BA (Hons) Music Performance (Film Acting)

Ensemble

You will produce a professional standard performance, demonstrating confidence within your chosen repertoire(s) and technical and expressive maturity. You will need an appropriate balance in programming and the ability to lean towards either a supporting or leadership role and develop your skills in hosting events and presenting the work to others.

Iconoclasts to Icons

You will explore the importance of observing and contrasting screen acting technique and styles through lectures and screenings, and will be expected to articulate the context of performances in group discussion.

Introduction to Film Industry

This module walks you through the various paradigms within the film industry and the use of filmic devices for dramatic and expressive intention.

Masterclass

This module develops your basic performance and communication skills and your sense of performance context. You will develop your repertoire, your understanding of style and your skill in preparing for audition or performance.

Performance Development

This includes your 1 to 1 tuition in your selected instrumental or vocal study.

Professional Resilience

This module will explore a range of different strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner and will introduce students to a number of different models of successful self-development.

Screen Acting 1

This module explores the complete timeline of a screen acting performance; from initial preparation through to final delivery. You will examine aspects of performance practice relevant to your individual choice of discipline development.

Ensemble 2

As in year one, this module allows you to explore your potential as a team player in performance. You are encouraged to explore the commercial potential for your performing ensemble, and longer-term planning and repertoire-building strategies will be emphasised in rehearsals and coaching sessions.

Performance Development 2

In this module you will develop an exploration of musical style in practical work and be encouraged to approach new and more ambitious repertoires.

A more sophisticated relationship to presenting performance and to preparing for audition will be encouraged, while you work under the direction of an individual vocal or instrumental-specialist teacher.

You will be emboldened to take risks in selecting material for study and to question previously held assumptions about the limits of your capacity to achieve as performers.

Masterclass 2

This module is intended to extend performance and communication skills and to further enhance a sense of performance context. You will continue to develop your current repertoire as a singer or instrumentalist, your understanding of style, and your skill in preparing for an audition or performance.

The importance of communicative performance and of an actively engaging relationship with the listener will be emphasised in group performance classes, and a good standard of critical self-reflection will be encouraged in preparing you for the assessment task.

Modern and Movie Musicals

This module relates a historical overview of the development of the genre to an examination of current trends and practices in musical theatre, both here and in the USA.

A range of models will be used to help you further your understanding of the different cultural contexts in which contemporary musical theatre operates.

The module will also help you to further your understanding of the different cultural and social contexts in which the movie musical operates.

Learning will focus on the way in which media, technology and animated motion picture corporations have altered the way in which movie musicals are received and categorised.

Professional Resilience 2

A successful career as a performance professional needs to be informed, alongside artistic and communication skills, by an understanding of the nature of personal strengths and weaknesses.

This module will seek to develop this self-awareness and to encourage a confident approach to the world beyond university, enabling a tailored combination of learning and practice approaches which encourages an awareness of individual character and circumstances.

Psychology of Learning, Teaching and Assessment

This module explores the psychology involved from both the teacher and student perspective during musical learning.

You will gain a general understanding of the historical framework of learning theories and social frameworks within psychology. Specific relationships to musical learning and a student’s concept of musical ability, understanding musical identity and the relationship of the body and instrument are explored.

The understanding of motivation, self- efficacy, self-regulation, mental skills, and cognitive strategies are explored and applied to real-life situations. These form a base of knowledge that can improve current learning and inform the future practice of teaching.

The module also allows you to become a beginner all over again by learning a ‘new’ instrument, recreating the feelings experienced by beginners. Reflections on this experience will inform and shape your approach to teaching.

Various repertoire, aural tests, scales, and sight reading will be included in a broad exploration of assessment, and discussions will cover the pressures or constraints that exams place on students.

Roots of Jazz to Modern Jazz

Previous jazz experience is needed to take this module.

This module will explore the roots of jazz, primarily focusing on the development of jazz between 1890 and 1930 and critically analysing the social, political and cultural context in New Orleans.

