Lecturers with media connections
Unjali is in her first year of the Media Production BA (Hons) at the School of Media and Performing Arts.
Overview
You need skill and experience to thrive in this industry and our Media Production course aims to equip you with the expertise your CV needs to shine in this digital world.
We live in a constantly changing, 24/7 multimedia landscape where anyone with a smartphone can become a broadcaster, awash with innovative trends and emerging techniques – like 5G, Internet of Things, virtual reality and mobile media.
If you’re an aspiring media professional, our course will cultivate your digital literacy skills, and help you to understand, engage and respond to the ever-changing global media. You should soon be producing professional, innovative, inspired and challenging work.
We’ll aim to help you develop your own original voice, encouraging you to see technology as an important tool so that you are not afraid to use the full range of media at your disposal to articulate that voice.
Why Coventry University?
An award-winning university, we are committed to providing our students with the best possible experience. We continue to invest in both our facilities and our innovative approach to education. Our students benefit from industry-relevant teaching, and resources and support designed to help them succeed. These range from our modern library and computing facilities to dedicated careers advice and our impressive Students’ Union activities.
To ensure an optimised and continual student experience, the university may deliver certain contact hours and assessments via emerging online technologies and methods across all courses.
Global ready
An international outlook, with global opportunitiesEmployability
Career-ready graduates, with the skills to succeedTeaching Excellence
Taught by lecturers who are experts in their fieldCourse essentials
A degree which offers you more, at no extra cost
Student shines at Television Awards
Leroy Da Silva a Media Production student stole the show at this year’s West Midlands Royal Television Awards winning three awards.
Related Links
Building Redevelopment
We are currently in the process of a major redevelopment of our Faculty of Arts and Humanities buildings. The building will be open to the public as well as students, and will feature an expansive gallery space.
Creative Community Hub
We hope that you are all staying safe in these uncertain times. Creative activities can really help fill the days, while we are spending more time at home and we have some ideas to keep you busy.
Employability
We are at the forefront of delivering enterprise and employability as part of our undergraduate programme and our employability unit co-ordinates the delivery of this for all students.
What our alumni say
Studying Media Production at Coventry University opened me up to a world of skills and experience in numerous forms of media such as documentaries, short films and television. It provided me with the opportunity to travel and therefore broaden my knowledge and perspective of the world which led to me producing unique and standout work. If it wasn’t for this course, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work at Aardman Animations where I continue to love every minute of my job!
Course information
This exciting course aims to keep you up to date with the latest media industry developments and encourages you to develop skills to produce work for distribution across multiple platforms and genres. We adopt a convergent media approach, familiarising you with a wide range of media, including film production, tv production, radio, podcasts, broadcast and digital media.
Our current links with local, regional, national media industries, including companies like The Walt Disney Company, ITV and Aardman Animations, provide numerous opportunities for location work, site visits and talks by visiting media professionals, together with live projects and a professional experience scheme. In short, you’ll be taught to tell interesting stories and distribute those stories to the largest possible audience.
91%
of our students are satisfied with the quality of the course
NSS, 2016
Course specification
Download PDF
Modules
We regularly review our course content, to make it relevant and current for the benefit of our students. For these reasons, course modules may be updated.
15th
We are ranked as the 15th best University in the United Kingdom inThe Guardian University Guide 2020
In more detail...
From the outset, this course will develop your technical, creative, reflective and analytical abilities, giving you a thorough grounding in current and emerging media production technologies, ways of working and contemporary professional practice, as well as the project management and professional skills needed in this ever-expanding industry.
You’ll produce multiple pieces of work, both individually and collaboratively, from self-reflexive professional portfolios to media projects using filmmaking, TV production skills, and/or online platforms. In doing so, you’ll have access to our extensive specialist resources, including video and photography studios, industry-standard software suites, radio studios, specialist IT facilities.
You’ll be taught by current staff with significant contemporary industry and teaching experience; their expertise spanning film history and theory, broadcast TV and radio, corporate video, experimental filmmakers, multi-media artists, writers, scriptwriters, editors and cinematographers, who have worked with national and international organisations. For example, Clifton Stewart (Assistant Professor in Media Production) is a screenwriter, curator and programmer for the Art and Algorithms Digital Arts Festival in Florida; Dr Kamila Kuc is an experimental filmmaker, writer and curator whose work and curated programmes have been shown nationally and internationally (ICA and BFI, London; New Mexico, Texas, Scotland, Bucharest); and Mez Packer (Assistant Professor in Interactive Media) is a novelist who has worked with Tindal Street Fiction and Skyros Writers’ Lab among others.
