BA Film & Television

With our BA Film and Television course, pursue your passion for films with leading academics and visiting practitioners, and have the chance to apply what you learn through practical filmmaking.

Here at the University of Reading, you will blend practical work with the theoretical study of film from the late nineteenth century to the modern day, including world cinema, avant-garde and experimental filmmaking. You will also explore the cinema of classical and contemporary Hollywood, together with new forms of digital entertainment and video art.

Alongside this, you can investigate television from its origins in the mid-twentieth century to contemporary engagements with new media and digital platforms, from soap opera to sitcom to sci-fi, exploring questions of authorship, genre and audience.

The focus is on your development into a critically informed filmmaker. You will gain academic knowledge and practical skills, with opportunities to collaborate on films and television programmes in the final two years. In addition to learning the histories and meanings of film, you will receive technical training in a range of creative techniques, such as editing, sound and lighting design, and television studio production.

In the first year of the degree, you will have the opportunity to watch, interpret and debate a wide range of film and television, including documentary, Soviet cinema and the work of Alfred Hitchcock. This enables you to build up a strong foundational knowledge of, and appreciation for, how stories and images work. Alongside these studies, you will learn key production and post-production skills, and start to explore what it means to apply critical ideas in a practical context.

In the second year, you will delve into work within and beyond classical and conventional narrative traditions. Optional modules allow you to investigate a variety of areas in detail, from genre and authorship in Hollywood and international cinema, to avant-garde, art film, political and feminist cinema. You will also have the opportunity to select theatre modules, such as Performance and Nation. Throughout this year you will engage with group-based practical work in either film or television, work that develops your ability to creatively respond to different movements, practitioners and historical periods – allowing you to develop your own distinctive storytelling and practical skills. This builds towards a 6-minute film or television piece developed across the second half of the year.

In your final year, you will deepen your knowledge and understanding of the subject through research-based modules. These modules are based around our academics’ current world-leading research and are all discussion-based, allowing you to rigorously engage with cutting-edge thought. Your practical work across the degree now culminates in either a collaborative 10-minute film or a written dissertation.

This degree is designed with the interaction between theory and practical work at its core, giving you plenty of opportunities to develop both your critical and technical skills. You will be based in Minghella Studios, a purpose-built study environment that reflects the way in which we think about and teach film, theatre and television. Your practical work allows you to try out different production roles and develop a range of skills and techniques while also developing a strong academic knowledge of their histories and meanings.

The Department of Film, Theatre & Television has a long and proud history of supporting collaborative work, and at every stage you will be encouraged to build your own knowledge and skills by working with fellow students on our BA Film & Theatre and BA Theatre & Performance degrees.