About this course
Explore and understand the complex relationship between contemporary communications and film and tv.
This degree provides a comprehensive examination of the theory, practice, and socio-cultural implications of communications, film and television. With an interdisciplinary approach that combines critical thinking with creative practice and close attention to context, you’ll come to see how film, TV, advertising and print and digital media are important forms of communication with their own distinctive traditions, styles and ideologies.
Exploring the complex relationship between communications, culture, and society, you’ll examine the ways in which in which the big and small screen, print and digital media shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Alongside engaging with a diverse range of media communications, you'll explore themes such as identity, the environment and representation from local, national and international perspectives and develop critical thinking and analytical skills to assess the social, cultural, and political implications of different media forms.
Throughout your studies, you will develop critical thinking, analytical, and creative skills that are essential for success in these dynamic and rapidly evolving fields.
Upon graduation, you’ll be prepared for a wide range of careers in the arts and communications industries and for further study. With a strong foundation in both theory and the understanding of practice, graduates of this programme will be equipped with the skills and knowledge to navigate the evolving media landscape and make meaningful contributions to the field.
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Interdisciplinary: This course combines critical analysis and an understanding of communications and creative production, equipping students with diverse skills, knowledge and understanding. -
Real world experience: Students work with external partners on professional briefs, gaining hands-on experience in the communications and film and television industries -
Future-oriented: This course prepares students for a continuously evolving film, television and communications landscape, ensuring they are equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding to make meaningful contributions to these fields.
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Industry-focused: This course prepares graduates for a wide range of film, television and communications careers, from management to marketing.
What you’ll study
Each year you’ll study a number of core modules from the lists below and you’ll have the opportunity to select from a range of optional modules to give yourself a more specialised pathway, depending on your interests.
In the second half of Year Two you can take your learning into your own hands and choose an extended work placement, learn at one of our many partner institutions worldwide, or continue to study here with a wide range of interesting optional modules to choose from.
Work-like experience
Work-like experience is embedded throughout your degree, ensuring that you are given multiple opportunities across three years to develop your career goals and build the skills and experience needed to achieve them. These embedded work-like experience opportunities are much more than a placement, and ensure that you develop the skills and competencies that employers demand. You will take part in a minimum of 240 hours of work-like experience during your course, with the option to take an extended 10-week work placement in your second year.
What does work-like experience mean?
Work-like experience defines a wide range of activities which will build your skills and hone your confidence to prepare you for a professional career after graduation. You will be given opportunities to engage in client-led projects, volunteering, consultancy, professional development, vocational training, project management and team work. You will expand and enhance your creative and communications skills through practical projects, producing podcasts and videos, organising campaigns, curating social media content and visual media. This rich and diverse experience will ensure that you graduate with the skills and confidence to thrive in your own career path.
Transformation modules
Each year you will take a core collaborative module. These modules are linked and will build on each other to ease you into University life, support you with mentoring and personal tutoring, begin your professional development, and expand your horizons with collaborative projects and assessments both within your subjects and wider afield.
Core modules
Understanding the Communications Revolution
Explore the dynamics of digital culture which underpin the ‘communications revolution’. You’ll examine a range of media technologies and creative industries centred on the internet explosion, which together have arguably transformed the nature of life in the 21st century. And you’ll be asked to consider some of the key questions – about ownership, power and control - which accompany these changes.
Psychology of Communication
This module is designed to demonstrate the centrality of communications, not just to the functioning of society, but also for the very constitution of who we are as individuals. Based within, but by no means contained by, the field of Social Psychology, it looks at how people communicate with one another both verbally and non-verbally. It also considers the role of both conscious and sub-conscious processes. Other key topic areas include the arts of conversation and persuasion, the psychology of leadership, group dynamics and intergroup relations.
Film and TV style in close-up
This module introduces you to the diversity of film and television style and invites you to think carefully about different forms of film and television from the 'mainstream' and the margins, home and abroad. You will learn all about the fundamentals of close textual analysis, as well as how to interpret film and television style across a diverse range of forms, periods and styles. The module also compares how the two mediums are similar and different and looks at the contexts that inform medium specificity.