- Your own mobile tech pack, including a high-end laptop with industry-standard production software (terms and conditions apply).
- Our Film Production & Photography courses are ranked 4th in the UK (Guardian University Guide 2020)
- Dedicated and flexible creative learning environments, media spaces and industry-focused studios, featuring the newly built TV studio, The Tank.
- Access to high standard professional media equipment via our Media Loan Shop, including media equipment, such as Blackmagic and Canon cameras. (subject to availability)
- Opportunities for professional experience and live projects, which have, in the past, included student-industry collaboration with Regional BBC, Creative City, Rolls-Royce and BBC3. (subject to availability, application and additional costs)
- Meet experts in new media and traditional media at our series of screenings and masterclasses with past guest speakers including media practitioners from the UK Saskia Sutton and USA Reed O’Beirne, Seattle based plus international artists such as Dan Hett, Alison Grade from Screen Skills (subject to availability).
- Opportunity to study abroad at one of our many international partners during a placement year, which include Zhejiang University of Media and Communications (ZUMC) in China and Jean Moulin University, Lyon, France. (Subject to availability, competitive application, meeting visa requirements and additional costs).
Learn to use industry-standard software, including DaVinci, Adobe Premiere and After effects.
Our main study themes are:
- Media and communication: Introduces you to the meaning, importance and use of a number of fundamental concepts within the broad fields of media analysis and production to give the opportunity for students to understand how meaning within media objects has been produced, consumed and interpreted. These may include institution, identity, contexts of production, audience, narrative and genre, critical refection. The meaning and significance of these concepts will be explored through a range of methods, including case studies, seminar discussions and individual exercises illustrating their development, conventional use and potential limitations.
- Media Production: You will develop the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively produce and distribute a range of media objects, with an emphasis on how content, presentation and distribution methods create impact in a local, national and global context. You will have the opportunity to examine the differences and similarities between established methods of distribution, like television, cinema and radio, alongside newer and emerging forms of distribution for increasingly diverse audiences, particularly online delivery platforms. We’ll consider the social, economic and political implications of these different modes of delivery. Learning through practice, you will be introduced to key issues within historical and contemporary international media production in order to consider and better appreciate the processes of production and how to develop meaning within various forms of media: lens-based, audio, digital media and textual communication.
- Critical media methods: You will be taught a range of research skills, including source acquisition, archival searching, and close reading of texts, critical review of published sources, media form interpretation, data/evidence analysis, discussion and argumentation.
- Living in a digital world: You will have the opportunity to gain practical experience working with a variety of contemporary digital media and cultural forms, ranging from moving image production, photography, sound and music production to text-based online publications. We will consider how the new forms of ‘prosumption’ involved in the creation and uses of these artefacts affect conventional conceptions of such things as ‘audience’, ‘institutional context’, the political economy of media and concepts such as ideology, meaning and pleasure in a new digital world of ‘prosumption’, ‘playbour’ and ‘prize economics’.
The course normally lasts three years when studied full-time and four to six years part-time, though full-time students have the option to extend the course by taking a sandwich year between the second and third years on placement or study abroad. You can start in September or January.
The course is delivered though project-based ‘hands-on’ learning, with a great emphasis on location work, live projects and practice activities, all with ongoing feedback. Past students have worked on projects as diverse as assisting on film sets or shooting promotional videos for production companies. Your personal tutor will review and discuss your progress with you and will be available for advice throughout the course.
Our current excellent industry links enable us to host an exciting programme of guest speakers covering topics such as film production, scriptwriting, distribution and curation of moving images (subject to availability). You will also have the opportunity to take part in industry visits at home and abroad, where you will be able to develop your knowledge and skills through fieldwork and group projects. Previous students have visited the Berlin Film Festival, as well as the Aesthetical Film Festival held in York and several of the major galleries in London.
(All industry visits are subject to availability, competitive application, meeting visa requirements where applicable and additional costs)
This course will be assessed using a variety of methods which will vary depending upon the module. Assessment methods include practical or project work, coursework, tests, essays and presentations/posters.
The Coventry University Group assessment strategy ensures that our courses are fairly assessed and allows us to monitor student progression towards the achieving the intended learning outcomes.
