Welcome to BA Digital Film Practice* – Launching September 2024
By Elise Czyzowska
13 June 2023
From September 2024, a brand-new undergraduate degree, BA Digital Film Practice*, will be offered at MetFilm School London. This three-year course gives students the opportunity to study and gain professional skills in a range of cutting-edge technical craft practices, and then to specialise in one of four in-demand skillsets: Visual Effects, Post Production, Virtual Production, or Sound.
In their 2021-22 Workforce Research, ScreenSkills identified skills shortages in all four of these craft areas, as well as highlighting further potential gaps should Virtual Production become commonplace in the industry, which it since has. These pathways will therefore continue MetFilm School’s mission of providing practical, industry-facing degrees, with a focus on graduate employability.
We are delighted to announce this extension of our undergraduate portfolio.
Our graduate outcomes already demonstrate the important role our alumni play in industry, and these four new pathways will offer students with technical aptitude in any or all of these areas the opportunity to progress their education in a more specialist way, complimenting our existing courses.
Visual Effects Pathway
Before diverging into their chosen pathways, BA Digital Film Practice* students will come together as a cohort to study the basics of storytelling, with skills development, practical exercises, and theory lessons incorporated into each semester. From their second year, students on the Visual Effects pathway will explore modules in animating effects, modelling, motion graphics, compositing, and workflow management for external projects.
With career options spanning all the way from pre-production (Concept Artists, Previsualisation Artists), to post production (Compositors, Animators, VFX Editors), the craft of Visual Effects neatly ties together an interest in both the technical and the artistic, making it a career path at the very front of film and television’s industry growth and development.
MetFilm School graduates have already gone on to see success in the craft of Visual Effects, as shown by their contributions towards nominated films at the 2023 Oscars:
- Tirza Oudolf (BA Practical Filmmaking) – Lead Compositor: Method Studios, Top Gun: Maverick
- Salman Khan (Eight Week From Story to Screen) – Visual Effects Production Coordinator, Elvis
- Erick Alcaraz (BA Practical Filmmaking) – Visual Effects On-Set Production Assistant, Bardo
Post Production Pathway
As with all four BA Digital Film Practice* pathways, one major reason for the skills shortage identified by ScreenSkills is the rapid growth of these craft areas. In particular, the Post Production market is expected to see incremental growth of $20.75bn between 2021-26, according to a 2022 report. As Editing Tutor at our London campus, Alex Lopera, says:
It’s a very exciting time to be in the world of post production and video editing at the moment.
It’s an invaluable skill in contemporary communications and storytelling, and there’s a lot of scope to practice the craft in all the myriad forms that exist – both now, and in the future.
As part of the Post Production pathway, students will learn through focused tuition and project-based application, exploring modules and topics including creative editing in both fiction and factual content, audio post production, colour correction and grading, and the business of post production – including advanced workflows and client briefs.
Virtual Production Pathway
Many MetFilm School students have had the opportunity to experience the world of Virtual Production first-hand through our partnership with Garden Studios, which is home to a state-of-the-art Virtual Production stage. As our friends at Garden Studios explain, ‘Virtual Production is a natural successor to the green screen, and one of film’s greatest technological innovations’, listing the sustainability and time-saving benefits that the craft offers.
In April, we celebrated Earth Month, and in this blog, we spoke about how being based in working film studios makes us perfectly primed to support the Albert ambition of a ‘studio sustainability standard practice’. With the green focus of Garden Studios, we see first-hand the environmental benefits that Virtual Production can bring, making it an easy decision to offer this pathway as part of our BA Digital Film Practice*.
During their degree, students on this pathway will see their technical skillsets brought into the creative realm, looking at creating virtual assets, applied Virtual Production, performance capture, and of course, training in Unreal Engine, an industry-standard real-time 3D creation tool.
Marta Baidek, Virtual Production Manager on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is just one of a series of graduates working in this space already, and new opportunities are opening on a continual basis.
Sound Pathway
In this pathway option, Sound, students will progressively learn and build their knowledge, skills, and understanding of sound capture and post production for film, television, and screen content creation.
This includes topics such as sound engineering, sound design (and its role in storytelling), Foley and sound capture, as well as the processes of recording, editing, and producing soundtracks. As with all BA Digital Film Practice* pathways, there will also be a focus on project management, career plans, and building a portfolio – all essential in preparing students for employment opportunities after graduation.
- Explore BA Digital Film Practice* through its pathways: Visual Effects, Post Production, Virtual Production, Sound.
- Learn more about this undergraduate degree at our London Summer Open Day, Saturday 15 July, 10am BST.
*Subject to Validation
