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Wednesday 4 September 2013

BSc (Hons) Film and TV Production

Nell
Hi. I’m Nell. Or Nellie. Or ‘The Nellster’. Or Neil. Or idiot. I have many nicknames because people are incapable these days of not using one, but I prefer being called just plain old Nell. Not the most interesting of names but hey, there’s a film with my name as the title with Liam Neeson in it, who is awesome, so that makes up for it.

So… my experience with the course. I’ll begin with how I decided to become a student at the University of Greenwich. I am obsessed with film; I am basically a living encyclopaedia when it comes to the subject. You know when you’re watching a film or television programme and you’re thinking ‘Oh who is that actor? I know his face, what has he been in?!’ I could tell you exactly what films he has been in, when they were released, what his next film is, who is he is married to, his height, his date of birth… It’s almost scary my knowledge because it would literally be with any actor/actress/director from about the 1930’s to today. Because of this, people started suggesting to me, especially my mother, that maybe I should do a degree in film? Just maybe?

Well, I was a‘late decider’. I took a gap year simply because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Towards the end of the year I quickly made the decision to actually go to university, but because I left it so late I applied to 5 universities without going to the Open Days. I got unconditionals from all of them because I already had my A levels, so off I went to go look at them. 4 of them were absolutely dire, like seriously, I was starting to panic that I wouldn’t go to university because they were all so awful… Until I went to the Greenwich Open day. Within 10 minutes of the welcome lecture I knew I was coming here, and thank goodness I did. The campus is beautiful, the TV studio is amazing and the course leaders have so much knowledge in film and TV that this degree has been a blessing for me.

The great thing about this degree is that if you don’t know exactly what route you want to go down, for example either a producer, a camera operator, a vision mixer etc., the course will actually help you to decide because you have a chance to try every role possible within film and television… and if you do know what route to go down, there are many opportunities for you to work solely within your chosen topic, such as being a camera operator for other peoples films etc.

There are a great number of choices as well; before each year you can choose what topics to complete for that year. I personally chose sound design and post production design and I thoroughly enjoyed both of those choices because they taught me how to use new computer software I had never seen before, such as Final cut pro, adobe audition etc. and now I have a far greater knowledge in film technology. In my second year I also chose to do BBC production which has been my favourite course to date. For a week we went to the BBC training programme where we created our own TV quiz show. The whole experience was amazing and I learnt so much from it… and the cafeteria has the best bread and butter pudding in the world ever. Like, ever.

So essentially, this course has a wide range of choices for you to choose from, from 3D Animation to Industry work experience and after completing this degree the world is your oyster (sorry for being corny) simply because you have the qualifications and experience needed to get into the industry, and throughout the 3 years you have opportunities to apply for work experience; I myself have worked as a camera assistant at the Olympics, worked at a radio station and was a runner at the BBC proms and there is even a man on our course who was recently a runner on the new ‘Thor’ film!

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