Media Production BA(Hons)

You’ll start developing the skills you’ll need to succeed from the very beginning, as you immerse yourself in the contexts and practices of media production and the broader creative industries. You’ll make your own short film and audio package, learn the essential attributes of a news reporter and gain key writing and study skills. 

Modules

News Lab: Multimedia Reporting 

In the first module on our News Lab series, you will learn the fundamentals of reporting, news writing and how to record and edit audio stories.  

You’ll be supported to investigate and interrogate digital and real-world news sources to generate good story ideas and learn how to interview people with confidence.  

Discovery

You’ll discover the heart of storytelling through filmmaking. Learning fundamental production skills, you’ll look at how we might express original ideas visually and audibly. The module helps you develop your sense of self-awareness and personal responsibility – including through exploration of the ethics of inclusion, and of essential health and safety. 

Writing Studio 

This module is all about understanding the mechanics of impactful writing. Collaborating with students from across the School of Communication, you will examine how language shapes the experiences of audiences across different platforms.  

Then, through practical tasks and workshops, you will develop tools and techniques that will build your confidence in writing with clarity, empathy, and purpose, helping you to craft engaging and persuasive stories for a wide range of different channels and contexts – from news and social media to websites and apps. 

Adland

The evolution and development of advertising is significant to aspiring creative advertising practitioners; you’ll explore its historical roots to its fast-paced digital evolution.  

Through a series of lectures, you will be immersed in the development of the industry throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, exploring the major concepts, people and campaigns that have shaped today's adland. 

Represent 

In this module you’ll learn how to develop your ideas, find stories and characters, and decide what creative storytelling you’ll use to form a documentary. You’ll work within industry health and safety, editorial and diversity guidelines to deal sensitively with your contributors and produce a quality piece of documentary work.  

Everyday Media & Digital Prototyping  

You will explore how digital media shape everyday life and, through qualitative user research and hands-on prototyping, learn to transform insights into creative design concepts.   

Using lo-fidelity and digital design tools you will create practical outcomes which may include an app, website concept or interactive sketch addressing media use during disruption.  

The second year enables you to build on the learning and creative confidence established in year one to develop your skills and thinking, while engaging in more complex outputs and working contexts, with a particular focus on collaborative practice.  

Modules

Digital News Lab: Local is Global 

Develop your multimedia storytelling skills by exploring stories connected across borders.   

You will focus your work - individually and collaboratively - around a theme with both local and global resonance, considering journalism’s role in promoting social justice and challenging Eurocentric assumptions about news cultures. You will also learn how to use digital content management systems to present your work. 

Media Law & Ethics

This module introduces you to the freedoms and constraints faced by content producers.    

Using current and historical case studies, you'll develop a working knowledge of law and ethics frameworks, to inform your practice and encourage critical discussion. A recurring theme is freedom of expression – exploring its limits and how it relates to other key human rights. 

Making Magazines 

Working in an editorial group as you would in industry, you will learn and apply the business, editorial and technical skills needed to produce magazines for print and digital platforms, using industry-standard publishing software.  

Once you have created a new product idea, you will collaboratively identify a clear target market and build a business case to prove its potential before creating an edition of your magazine. 

Collaboration 

Building on the teamworking skills developed in the previous module, you will work with your peers and external partners to realise a collaborative project, applying your professional skills alongside valuable transferable ones, such as negotiation, problem-solving and project management.   

You will also develop your reflective thinking and will publish an online CV or portfolio, employing digital tools to showcase your work and skills. 

Work Futures 

Digital media and the creative industries are changing fast. In this module you will explore the contemporary creative industries and develop the skills and knowledge to shape them.   

Through a series of guest speakers from our network of alumni and professional connections, workshops and seminars, you will build a toolkit for working life. Reflecting on pressing issues such as the gender pay gap, racism, socioeconomic inequality, burnout, remote working, and the role of AI and digital platforms shaping jobs, you will prepare to make choices that align with both your ambitions and the realities of creative work today.   

You’ll also explore the importance of creating a personal brand and professional network reflecting on your own position and values. 

Games (optional) 

This module introduces you to the craft of writing for games. You’ll critically consider everything from small indie titles to AAA blockbusters, from mixed reality to immersive experiences, to help you unpack writing and narrative design methods you can use in your own games, including player and non-player characterisation; environmental storytelling; and audiovisual storytelling.

Screenwriting (optional)  

Study the craft and creativity of writing for the screen (cinema, television, online). You will form a Script Development Team responsible for the development of individual writing projects.   

