Welcome to Creative Media 2020-21

BTEC LEVEL 3 EXTENDED DIPLOMA IN CREATIVE MEDIA PRACTICE

COURSE OVERVIEW WELCOME

You’ll be joining us for the 2020/21. Academic Year where we’ll be working through a 540 Diploma, which is the equivalent of 1.5 A Levels. For the following academic year we’ll be topping this up to a full Pearson BTEC National Extended Diploma, the equivalent of 3 A Levels and recognised by UCAS in the same way. The qualification is setup by the exam board Pearson, full details are available on request.

The qualification is split into two distinctly different years:

YEAR 1

The first year of the course will be about you, and your ability in creating compelling media products. Our highly qualified and motivated staff team will take you on a journey through: Personal skills development, academic competence, subject currency, presentation skills and general academic aptitude.

At the beginning of Semester 2 you will be exhibiting your most outlandish, creative works in an experimental film festival (location to be confirmed), before presenting a skills carousel to your staff team. After this you will be proposing, developing, planning, producing and editing a music video to showcase those technical and creative talents you’ve developed.

YEAR 2

The second year will be far more about teamwork and clearly communicated narratives. The main event you will work towards will be a 20 minute, live studio production, including live hosts and guests, including pre-recorded footage that you will prepare in advance, inclusive of adverts, factual segments, sketches/dramatic stings. You will assume a key production role in your team and execute this role to the best of your ability, working collaboratively in the production of a compelling, live production.

PROGRESSION The majority of our students progress into higher education either though our internal HNC/D Digital Content Creation course, or by applying directly to university.

Alternatively students may wish to explore higher level apprenticeships or consider direct applications into industry.

Progression is something that is directly supported during the 1st semester of year 2 of the course.

The Level 3 Extended Diploma in Creative Media opens up a wide variety of avenues for you to progress into, with previous graduates going on to work successfully within the film, television, vfx compositing, motion & graphic design, marketing, journalism, sports broadcasting and public relations, as well as some setting up their own indepenent production studios and companies.

Some of our most successful former students have gone on to forge successful careers with Framestore, Disney, Premier League Productions, BBC, Dock10, 20th Century Fox, and many more regional companies up and down the country. Two former students work across Europe in film and corporate productions, and many enter careers with the opportunity to travel. I spoke with one recently who makes training videos and with Popcorn media, and has to fly to various countries to cover events, another spent the summer of 2018 in Russia working on the broadcast of the World Cup.

RESOURCE LIST You will need some equipment to complete this course, but we provide a lot of what you will need. Below is a list of the tools that you need to supply, day to day: •Headphones with a 3.5mm jack, or a 3.5mm jack convertor.

•At least 1* Micro SD Card 32Gb with SD Card adaptor •USB Flash drive 32Gb minimum, or a portable Hard Disk Drive •Pens, pencils, ruler, rubber, fine liner.

•A nice Notebook What we will provide: •Imacs for researching, developing, planning and postproduction •A range of cameras, lights, sound recording and stabilisation equipment for capturing moving image content.

•On site access to the Adobe Creative Suite, focusing on the following applications: oAdobe Premiere Pro CC 12.1.2 oAdobe Photoshop CC 19.1.8 oAdobe After Effects CC 15.1.2 oAdobe Audition CC 11.0.1

FREE SOFTWARE Get and learn some free software: 1. DaVinchi Resolve 16 is free - Industry standard video editing package.

2. Pixlr is free - an online image manipulation suite There’s a world of beginners tutorials online that are completely free, Youtube is brilliant for this but will only get you so far. You will need some stock imagery/video to work with, check out Adobe Tutorials for Premiere (video) and Photoshop (image manipulation). The tutorial might not work the same but you’ll be able to download and make use of the video clips/images that they give you for the lessons.

VISUAL

INSPIRATION There’s no end to available media related content online, but sometimes cutting through this to find the most clear explanations, or easy-to-follow guides is tricky. So here are our online favourites: 1. Studio Binder 2. Vice Film School 3. Film Riot 4. British Cinematographer 5. Podcast: The Black List Table Reads 6. No Film School

WORTH A WATCH Mark Kermode’s Secrets Of Cinema on BBC Iplayer A binge worthy directors list, start at the top. Watch a couple of films of each, and consider the repetition of themes/styles within: 1. Edgar Wright 2. Sophia Coppola 3. Ridley Scott 4. Christopher Nolan 5. Martin Scorcese 6. Paul Thomas-Anderson 7. Quentin Tarantino 8. Yimmou Zhang (not 100% on spelling) 9. Wes Anderson 10. Alejandro González Iñárritu

MEET

THE TEAM Course Leader, Personal Tutor & Technical Guru James Nicholls

Lecturer & Professional Film Maker Pat Graham

Lecturer & Professional Photographer Daniel Moore

Lecturer & Award Winning Graphic Designer Dave Holcroft

Lecturer & All things Academic Jess Birks

contact CURRICULUM LEADER: JAMES NICHOLLS james.nicholls@nscg.ac.uk

follow @nscg_ createmedia