BA (Hons) Acting for Screen*

All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.

If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.

Throughout the course the focus rests on fundamental questions and approaches to acting, ensemble, autonomy, spontaneity, repetition, self and character, play and presence. It is a process of experimentation and building your own meaning and your own processes of working.

During the year, you'll work on the idea of being in the moment, heightened awareness, precision to detail, and working on the voice and language through dramatic texts. We'll also work on exploring vulnerability, openness, risk-taking in making visible what normally, in society, is invisible.

You'll also be introduced are introduced to collaborative, visceral and sensual practices that enhance your stamina, physicality and imagination. You'll play group games, learning how to work together as an ensemble and have fun by making mistakes and improvising on the spot.

In Acting for Screen and Media, you'll enhance your curiosity and sustain and deepen your awareness of how texts and narratives move into recorded performance, through a range of creative development processes and rehearsals. You'll develop understanding of how performance in different recorded or filmed contexts requires shifts in techniques and technologies.

Level 5 consists of more advanced work, concerned with aspects of dramatic structure and the implications of style for the actor. You'll build on the key skills and concepts introduced in Level 4 and continue to expand your skills, knowledge and experience of voice and body work as a core spine through the level. As in Level 4 lessons in acting, movement, voice and singing run throughout the different units in this level.

Through the Shakespeare and Acting 3 units, the acting is developed to more advanced level. Historical and contemporary texts and scores, further challenges you to apply existing skills and knowledge to the making and staging of these works, as well as opening new opportunities to acquire new skills and sensibilities within workshop, rehearsal, and performance settings.

In Acting 3, you're also introduced to acting for camera through a Meisner or an equivalent technique. You'll also gain skills in acting for innovative technologies (motion capture) as well as developing your understanding of stage and screen fighting techniques.

BA (Hons) Acting for Screen moves towards furthering your understanding of advanced acting for camera and learning how to act for different genre and styles of films. You'll also gain a in-depth understanding of how to act for digital technologies (motion capture) and developing methods for screen fighting scenes.

You'll then put this knowledge to practice through acting on the set of short films created by your peers on BA (Hons) Film Production. The Acting for Short Production unit is a collaborative unit with BFS, where the actors are developing their understanding of acting of the set and being part of the production team. You'll experience the full range of activities and learn about the film part of production: rehearsed readings, prep-activities and on-set filming day routines, etc.

The Professional Practice and Research unit is shared part of the BFS experience, with common aims and learning outcomes across all courses. You'll have the opportunity to choose from a multitude of different courses from the whole of BFS to enhance your curiosity and knowledge in a new field or undertake a research to suit your specific discipline or focus. This unit gives you the chance to build on your knowledge and practical skills within a professional, industry-relevant environment, encouraging creativity and innovation.

Level 6 enables you to extend the scope and depth of your exploration of the acting process, and test the working methods developed in Levels 4 and 5, with a range of creative challenges. In this level you will focus on public facing performance or film recordings working with a wide range of external screen, theatre and media practitioners enhancing your skills of collaboration and working to tight professionalised deadlines.

As students on BA (Hons) Acting for Screen, you'll be cast in the prestigious Kodak film project and graduate film project. You'll engage in professional level of acting for camera projects and build a portfolio of roles and project delivery experiences working across BFS film productions, independent film project collaborating with students from many different departments.

You'll collaborate with your peers on BA (Hons) Acting throughout the year during the Graduate Showreels and Showcase and Professional Preparation units, which will enable you to build a digital portfolio of work and further their understanding of audio and media work within the profession. In these units, you'll present your skills in front of the industry agents in a Showcase in London and prepare for professionally filmed showreels for the Spotlight platform.

This work is documented and forms an important aspect of the your individual public-facing professional portfolio.

In your concluding unit, you'll design and complete an independent research project on a topic of your choosing. The research should be relevant to the subject specialism broadly, but doesn't need to be restricted to acting alone.