On successful completion, you will have knowledge of:
- The roles of communication, media and cultural systems within their political, social, economic and technological contexts.
- The modes of representation and systems of learning within the contemporary social world and the ways these are shaped by issues of gender, race, class, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and nationality.
- The historical and global contexts of media, communication and cultural systems and processes.
On successful completion, you will be equipped with the skills to:
- Apply the various processes and practices that combine towards the production, circulation and consumption of media, communication and cultural texts.
- Undertake a variety of forms of research appropriate to different forms of study and analysis and be able critically to reflect on the appropriateness of each form of research.
- Critically reflect on the chosen processes of production of media artefacts and products.
- Critically interrogate through appropriate theoretical and conceptual material the various processes of production of media and cultural texts and artefacts.
- Demonstrate a knowledge and critical understanding of the issues of social and political citizenship, especially in relation to debates involving communication, culture and media.
- Work in flexible, creative and independent ways, demonstrating self-discipline, self-direction and reflexivity.
- Gather, organise and deploy ideas and information in order to formulate arguments cogently and express them effectively in written, oral and other form.
- Produce work which shows an effective manipulation of sound, image and/or the written word, demonstrating competences in operational aspects of media production technologies, systems, techniques and professional and academic practices.
In a typical teaching week, you will have up to 15 ‘contact’ hours of teaching.
This generally breaks down into:
- Personal tutorial/small group teaching
- Medium group teaching
- Large group teaching
Our course is designed to reflect the increasingly international context of media production; this is reflected strongly in the course curriculum through international trips which provide an insight into other cultures and societies throughout the world.
We strongly encourage you to broaden your theoretical, cultural and practical references, providing opportunities to broaden your horizons by living, studying or working abroad on a sandwich year.
You will have opportunities to take part in international trips where you will be able to develop your knowledge and skills through the production of individual and group media projects. Reviewed annually, recent field trips have included: Cyprus, Hangzhou, Kenya, Los Angeles, New York, Norway, Paris, Prague, Sierra Leone and Tenerife. On all trips, you will be engaging in production projects, assisting on a local film production or making your own films using local crew. .
In May 2019 a group of Media Production students visited New York City to engage with the City culturally and sample a film festival in Montclair State. Alongside the creation their own independent film projects the students visited Montclair State University and attended the opening night of the Montclair Film Festival. They spent the rest of the trip exploring one if the greatest cities in the world and learning what it means to be an international media maker.
Global ready
Did you know we help more students travel internationally than any other UK university according to data from the experts in higher education data and analysis, HESA?
In 2018/19, we provided a total of 5,469 experiences abroad that lasted at least five days.
Much of this travel is made possible through our Global Leaders Programme, which enables students to prepare for the challenges of the global employment market, as well as strengthening and developing their broader personal and professional skills.
Explore our international experiences1st for
international experiences
Sending more students overseas than any other UK uni 2016/17
5,469
Student experiences
The number of student trips abroad for at least 5 days in 2018/19
12,000
and counting
The number of students we’ve helped travel internationally since 2016
12
global programmes
As well as trips, we offer other opportunities like language courses
What our alumni say
Studying Media Production at Coventry University opened me up to a world of skills and experience in numerous forms of media such as documentaries, short films and television. It provided me with the opportunity to travel and therefore broaden my knowledge and perspective of the world which led to me producing unique and standout work. If it wasn’t for this course I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work at Aardman Animations where I continue to love every minute of my job!
Entry Requirements
Tuition Fees
We pride ourselves on offering competitive tuition fees which we review on an annual basis and offer a wide range of scholarships to support students with their studies. Course fees are calculated on the basis of what it costs to teach each course and we aim for total financial transparency.
For more information, please visit our Finance pages.
Course essentials at no extra cost
We're committed to communicating study costs clearly to make sure you're not faced with having to make any unexpected payments.
This is why our ‘Flying Start’ package provides you with a few course essentials. Your full-time fee for an undergraduate degree will cover the following:
UK field trips
Any mandatory site visits and trips within the United Kingdom.Key material
This can include core textbooks, software and equipment.Laser prints
1,000 A4 sides of black and white laser printing credits per year.Optional year
Pay no tuition fees for optional work placements or study abroad trips.As well as covering UK field trips, key materials and laser print, the fees for this course also include: providing you with a high-end laptop with the latest industry standard production software, which enables you to benefit from mobile working and learning with 24/7 access (terms and conditions apply)
This course may incur additional costs associated with any field trips, placements or work experience, study abroad opportunities or any other opportunity (whether required or optional), which could include (but is not limited to) travel, accommodation, activities and visas.