The Bigger Picture: core concepts, contexts and debates in film and television studies
On this module you will develop your understanding of some of the key debates, concepts and contexts that inform film and television studies, typically including genre, stardom, authorship, documentary, representation and sustainability. The module also introduces you to some of the key drivers of change that are transforming the film and TV industries, both on- and off-screen, so that you gain confidence in advocating and agitating for greater diversity, inclusion and equality in the film and TV industries, as well as for more sustainable film and TV production and consumption.
Transformation: Agency and Self
In this module you will build the foundations for a successful University life through developing understanding and knowledge of your sustainable self. Exploring mental health (in)justice through academic research and project work, this module will demonstrate that knowledge of self, leads to a greater sense of community, key to overall wellbeing and academic success.
The main assessment will be the pitch of an initiative/resource/activity that will encourage and sustain wellbeing across the Joint Honours cohort to internal clients, NTSU, NTU Sport, or the Arts and Humanities Wellbeing team and a professional development reflection.
Optional modules typically include - choose one
Journalism and Promotional Cultures
This is your introduction to the field of professional media communications. You’ll look at debates about ‘fake’ news, the operations of propaganda and controversies around celebrity culture. This will provide you with a combination of theoretical insights and practical skills relevant to the fields of journalism and public relations, which you will use to write a feature article and to develop a PR campaign.
International Ciné-Club
On this module you will travel the world and the world of cinema. Each week you will visit a different international film movement and get to know its key films and filmmakers, as well as figures typically found on the margins of major film movements and world cinema. Thanks to weekly ciné-club sessions, which will include film screenings and plenty of discussion opportunities, the module will foster a lively film culture and community with you at the heart of it.
Core modules
Explorations in Identity and Selfhood
This module looks at a range of psychological and sociological theories of identity and selfhood. Starting with our common sense understandings and a focus on 'personality', it moves out towards more radical theories and arguments, which see identities as more contingent and de-centred.
Putting Film and TV into practice
This module explores the vibrant and varied theoretical landscape that shapes our understanding of the big and small screen. It draws upon canonical work in film theory and television studies, as well as theories that attend to more marginal screens, texts, audiences, and industries, enabling you to theorise classical Hollywood cinema and popular TV genres, as well as films and shows from alternative filmmaking and televisual perspectives and practices.
Transformation: Agency and World
What purpose do the humanities serve in today's society? How can the humanities help in the process of "healing and securing our planet" and "freeing the human race from poverty" as stated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations?
This module focuses on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and encourages you to develop your awareness of how your own field of study as well as cross- and inter-disciplinary actions can result in real, quantifiable change. Alongside a personal reflective portfolio, you will share your knowledge and understanding developed through the module to produce a news reel of how a contemporary sustainability goal relates to your discipline.
In this module you will either undertake an 80 hour placement, supported by the Arts and Humanities employability team, or will engage in an 80 hour project, responding to a supplied employer brief and producing a solution to the brief given.
Optional pathways
Pathway 1: Extended work-like experience
Get the experience you need for after you graduate, and really understand how the things you study translate into the world of work with a work placement. Your highly experienced Employability Team will help you find a placement to suit your career goals from our huge network of companies, charities, institutions, and beyond.
Pathway 2: An international exchange
Travel the world, meet new friends, and have experiences you will remember for the rest of your life.
Our flexible curriculum has been designed to allow some amazing opportunities for you. Your second year of study is divided into two semesters, giving you the opportunity to take part in an international exchange. You could study with one of international exchange partners in Australia, Europe, USA, Canada, Thailand and many, many more.
Our dedicated team will support you in finding and arranging a suitable exchange. And don't worry about the cost, they will help you apply for any grants or loans you may need, as no one should miss out on the chance to broaden their horizons.
Pathway 3: Taught modules
Interdisciplinary optional modules typically include:
Intercultural Communication at Work
Gain the knowledge, skills and strategies to build your intercultural communication competence. Analyse and reflect on the impact of culture(s) on your values, assumptions, perceptions, expectations, and behaviours. Build successful verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in different intercultural settings.