You will work individually and in a ‘Writers' Room’ style model. You will act as script editors as well as writers in order to see projects through to completion. 

Creating Brands (optional) 

This module explores the role of brands in business and society, introducing their key components — from values, positioning, and personality to tone of voice and visual identity.  

You will develop the practical brand design and production skills that bring brands to life: branding tools, methods, and frameworks to identify cultural tensions and opportunities, and strategies for compelling brand-building.   

Alongside understanding how brands create value for businesses, you will discover how brands support innovation and drive change by challenging industry norms and engaging with social, environmental, and ethical issues. 

You can choose to take an optional professional placement after your second year on a three-year programme, or after your third year if you’re studying for a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year.  

You’ll be responsible for finding your own placement, with support from the Employability team.  

Choosing this option will enhance your industry experience and skills while studying.  

How you’ll study during your professional placement  

You’ll spend time working in a professional context, as part of a business or organisation. This can be in one role, or up to three, and must be for a minimum of 24 weeks.  

You’ll develop in-demand workplace skills, deepen your insight into industry and grow your network of contacts, all of which could help you get ahead in your career after graduation.  

Throughout this year, you’ll develop a portfolio of work that includes critical self-reflection on what has been learned from the experience. You’ll be required to evidence your experiences, the skills you’ve learned and your professional growth. 

Your final year is all about creating a career-launching portfolio. You’ll work collaboratively and individually on a range of content outputs and contribute to a digital multimedia production project. You'll also sharpen your professional and business development skills, so you’re all set to start making a living from your practice. 

Major Project – Startup Development 

You’ll research, plan and develop a digital startup idea that is aligned with your creative passions or professional aspirations.  

Demonstrating engagement with contemporary industry trends, debates and conversations, you will conduct a combination of secondary and primary research to identify findings or insights that can be used to inform your creative practice.   

Through masterclasses, seminars and workshops, you will study research methods that are relevant to your discipline and chosen theme. With formative feedback from your project supervisors throughout, you will learn to shape your ideas and research findings into a clear and focused proposal of work. 

Major Project – Showcase 

Placing your critical thinking and creative practice centre stage, you will create a thoroughly researched major project. Through 1-to-1 sessions with your tutor, you will define and plan the appropriate project outcomes to demonstrate how you have interpreted your research creatively. You will produce an accompanying critical evaluation or rationale and prepare your work for public showcase. 

News Lab: Going Live 

Put your professional, collaborative and digital skills into practice in a deadline-driven newsroom environment, sharing responsibility for organisation, quality and workflow. You will enhance your knowledge of editorial roles and practise them in a production cycle with live weekly outputs. You will also learn the importance of rigorous editing, and the essential creative and commercial drivers of successful production. 

Mini-Documentary (optional) 

Complete your degree with a flourish by producing a piece of non-fiction film or audio. You will deploy digital technologies to experiment with deep emotional storytelling, learning how to refine your story and pitch it to a panel – as you would in industry. Lectures and workshops provide the platform, but the emphasis is on you to demonstrate professionalism and self-direction, supported by a supervisor. 

Industry Portfolio  

This module will enable you to develop a unique graduate portfolio demonstrating your experience, projects and skills to potential employers. You may also work on industry-recognised competition briefs.  

Why study an Integrated Foundation Year route? 

If you’re taking on a new subject that you haven’t studied in depth before, have been out of education for a while or have a non-standard educational background then an Integrated Foundation Year degree may be the right choice for you. It is a four-year degree with an Integrated Foundation Year to start, which allows you to explore the primary elements of your subject before progressing on to the remaining three years of the BA(Hons) degree. 

What you'll study in your Foundation year

If you choose this pathway, you'll study five core modules in your Foundation year. These are all designed to help you explore the foundational elements of your subject. You'll gain relevant technical skills, learn to experiment and take risks, develop an understanding of professional practice, have opportunities to work across disciplines and collaborate with other students on live project briefs. 

Modules

Explore

You'll begin your foundation year by working collaboratively with others to explore themes of the future. You'll take risks, experiment through play and be supported to break through barriers.

Technique

You'll take subject-specific workshops and develop essential technical and practical skills in your area of study. You'll also enhance your analytical and organisational abilities.

Apply

You'll work with your peer group to think beyond discipline by addressing a societal or global issue. You'll then showcase your work to your peers and deliver an accompanying evaluation of your process.

Industry

You'll enhance your creative and practical skills in your subject specialism by responding to typical industry briefs, underpinned by focused research and experiments. You'll also gain industry insights through guest lectures and workshops.

