Film Production and Theatre with Placement Year

Film Production and Theatre is a degree for students who want to engage seriously with two of the most important forms of live and recorded performance, developing both the practical skills to make work and the critical understanding to situate it historically and theoretically. Film production and theatre are related but distinct arts: film records and edits time, working through the camera and the cut; theatre exists in the live encounter between performers and audience, unrepeatable and immediate. Studying both disciplines together enriches your understanding of each, revealing how screen and stage have influenced and borrowed from one another throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

At Brunel University London, this four-year, full-time degree with a placement year gives you the flexibility to map your own route through the programme, combining theory and practice modules in ways that suit your interests and strengths. On the theatre side, you will explore a wide range of specialisms including acting, applied drama, theatre-making, musical theatre, physical theatre, and playwriting. The film side gives you the opportunity to make short films while studying how screen media have been theorised and interpreted.

The placement year provides substantial professional experience in the creative industries.

Graduates with this dual grounding in film and theatre practice and critical analysis are well placed for careers across the creative industries: film production, television, theatre-making, directing, writing, arts education, community arts, and cultural management are all natural directions. The combination of practical capability and theoretical literacy is particularly valuable in an industry where practitioners need to understand both what they make and why it matters. Postgraduate study in film, theatre, or screen studies is available for those who wish to develop specialist expertise or pursue academic research.