Drama with Film

By combining Drama (75% of your course) with Film (25%) you'll have the opportunity to study Drama and Theatre as the major element of your degree alongside film.

Choosing to study Drama at Royal Holloway will put you at the centre of one of the largest and most influential Drama and Theatre departments in the world. You'll create performances, analyse texts, and bring a range of critical ideas to bear on both. On this course the text and the body, thinking and doing, work together. There's no barrier between theory and practice: theory helps you understand and make the most of practice, while practice sheds light on theory. By moving between the two, you'll find your place as an informed theatre-maker, and by studying a variety of practices, by yourself and with others, you'll get knowledge of the industry as a whole, and learn how your interests could fit into the bigger picture.

We are top-rated for teaching and research, with a campus community recognised for its creativity. Our staff cover a huge range of theatre and performance studies, but we're particularly strong in contemporary British theatre, international and intercultural performance, theatre history, dance and physical theatre, and contemporary performance practices.

Film and television don't just shape culture: they create it. Our unique 360˚ approach to cinema allows you to understand film from every angle: from stars to directors, historical origins to contemporary economics, socio-political contexts, to aesthetic achievements and from the dynamics of screenplays to the global cultures that shape production, reception and film form itself. You'll come away from the course speaking confidently about concepts and ideas, with the ability to deftly critique them, too – ideal skills for the communication industries, creative arts and beyond. Taking this approach, you will study film and television from Hollywood and Europe, Bollywood, Asia and Latin America alongside a range of more experimental non-narrative film, television and digital media forms.

• Film studies makes up a quarter of your course.

• Study a range of practices, from physical theatre to contemporary British theatre.

• Be part of two complementary departments with a creative focus on interdisciplinary.

• Reflect critically on performance and write film reviews.

• Contrast performance techniques for stage and screen.

Course Modules

Year 1

You will take the following modules in Drama:

• Theatre and Performance Making 1

• Theatre and Text 1

• Theatre and Ideas 1

• Skills Lab

• Screen Narrative: Theory and Practice

• Screen Narrative: Theory and Practice

Year 2

• Theatre and Performance Making: Acting for Camera

Year 3

• Group Project

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• All modules are core

Year 2

• Theatre and Culture: Theatre for Young Audiences

• Theatre and Culture: Cultures of Memory

• Dancing Bodies, Global Culture

• Theatre and Ideas: Ideas of Gender and Sexuality

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Tragedy

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Adaptation

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of the Musical

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Acting

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Money

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Casting

• Directing Screen Fiction

• Screen Documentary

• Cinematography

• Creative Interactive Media

• Animation and Visual Effects

• Screenwriting

• Producing Film and Television

• Creative Digital Arts

• Creative Social Media

• Creative Post Production

• Film Theory: Hitchcock and Point of View

• Post-Classical Hollywood

• Television Histories

• Modern European Cinema

• Contemporary Chinese Cinemas

• Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference

• Modernism and Avant Garde Film

• Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema in a Transitional Frame

• Digital Aesthetics

• The Creative Industries

Year 3

• Love, Gender and Sexuality

• Race Relations in Theatre, Film and Television

• Shakespeare

• Naturalist Theatre in Context

• Creative Learning and Theatre

• Physical Theatre

• Shakespeare on Camera

• The Actor's Voice

• Actor Training in a Globalised World

• Final Year Project - Special Study

• Final Year Project - Dissertation

• Taught Dissertation

• Directing Screen Fiction

• Screen Documentary

• Advanced Screenplay- Major Project

• Producing Film and TV

• Cinematography

• Transmedia

• Creative Digital Arts

• Creative Sound Design

• Creativity, Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

• Contemporary British Cinema 1

• Television and Digital Cultures

• Film Aesthetics 1: Issues of Interpretation and Evaluation

• Psychoanalysis and Cinema

• Film, Television and the Holocaust

• Media Technologies

• See This Sound - Audiovisuology

• Cinephilia

• 360º Cinema

• Political Cinema: From Eisenstein to Youtube

• The Poetics of Contemporary Television

• Contemporary British Cinema 2

• Film Aesthetics 2

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/undergraduate/drama-theatre-and-dance/drama-with-film/

Each year you will take three course units in Drama and one in Film.

The course has a modular structure, whereby students take 12 course units at the rate of four per year. Some course units are compulsory, while others are elective, thereby offering flexibility and some choice.

You'll be taught through a combination of lectures, seminar/workshops, and for Drama, presentation of your research and practical experimentation, with or without written texts. IT applications are used to explore many aspects of the subject, and we support your capability in this area through an Information Technology Skills course. Private study and preparation are essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources and the University’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle. Academic staff hold regular drop-in consultation sessions with students and, when you start with us, you will be assigned a Personal Tutor to support you academically and personally.

Assessment methods match the course content. For most course units, you will be assessed on pieces of work, usually an essay, or assignment such as a seminar presentation or a performance. You will sometimes be assessed as part of a group.

You will also take a study skills course during your first year, designed to equip you with and enhance the writing skills you will need to be successful in your degree. This course does not count towards your final degree award but you are required to pass it to progress to your second year.

The results of your first year qualify you to progress to the second year but do not contribute to your final degree award. The second and final year results do contribute to the final degree result, with the final year work counting double that of the second year.

All undergraduate degree courses at Royal Holloway are based on the course unit system. This system provides an effective and flexible approach to study, while ensuring that our degrees have a coherent and developmental structure.