People and Planet: pasts, presents, and futures
In this module you will develop an understanding of the human impact on the environment from the 15th Century to the present as a form of slow but sustained violence enacted against the planet. It will also explore how such long-term change can interact with social justice in the present day.
Film & TV optional modules typically include:
British Cinema
This module looks at British cinema from 1960 onwards from a variety of perspectives. It considers how ‘British cinema’ is defined and its purpose in terms of representation and diversity in the face of the dominance of Hollywood. We study topics including the Bond franchise, Swinging London, social realism, the British gangster film, Hammer horror, the costume drama, Thatcherism on screen, New Scottish cinema and ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. We also visit Broadway cinema for a screening and industry talk.
Analysing British Television
This module explores in-depth the specific characteristics of the British TV landscape. It introduces students to the story of British television. It surveys important factors and influences that have historically shaped British television industries and institutions, as well as forms and genres. Second, it explores different televisual mediation of class, gender and race/ethnicity. Third, it explores the key genres which enable us to make sense of British television both in the past and in the present.
Film Programming
This module gives you the opportunity to devise, plan and run your own pop-up film event. Working in groups, and alongside experienced industry professionals, you will be responsible for identifying an event theme, selecting and curating event content, and delivering your film event at one of a series of city venues. Across the module you will gain industry-ready skills in research and curation, pitching and collaboration, licensing and copyright, venue management and setup, PR and promotion, and event production and management, alongside a unique insight into Notts film culture.
Communications optional modules typically include:
Journalism and PR: Critiques and Practice
This module explores the new ways of working and new modes of creativity in today's economy. Ranging across the fields of advertising, PR and journalism, you’ll interrogate the economic, psychological and sociological coordinates of the new forms of communication and media technology used in those industries, and you’ll examine the new types of creativity which have arisen as a result.
Media, Communication and Culture in East Asia
This module provides an insight into contemporary media development and cultural change in East Asia, placing this in the context of broader historical, economic and cultural debates. It will examine a wide range of media forms including print media, broadcasting, film and new media technologies, assessing their cultural impact in East Asian societies. It will explore contemporary issues of media development and policy and it will relate these to longer historical contexts.
Gender and Sexuality
Gender’ and ‘sexuality’ are familiar terms; however, they are also highly complex and contested. This module examines the ways these concepts have been theorised from a range of academic perspectives - including psychoanalysis, cultural history and feminist theory. It also orientates around three central questions: i) what is the substance of gender? ii) how do we become gendered? and iii) why do masculinity and femininity take the forms that they do and how do they change over time?
You may choose to take an optional year-long placement in Year Three, either in the UK or overseas.
You will be supported by our experienced Employability Team to source a suitable placement.
Core module
Major project
For your major project in your final year of your studies, you can choose to undertake a project in either one of your two Joint Honours subjects.
Communications Major Project
The Communications Major Project will provide you with a unique opportunity to choose a topic relevant to the field of Communications in which you have a special interest, and to explore it in depth over a sustained period of time. You can either produce a traditional, written dissertation, in which you will interrogate your chosen area of study and develop an argument of your own; or you can produce a media artefact (such as a screenplay, a podcast or a video), along with an accompanying critical analysis, in which you might explore your topic more creatively. Whichever format you choose, you will be supported throughout both by regular workshops, and by your own dissertation supervisor.
Film and Television Major Project
The Film and Television Major Project offers you the chance to create a project on a film and/or television topic you are inspired by. This could be a written dissertation, a visual essay or podcast for instance. Taught sessions and tutors help throughout the process. You are free to choose your topic and develop your ideas around areas of interest. Recent projects range from witchcraft on film, queer youth in American cinema and female rage in the horror film to masculinity in Breaking Bad, satire in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, sexuality in Sex Education and Squid Game and the K-Wave.
Humanities Research Project
The Humanities Research Project provides you with the opportunity to work with the combined knowledge and skills you have gained in each of your subjects and further develop them to create a substantial and independent piece of research. The Research Project can be fulfilled through either the writing of a dissertation or through a project in an alternative practice-based format (e.g. publication, film, (video)game, performance, report, podcast, creative writing, exhibition, web-based etc.) accompanied by a shorter essay.