Launch

You'll develop your unique identity in your specialism through the production of a self-initiated body of work. Your final project will be the bridge to your next year, fully supported by evaluative reviews and critical analysis of the work you have created.

After the Foundation year, you progress into Year One of the full three-year degree, equipped with a deeper knowledge of your subject, a clear understanding of your strengths, and develop a practical and technical skillset and the confidence to excel in your chosen subject. 

If you apply for and enrol onto a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year, you’ll have the option to switch onto a five-year version including a placement year. That means you’ll complete the first three years of your course before completing a placement in industry in your fourth year and returning to Falmouth for the fifth year of your programme. 

The Integrated Foundation Year pathway for this course is new for entry year 2023 and subject to validation.

Through skills development workshops, masterclasses and interactive seminars, supported by keynote lectures, you'll develop briefing, concepting, strategy, research, idea development and planning skills. Mirroring industry, you'll then put these skills into practice as you work on real-world projects individually and in teams. Throughout your Media Production degree, you'll benefit from the course team's film, television, advertising and journalism connections. 

At Falmouth, we use a 'digitally enhanced learning & teaching' approach. Your experience will always be predominantly in-person, including seminars, tutorials and studio teaching, with some, more targeted elements, being online either live (synchronous) or pre-recorded (asynchronous). You can read more here.

100% of your assessment will be coursework. There are no exams as part of this course.  

Assessment methods

Assessments can take many forms, including: 

• Practical projects 
• Presentations 
• Portfolios 
• Short essays 
• Integrated Foundation Year assessments are 100% coursework based 

Mirroring the industry, we encourage self-evaluation at the end of each project and support this via personal development plans. 

You will require a laptop for the course. Macs are preferred but a PC is fine. Costs range from about £400 to £1500. You will be using the Adobe Creative suite which as a Falmouth student, you will be able to access at a heavily discounted rate of £16.24 per month. You will also need a reliable broadband connection (if you are living in university accommodation you will have this).

Some printing costs will be needed when setting up your degree exhibitions in the final year. This is likely to be £50-£100 depending on the nature of your work.

Study trips

All first-year students have a scheduled three-day study trip to London during which you will visit relevant companies. Costs will vary depending on your accommodation and travel preferences. As a guide, expect to pay about £600 for the whole trip, including food and socialising.

In your final year, students may wish to participate in the three-day exhibition and festival event in London in July. Costs will vary depending on your accommodation and travel preferences. As a guide, expect to pay about £600 for the whole trip, including food and socialising.

In addition, there is likely to be the opportunity to travel with sister degrees to New York for a trip taking in media outlets and photographic agencies. This takes place around Easer. This is usually open to all years and costs around £1,000.

Laptop (essential)

There is excellent access to computers at Falmouth, both PC and Mac, but you will also need your own laptop and a reliable internet connection to access the digital platforms we will be using for online activities as well as your independent and group-based work.

You can expect to pay £200-£300 to purchase a basic one for email and word processing. Video editing requires high powered computing which for most will be best achieved using our industry standard editing computers.

Smartphone

Even the most basic smartphone with a working camera will be sufficient for you to experiment with expressing yourself and developing your narrative storytelling to supplement the use of the bookable resources.

Hard Drive

Hard drives can be borrowed from our Stores however it’s often handy to have access to your own to store and backup your work. Reliability is critical so we would recommend brands such as G-Tech or Lacie with USB 3 connectivity and ideally a minimum disk speed of 7200rpm (approx. £100).

You will be expected to work in all sorts of locations and weather conditions. It is therefore highly recommended that you come fully prepared with the right sort of personal clothing to protect yourself from the elements and to meet risk assessment requirements. This will set you up well for industry work beyond graduation too.

This list is not exclusive, so please use it as a guide; you should be able to equip yourself for the outdoors for approximately £150 (some companies offer student discounts so be sure to check):

• Waterproof jacket
• Warm headgear
• Strong waterproof boots/shoes
• Gloves
• Waterproof trousers (working all day in wet jeans is particularly unpleasant!)
• Warm/thermal top (and bottoms for good measure!)
• Mobile phone for emergencies

Typical Costs

Typical course material costs:

• £150 - Recurring annual costs may include printing and stationary.

Study trips:

There are several IFY field trips, and you will need to allow for some costs for student contributions towards coach hire and exhibition entry. Total annual cost of day trips approximately £60.

If you want to attend the planned IFY week-long residential trip to London in the Spring of 2026 then you will need to plan for a £100 deposit payment shortly after arriving on the course, to secure a place, and to budget for a total trip cost of approx. £400 - to be paid in instalments.