The following are additional costs not included in the fees: any optional overseas field trips or visits; any additional printing; any optional site visits and trips; Media consumable items
EU student fees
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year remain eligible for the same fees as home students and the same financial support. Financial support comes from Student Finance England, and covers undergraduate and postgraduate study for the duration of their course, providing they meet the residency requirement.
For tuition fee loans
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year must have resided in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland for the three years prior to the start of their course. The purpose of that three year residency should not have been mainly for the purpose of receiving full time education.
For maintenance loans
EU nationals starting in the 2020/21 academic year must have resided in the UK and Islands for the five years prior to the start of their course. The purpose of that five year residency should not have been mainly for the purpose of receiving full time education.
What our alumni say
Studying Media Production at Coventry University was a wonderful journey. I really enjoyed the course and received great support from all the staff. Throughout my three years, I was able to develop my skills and become even more passionate about film making.
Career prospects
Graduate Immigration Route visa
Based on current information from the UK Government, international students whose study extends beyond summer 2021 may be eligible for a visa under the UK Government’s Graduate Immigration Route, which will enable students to stay and work, or look for work, in the UK at any skill level for up to two (2) years. Check the most up to date guidance available to check your eligibility and any updates from the UK Government before making an application or enrolment decision.
The ever-changing world of the creative industries demands multi-skilled media professionals, who are familiar with a range of media platforms, full of ideas and imagination, with strong ethics and levels of professionalism; these same graduate attributes our course seeks to nurture.
By studying a broad spectrum of media practice, the course is designed to equip you with the skills to work for large organisations like the BBC, as well as smaller media production companies, or to work as a freelancer or independent media producer. During your second year, the ‘Professional Practice 2’ module requires you to source and undertake four weeks of work experience and, throughout your course, you will develop your own professional practice portfolio to use when looking for work after graduation.
Over the years, we have developed and maintained excellent links with a wide variety of potential employers in the media and cultural industries. Our Creative Futures employment team is on hand to offer tailored career and enterprise support if you wish to gain employment or take advantage of professional practice opportunities within course specific industries. Our dedicated enterprise officers also offer valuable assistance on how to begin as a freelancer/entrepreneur.
Coventry University is committed to preparing you for your future career and giving you a competitive edge in the graduate job market. The University's Careers and Employability team provide a wide range of support services to help you plan and prepare for your career.
Where our graduates work
The School has a very long and impressive history of graduates who establish themselves in extremely high profile media and cultural employment, examples of which include: executive producer for many highly prestigious Hollywood films, executive producer for SYCO, director for BBC documentaries, DJs for national radio stations such as BBC Radio 6 and Virgin Radio, planners and creatives for a number prestigious London-based advertising agencies.
There is also the chance to go onto master’s level study upon successful completion of your undergraduate degree.
What our alumni say
Studying Media Production at Coventry University opened me up to a world of skills and experience in numerous forms of media such as documentaries, short films and television. It provided me with the opportunity to travel and therefore broaden my knowledge and perspective of the world which led to me producing unique and standout work. If it wasn’t for this course I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work at Aardman Animations where I continue to love every minute of my job!
Disclaimer
By accepting your offer of a place and enrolling with us, a Student Contract will be formed between you and the university. A copy of the 2020/21 Contract can be found here. The Contract details your rights and the obligations you will be bound by during your time as a student and contains the obligations that the university will owe to you. You should read the Contract before you accept an offer of a place and before you enrol at the university.
The tuition fee for the course that is stated on the course webpage and in the prospectus for the first year of study will apply. We will review our tuition fees each year. For UK and EU students, if Parliament permit an increase in tuition fees, we may increase fees for each subsequent year of study in line with any such changes. Note that any increase is expected to be in line with inflation. Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, EU students should be aware that there may be a change to UK laws following the UK’s exit, this may change their student status, their eligibility to study part time, and/or their eligibility for student finance. We will act in accordance with the UK’s laws in force in relation to student tuition fees and finance from time to time.
For International students the tuition fee that is stated on the course webpage and in the prospectus for the first year of study will apply. We will review our tuition fees each year. For international students, we may increase fees for each subsequent year of study but such increases will be no more than 5% above inflation.