Transformation: Agency and Social Change
In this module, you will engage in a 'live partnership' with a cultural festival that is designed to deliver social change through the Arts and Humanities: the Counterpoints-run initiative, Refugee Week. Over the course of the module, you will gain insight into the sociocultural challenges faced by refugees in the C21st, and will explore the work of Counterpoints Arts as an organisation that seeks to address those challenges via cultural activity. Drawing on these insights, you will work in interdisciplinary teams in order to create a Refugee Week campaign that champions positive social change in attitudes or behaviours towards refugees. Ultimately, the module invites you to consider how your disciplinary knowledge of the Humanities enables you to become a responsible global citizen, and to assume responsibility for championing positive social change, whatever your chosen career. The main assessment for this module is the creation of a ‘campaign tool’ (blogpost, podcast, social media post series, educational pack or other, that will be presented as part of a team ‘campaign’ at the end-of-module ‘festival’.
Film and TV optional modules typically include:
American Television since 1950: from broadcast to narrowcast
This module examines American television from the 1950s to the present. It follows key developments in the industry, such as the formation of the classic network system, the arrival of cable and the development of on demand and streaming services, each of which has characteristic sorts of programming associated with it. We focus on key genres and cycles during this period to investigate how television responded to changes in wider American society.
Rubbish Film
Rubbish, garbage, trashy – we all occasionally use these words to describe films. Salvaging such throwaway responses, this module explores questions of equality, sustainability, climate change, industry and innovation through rubbish and its relationship to film. From films made from rubbish, and films that take garbage as their explicit thematic concern; to fake found footage films, bad biographies, the ‘dirt’ of B movie cinema, and Hollywood’s penchant for ‘recycling’ via superhero sequels and franchise reboots, you will come to understand the wastefulness of film without getting your hands too dirty.
American Cinema Since 1949: Margins and mainstreams
1949 marks the enactment of key legislation which had some far-reaching effects on American cinema over time. This module covers the period from that date to the present, identifying key trends in the industry as it responds both to these changes and to changing American social contexts in a wide variety of ways. We examine both mainstream Hollywood cinema, the independent sector, and the increasingly complex relationships between the two.
Communications optional modules typically include:
Self in Crisis: Power, Prejudice and Otherness
This module brings together debates which contend that, in various ways, contemporary selfhood is in a profound state of crisis. One part explores the idea that the very concept of the self – which, for so long, has sat at the very heart of the humanities - is itself problematic. Another considers the troubling of contemporary selfhood in more existential terms; that is, in terms of people’s actual lives and experiences. Here, special emphasis is placed on the status of mental illness and the roles of psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Advertising, Journalism and the PR Project
This module explores contemporary communication industries through the concept of ‘convergence’. This idea refers to the way in which individuals working in areas such as advertising, PR and journalism increasingly have to take on a variety of roles which cut across the traditional boundaries of each sector, and need to learn to use a variety of working practices and technologies as a result. The module culminates in you developing a PR project..
What's New: the Future of Media Communications
This module looks at innovations and challenges that face media communications professionals as they look to the future. Using practical assessments such as blog writing, producing a radio advertisement and making an audio slideshow, students will advance their media skills in preparation for future employment as digital, multi-media producers. You will examine the issues, ideas and debates which contemporary journalism and marketing have to engage with, such as the funding and accessibility of news on the internet, the nature and trends of popular content, new styles and forms of presentation and the blurring of fantasy and reality in digital communications.
We regularly review and update our course content based on student and employer feedback, ensuring that all of our courses remain current and relevant. This may result in changes to module content or module availability in future years.
How you're taught
How will I learn?
Teaching takes a variety of forms and during your degree you will experience many different types of learning activities. Some of our modules are delivered entirely online, allowing you the flexibility to study at a time that is convenient to you. Other modules use interactive lectures and workshops that are supplemented by smaller group sessions, including:
- seminars
- tutorials
- problem-solving workshops
- training workshops
- hands-on practice
- group projects and presentations
- guest speakers
- field work
You will also be able to take part in lots of extra-curricular activities outside your course, including debating, research seminars, student challenges, Sustainability and careers training, sports, student societies and much, much more.
