BA (Hons) Film Production

As a BA (Hons) Film Production student at ARU, you will be supported by award-winning, lecturers whose work has been screened on all the major UK television networks, as well as at multiple international film festivals. They have won Emmys, HUGOs and BAFTAs and continue to practice.

With their encouragement, you'll produce a range of programmes and films that may be as prize and film festival-worthy as our other recent student work. Our students’ films have been very successful in the regional Royal Television Society Student Awards. In 2021 following five nominations overall, Lidia Bieniarz won both the best short form film as well as the top prize – The Sir Lenny Henry Award – for A Film About My Dad, while Agata Kazmierczak won best editing for Colourblind. This success followed on from the 2020 RTSE Awards, where our students won four out of nine prizes including Best Drama and Best Factual, and the 2019 RTSE Awards, where they won six out of ten student prizes.

One of our student's Major Project films, Life on Cam, won Documentary of the Month at the European Film Festival for May 2022, while second-year documentary Tertiary Sound was officially selected for the BFI London Film Festival 2019.

As well as submitting your films, you can gain crucial work experience at Cambridge’s two annual film festivals. You’ll have the chance to get involved with Cambridge Film Festival, one of the longest running film festivals in the UK, as an intern in the lead up to the festival, a volunteer during it, or even as part of the CFF Youth Lab and Jury. As well as these opportunities, you can enter your films to CFF for free.

You can also get involved with the Watersprite International Film Festival, the biggest student film festival in the UK, run in conjunction with the University of Cambridge. Every year, our students are part of the central organising committee and lead subcommittees like marketing, filming, events, and judging. This festival presents a huge opportunity for you to build your networks and make connections with industry guests, mentors and student filmmakers from around the world.

You’ll also have the chance to join our organised trips to Sheffield Documentary Festival, Camerimage in Poland and Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol (COVID permitting), and take part in live briefs with partner organisations. Some of our students recently worked with communications and PR agency Creative Warehouse, submitting pitches for a 90-second film and accompanying social media campaign.

You’ll have access to a series of guest lectures and workshops led by industry professionals where you’ll learn more about industry practices, receive invaluable advice and have an opportunity to network with visiting film and programme makers.

Past speakers have included directors Ben Wheatley (High Rise, Free Fire), Chloe Thomas (Victoria, Harlots), Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Enduring Love), producers Laura Hasting-Smith (Macbeth, Hunger, Howards End), Oliver Kassman (Saint Maude and a BAFTA Breakthrough winner), cinematographers Sean Bobbitt (12 Years a Slave, Hunger) and Robbie Ryan (Red Road, I, Daniel Blake, American Honey) , sound designers Larry Sider and Adele Fletcher, Emmy Award-winning documentary director, Geoffrey Smith (The English Surgeon, Presumed Guilty) and BBC Commissioning Editor for Storyville, Mandy Chang.

Making the most of being in Cambridge, you'll have opportunities to collaborate with University of Cambridge students through extracurricular events at venues including student-run radio station Cam FM and the ADC Theatre (home of Cambridge Footlights).

There are plenty of other opportunities to get your work seen. The Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, screens the best films by our students at an end of year screening. We also host a selection of student work on our YouTube channel, and you can get involved with The Globe’s Sixty Second Shakespeare project, creating shorts to coincide with their productions. The project is open to all students in the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, with the films released on The Globe’s website and also promoted on their social media and YouTube channels.

The impact of our Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film & Screen Studies research achieved ‘world-leading’ in the Research Excellence Framework 2021.

What’s the difference between ARU’s BA (Hons) Film Production and its other film degree courses?
ARU offers a number of film-related degrees. Which one you choose to study depends on your particular interests and ambitions.

• Our BA (Hons) Film Production degree is for students who are interested in being on set, in the production office, or in edit suites learning how to bring together visual stories for the big or small screens. It is a course that is 80% practice and making, 20% contextual research.
• If you know that your interest is specifically for the small screen, you might want to enter our BA (Hons) Television Production degree, which focusses on the television industry in particular.
• While our BA (Hons) Film degree course also involves film-making, it has a stronger focus on the theory and history of film.
• We also offer BA (Hons) Drama and Film and BA (Hons) Writing and Film courses if you'd like to develop your knowledge and skills in writing or drama alongside film, or are still deciding which career path to pursue.
• Our BA (Hons) Film and Media degree incorporates additional skills such as animation, journalism, and web design.