Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Study Details: 1 year 3 months full time (45 weeks across a four-term model)
MA Documentary Film is a leader in exploring the traditions of the documentary film genre and its modes of production. Integrating practice with theory, you’ll analyse filmmaking critically, historically and conceptually within a practical context.
Documentary has the power to investigate and inspire - to reveal the human experience, call the powerful to account and help effect lasting change.
As a student of documentary film, you’ll be naturally inquisitive and interested in the lives of others, committed to understanding the world that surrounds you, and keen to examine the most pressing issues of our time.
On this course, you’ll undertake the roles of producer, director, camera operator, sound-recordist and editor. You’ll learn how to self-shoot, to work in teams, and to direct and produce for broadcast, independent and web media.
For your Major Project, you’ll develop ideas in ways that suit your work best. From identifying characters, stories and locations to shooting and editing with a particular visual style, you can choose to be the author of your work or to collaborate with peers.
You’ll collaborate with external partners for projects and live briefs. Previously, we’ve worked with a variety of partners, including a collaboration with the Independent Film Trust, collaborating on the Coldharbour Project, an oral documentary series and with the Fastnet Film Festival in Ireland, adjudicating a major documentary award in a human rights category.
Offers will be made based on the following selection criteria, which applicants are expected to demonstrate:
Graduates go into a range of film-making options such as production and academic research. Alumni of this course have also gone on to associate producer roles and commissions in broadcast and independent sectors. Much depends on individual focus and aspiration.
Many former students are now building strong reputations for their work on the course. Alana McVerry is a producer at VICE after making documentaries for the BBC; Leila Hussain is making short documentary features all over the world for CNN; Anahi Aradas has made films for BBC World and Victoria Burns won a Mead Fellowship to make a one-hour observational documentary on the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre.
In response to the Climate Emergency, UAL has embedded responsible practices within the curriculum. We shaped our courses around principles of social and racial justice, and environmental sustainability that ensure learning outcomes reflect the urgent need to equip you with the understanding, skills, and values for ethical practice and empower you to work towards an equitable future.
Each course is divided into units, which are credit-rated. The minimum unit size is 20 credits. The MA course structure involves 6 units, totalling 180 credits. Whether contextual or practice-based, all units on MA Documentary Film are mandatory.
The contextual lectures with screenings and seminars are timetabled to a regular weekly pattern. Throughout the terms, your production-based classes, as well as your individual and group assignments, will vary your timetable according to the nature of the production.
You’ll be introduced to documentary filmmaking and equipped with the core practice skills of documentary film production. You’ll be encouraged to research, develop and pitch a documentary idea which you’ll go on to produce as your Major Project film.
This unit positions documentary production within a historical and theoretical context.
You’ll explore the relationship between filmmakers and their subjects, questions of representation, and the ethics and practices of documentary filmmakers.
With a focus on student-driven collaboration, you’ll identify and develop collaborative working relationships with a range of possible partners, from postgraduate student colleagues on your course to external parties.
This unit initiates the production and direction of an individually authored or co-authored documentary film of up to 20 minutes, which is accompanied by a portfolio of research, a proposal and a treatment.
This unit weaves together analysis of present-day issues faced by the documentary film business and brings up-to-date examination of contemporary approaches to storytelling and the documentary form.
Your Major Project will resume, culminating with a critical and analytical report which contextualises your documentary film while articulating a promotional and impact strategy aligned to your future professional plans.
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