Further information
100% of NTU's research submitted to the 'Communication, Cultural & Media Studies, Library & Information Management' Unit of Assessment was rated world-leading or internationally excellent in terms of research impact - REF 2021.
Study abroad in Year Two
You’ll have the option to take part in an international exchange at a partner university in the second half of Year Two. This will enable you to gain impressive international experience, and broaden your perspective and career ambitions.
You’ll experience other cultures, travel the globe and open your eyes to a world of opportunities. Our exchange partnership with a number of international universities enables you to live and study in another country in your second year. Find out more about international exchange and study abroad.
Learn a new language
Alongside your study you also have the opportunity to learn another new language. The University Language Programme (ULP) is available to all students and gives you the option of learning a totally new language or improving the skills you already have. Learning a new language can enhance your communication skills, enrich your experience when travelling abroad and boost your career prospects. Find out more about the University Language Programme.
Supporting you
If you’re struggling with a topic or require additional support or guidance, you can arrange to see your tutors in small groups or one-to-one, to discuss essay plans or to seek some specific academic guidance.
It is the nature of the subjects offered in the School of Social Sciences, however, that much of your time will be spent engaged in independent study. We recognise that this marks a change of culture from school or college, and we have in place a system of study support to help you adapt to this.
How you're assessed
We use a varied and diverse range of coursework assessments to develop your skills and support your progress. These include digital projects, reviews, case-studies, essays, presentations and reports.
Our innovative approach to assessment means that in Year One you will develop and enhance a complementary set of key skills for success in second and third year, and throughout the degree the varied assessment pattern will enable you to engage with the past and prepare for your future through an exciting array of projects
Contact hours
If you’re struggling with a topic or require additional support or guidance, you can arrange to see your tutors in small groups or one-to-one, to discuss essay plans or to seek some specific academic guidance.
It is the nature of the subjects offered in the School of Social Sciences, however, that much of your time will be spent engaged in independent study. We recognise that this marks a change of culture from school or college, and we have in place a system of study support to help you adapt to this.
Careers and employability
Your career development
This is a major part of the curriculum, recognising the importance of University study as a route into graduate level careers. We don’t expect you to have a target career from the outset, but we will support you to develop your career aspirations, and provide multiple opportunities for you to work towards this, during your degree.
The structure of your degree, the assessments that you will undertake, and the opportunities we provide are designed to help you develop key transferable skills and competencies demanded by employers. We work very closely with a range of employers, and many employers helped shape our degrees. Our courses provide lots of opportunities for you to develop your own links with organisations and potential employers.
Joint honours humanities students develop a wide range of complementary skills. These include key skills of communication, project management, analysis, creativity, digital skills, collaboration and leadership, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and inclusivity. Through this course you’ll become more confident and self-motivated, be able to work independently and in teams, and develop excellent time management skills.
Many graduates also choose to undertake further study on one of our Masters-level courses or MPhil and PhD research degrees.
Campus and facilities
You’ll mainly be studying in the Djanogly building with access to facilities including a student kitchen and collaboration space.
NTU’s City Campus has everything you’ll need to stay busy between lectures. As well as the Boots Library and its beautiful roof garden, there’s our stylish Students’ Union building and two-storey, 100-station gym; a whole host of cafés, bars, restaurants and food outlets for every taste; our much-loved Global Lounge; performance and rehearsal spaces for musicians; and much, much more!
Take a few steps off campus and you’ll find yourself in the heart of Nottingham — England’s original ‘rebel city’. It’s one of the UK’s top 10 student destinations, and one of Europe’s top 25. Enjoy a booming indie arts scene, pop-up galleries, the nationally renowned Nottingham Contemporary, two A-list theatres, the iconic Broadway (voted one of the world’s top 100 independent cinemas by Total Film), and a constant rotation of events and exhibitions.
