confidence to present your work effectively and professionally to others, both as a work-in-progress and as a completed project.
To find out more about this highly regarded course, please download the full specification.
We review our courses regularly to improve your experience and graduate prospects so modules may be subject to change.
For Holocaust Memorial Day 2019, BA Film students produced a short film in collaboration with Big Grange Local, Barnet Multi-faith Forum, and the residents of East Finchley.
BA Film and BA Animation students and graduates, along with their academics, have together produced a powerful and moving videos for the launch of the Violent Crime Prevention campaign for the VCPB (Violent Crime Prevention Board).
Have a look at the videos below for more examples of the brilliant work our students are doing at Middlesex.
Alex Britt in the prison scene in Between Us (2020), written and directed by Antonio Mendes, produced by Claudia Carbajo.
Antonio Mendes directs the prison fight scene in Between Us (2020).
Cinematographer Kristiana Zhekova on the set of Between Us (2020).
Noel Samuels (L) and Will Henry (R) in Bloodline (2018), directed by Aynsley Johnson, produced by James Knight.
Linda Louise Duan (L) and Shinji Ishigaki (R) in Chopsticks!! (2018) written and directed by Aeddan Sussex.
Alice Simpson and Lucy Jackson in Isabella (2018), directed by Rohan Reddy, Produced by Lucy Evans.
William Greenaway-Parry in The Last Breath of Winter (2019), written and directed by Aynsley Johnson, produced by Ryan O’Halloran.
Publicity poster for Natia, written and directed by Anna Parcerisas (2017).
Alaisdar Melrose as Dr. Acula in Potty the Plant (2017), written and directed by Aeddan Sussex, produced by Taliah Lamont.
Ava Morley in Stevie (2017), written and directed by McKenna Fernandez, produced by Yasmin Stewart.
Elle Atkinson in Yard Kings (2020), written and directed by Vasco Alexadre, produced by Billy King.
Elle Atkinson and David Price in Yard Kings (2020), written and directed by Vasco Alexadre, produced by Billy King.
Elle Atkinson and David Price on the set of Yard Kings (2020), written and directed by Vasco Alexadre, produced by Billy King.
Cinematographer Jakub Rogala, Director Vasco Alexandre and Producer, Billy King on the set of Yard Kings (2020).
The making of Sidetracking (2023), BA Film student's work.
MDX Film student Rohan Reddy won the Writing prize for his gritty slice of life drama Nice to Meet You, Florence! at the 2020 RTS London Student Awards
Highlights from the BA Film 2019 graduates from Middlesex University
Watch our latest showreel to see what our BA Film students have been making in 2018.
Filmed during the final year screening at the BFI on London's Southbank, students and staff from the Television Production and Film degrees at Middlesex share their experiences.
We know that it is a great time to be studying film. The industry is booming and the film and television industries are crying out for new talent. Several of our 2022 cohort have already got jobs at Envy, at Disney, on Netflix’s Top Boy, an indie for Channel 4, HBO, African Movie Channel, editing the Stranger Things campaign, even working on Queen's Jubilee BBC live coverage.
Middlesex University is fortunate to be surrounded by film studios, with which we have established relationships allowing our students to find work placement and experience opportunities. Several of our students have worked at the London North Studios, as runners/marshals or set builders with Brandon B whose video work is seen by millions around the world.
Our graduates go into entry level roles in film and television, such as: runners, production assistants, social media coordinators, covid marshals, assistant editors, location assistants, and then move quickly into more senior level roles such as assistant producers, junior editors, assistant location managers, and casting directors. Several of our graduates have set up their own businesses in videography, social media, and visual marketing, examples include Speeding Films, Aquifer Film Studio.
Our alumni are close contacts and come back to tell us about working at the BBC, Channel 4, QVC International, ILM, Shine TV, the Venice Biennale, HBO, Netflix and Sky Sports.