Take our virtual tour to get a real feel for the campus.
Here are some of the free services, student discount and benefits you'll get studying at NTU
We've carefully considered what benefits and services you need for your studies, so when you join NTU you'll get free printing and materials credits, access to our free WiFi, a copy of Microsoft Office, and can even borrow a laptop if yours is out of commission.
For life outside your lectures, you'll enjoy access to over 60 sports clubs and 130 student societies, discounted travel and bike hire, free language learning, award-winning student support and an entertainment programme which is second to none.
See all the benefits and free services you will enjoy as an NTU student.
Societies
Current students run societies in a range of Humanities and Arts subjects including History, Medieval, Film, Filmmaking, Philosophy, Politics and International Relations, and the Book society.
There are also a number of media channels which our students get involved in such as the NTU radio station FlyLive, our student magazine Platform, and TV station TrentTV.
Find out more about student societies at the Student Union website.
Entry requirements
UK students
Standard offer: 112 UCAS Tariff points from up to four qualifications
Contextual offer: 104 UCAS Tariff points from up to four qualifications.
To find out what qualifications have tariff points, please use our tariff calculator.
Additional requirements for UK students
There are no additional requirements for this course.
Contextual offers
If you don’t quite meet our entry requirements, we might be able to make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (such as where you live and the school or college you attended), your experiences and your individual circumstances (you may have been in care, for example). This is called a contextual offer, and we get data from UCAS to help make these decisions. We do this because we believe everyone with the potential to succeed at NTU should have the opportunity to do so, no matter what barriers you may face.
Meeting our entry requirements
Hundreds of qualifications in the UK have UCAS Tariff points attached to specific grades, including A-levels, BTECs, T Levels and many more. You can use your grades and points from up to four different qualifications to meet our criteria. Enter your predicted or achieved grades into our Tariff calculator to find out how many points your qualifications are worth.
Other qualifications and experience
NTU welcomes applications from students with non-standard qualifications and learning backgrounds, either for year one entry or for advanced standing beyond the start of a course into year 2 or beyond.
We consider study and/or credit achieved from a similar course at another institution (otherwise known as credit transfer), vocational and professional qualifications, and broader work or life experience.
Our Recognition of Prior Learning and Credit Transfer Policy outlines the process and options available for this route. If you wish to apply via Recognition of Prior Learning, please contact the central Admissions and Enquiries Team who will be able to support you through the process.
Getting in touch
If you need more help or information, get in touch through our enquiry form.
International students
Academic entry requirements: 112 UCAS Tariff points from up to four A levels. We accept equivalent qualifications from all over the world. Please check your international entry requirements by country.
English language requirements: See our English language requirements page for requirements for your subject and information on alternative tests and Pre-sessional English.
Additional requirements for international students
If you need help achieving the academic entry requirements, we offer a Foundation preparation course for this degree. The course is offered through our partner Nottingham Trent International College (NTIC) based on our City Campus.
English language requirements
View our English language requirements for all courses, including alternative English language tests and country qualifications accepted by the University.
If you need help achieving the language requirements, we offer a Pre-Sessional English for Academic Purposes course on our City campus which is an intensive preparation course for academic study at NTU.
Other qualifications and experience
If you have the right level of qualifications, you may be able to start your Bachelors degree at NTU in year 2 or year 3. This is called ‘advanced standing’ entry and is decided on a case-by case basis after our assessment of your qualifications and experience.
You can view our Recognition of Prior Learning and Credit Transfer Policy which outlines the process and options available, such as recognising experiential learning and credit transfer.
Sign up for emails
Sign up to receive regular emails from the International Office. You'll hear about our news, scholarships and any upcoming events in your country with our expert regional teams.
Getting in touch
If you need advice about studying at NTU as an international student or how to apply, our international webpages are a great place to start. If you have any questions about your study options, your international qualifications, experience, grades or other results, please get in touch through our enquiry form. Our international teams are highly experienced in answering queries from students all over the world.
Policies
We strive to make our admissions procedures as fair and clear as possible. To find out more about how we make offers, visit our admissions policies page.