The facilities, studios and workshops at our £80 million purpose-built Grove building on campus are recognised as among the best in the country. With a wide range of digital media, equipment, software and library facilities on-site you'll benefit from unique levels of access to both the latest forms of technology and traditional tools with expert support to help you develop your work.
These facilities include:
Studio and location filming equipment including:
Digital Media Workshops featuring:
David received his Ph. D from Birkbeck College. He is also a theatre director, writer, lyricist, and dramaturg, most recently working with James Martin Charlton on the horror play Black Stone for Just Some Theatre Company. His five-actor adaptation of Oliver Twist was taken on national tour by the Love and Madness Company, his short plays Cash and Semolina were seen at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and his opera libretto She Stops at Costa's was shortlisted for the English National Opera's 'New Voices' project. He has edited A Dirty Broth and A Ladder of Words, two anthologies of Twentieth-Century Welsh Plays in English for the Parthian Press, and wrote the chapter on Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical. His book How Stage Playwrights Saved the British Cinema: The Well-Made Screenplay will be published by Bloomsbury Press.
Vesna is a visual artist, filmmaker and practitioner researcher. She completed her PhD at the University of Bristol and also holds BA and MA degrees in Fine Art from the Arts University in Belgrade. Her interests lie in film as a mode of interdisciplinary research, and her current practice explores contemporary documentary film, film archives, colonial heritage and memory. A key focus of Vesna’s work comprises collaborative filmmaking practices and she co-led an award winning campaign film project on restorative justice for people with learning disabilities and/or autism. She regularly publishes her academic work, most recently in the Journal of Media Practice and Education and Screenworks.
David directs documentary and drama, and works as a sound designer. He obtained his MFA in Filmmaking at Columbia University in New York, and is nearing completion of his practice-as-research PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, on the cinematic representation of psychosis.
David has published articles and book chapters on various aspects of cinema, including an ongoing exploration of the role of the voice in narrative cinema – an interest which is reflected in his practical work: the recent short documentaries Remember, thou art clay and Voices Apart, and the drama Unburied. His latest film, Rising, was part-funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council award for Voices Apart. David runs the production company Broken Island Films, with branches in the UK and Lithuania www.brokenislandfilms.com
Ben received a doctorate in Film Studies from King’s College London. His teaching and research focus on the intersections of film, philosophy and psychoanalysis, and the relationship between theory and practice in art and politics. His interests include popular culture and ideology critique, the constructions of race, class and gender/sexuality on screen, Left Bank filmmakers, the Greek weird wave and Game of Thrones. He is the author of a monograph on film noir, has published two edited collections on psychoanalysis and culture, and has written on film and theory in Studies in French Cinema, Film-Philosophy, and Screen.
Lara writes and lectures on film. Her interests include the relationship between cinema and photography, issues of temporality and the impact of film aesthetics on storytelling and sensory experience. She is particularly interested in the way the study of film theory and aesthetics affects practical filmmaking. She received her MA and PhD under the supervision of Prof. Laura Mulvey at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her book Film Light: Meaning and Emotion (2015, Manchester University Press) focused on the emotional impact of light in cinema. She has published and delivered conference papers internationally, including at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, at CUNY in New York, at Lund University in Sweden and at the University of Amsterdam. Lara has produced two short films and has been a cinematography jury member for Watersprite, the UK’s largest international student film festival at Cambridge University. Lara is also a novelist. She won the Virago New Crime Writer Award for her cinematic debut novel One Night, New York (Virago, 2021).
We’ll carefully manage any future changes to courses, or the support and other services available to you, if these are necessary because of things like changes to government health and safety advice, or any changes to the law.
Any decisions will be taken in line with both external advice and the University’s Regulations which include information on this.
Our priority will always be to maintain academic standards and quality so that your learning outcomes are not affected by any adjustments that we may have to make.
At all times we’ll aim to keep you well informed of how we may need to respond to changing circumstances, and about support that we’ll provide to you.