The module will also examine the music and musicians that helped to create jazz and will consider the relevance of early jazz with regards to contemporary jazz education and performance.

The focus of study will go on to explore important developments in jazz from its birth in New Orleans to the present day. By examining the history of jazz’s inception through to the current developments, you will gain a broad understanding of the major styles and the particular innovators in the field.

Self-Employment and Promotion

This module will explore the local and national marketplace for instrumental, vocal or dance teaching, as well as music and musical theatre performance and acting. It will introduce you to a number of different models of successful positioning within it.

A successful career as a professional needs to be informed, alongside performance and communication skills, by an understanding of the nature of self-employment in business, as well as the skills needed to become employed. This module will seek to develop this, and to encourage a confident approach to the world beyond university, enabling a tailored financial, business and career planning which encourages an awareness of local markets and circumstances.

Ensemble 3

In this module, you will work towards more polished and professional standards in group performance and presentation, and will seek to add to your experience in performing independently off campus.

This module aims to consolidate existing repertoire and to foreground strengths within the group’s overall repertoire. You will undertake this work under the direction of a specialist ensemble coach, as well as taking part in hosting the department’s programme of performance events.

Masterclass 3

This module explores issues of style and technique relevant to your specialist performance context. As you continue to develop your first study repertoire as singers or instrumentalists, yourunderstanding of style, and your skill in preparing for audition or performance are supported through peer observation and learning in the masterclass environment.

The importance of communicative performance and of an actively engaging relationship with the listener will be emphasised in group performance classes, and a good standard of critical self- reflection will be encouraged in preparing you for the assessment task.

Personal Study

This module aims to provide you with an opportunity to select an area of study of your choice in performance or individual research.

You may develop a performance programme, research an agreed topic and present your findings in written or presentation form, and will develop this project over an extended period. You can incorporate original composition within your performance or research work if you wish.

Screen Acting Skills B 3

The module continues the learning of the methods and approaches to develop the skills, techniques and understanding needed to act in front of the camera.

The syllabus for this year falls largely into three areas:

• Consolidating learning in the development of physical aspects needed for acting.
• Producing an assured and probing understanding of psychological aspects needed in actin,g with emphasis on research for character work. Will include text work.
• Drawing together a range of technical aspects of camera work.

Jazz Arranging and Postmodernism

Previous jazz experience is needed to take this module.

This module will develop key skills in rearranging standards from the jazz canon. You will look at a number of specific techniques on how to re-create jazz standards in a stylistically inventive manner. The module also allows you to build on your skills to develop a more personalised sound and style within jazz.

You will debate whether Jazz is a style or a process, and be introduced to a variety of models, both practical and theoretical, to recent developments in jazz up to the present day. By exploring the work of such artists as Anthony Braxton and Weather Report, and critical frameworks such as Foucault and Lyotard, Jazz, in this context, will be redefined as a ‘process’, albeit still rooted in a tradition.

You will examine jazz as a form of social transformation, jazz from a postmodern perspective, jazz and issues of gender and jazz as a global phenomenon alongside other related subjects. You will be encouraged to examine and work with the ‘jazz process’, which can be traced back to the very first inception of jazz in New Orleans.

Music Performance Practice 3

Practice is an activity that consumes most of the time you spend playing or singing, and usually, there is a target or goal associated with the practice activity.

This module is about how we should practise, what we are trying to achieve by practising, and, through more useful and intelligent practice, how to achieve each goal as it comes along.

You will explore how we feel about the music we’re performing, or planning to be able to perform, and how we feel about the often competitive context set by our performance goals. You will learn that we can change how we feel about achieving our goals, and that most of this change will, inevitably, happen through the autodidactic process – through practice.

Professional Resilience 3

This module is designed to help you identify challenges in your journey towards becoming a trained professional, and to provide a variety of tuition and support opportunities for personal development.

You will explore a range of different strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner and will be introduced to a number of different models of successful self-development.

A successful career as a performance professional needs to be informed, alongside artistic and communication skills, by an understanding of the nature of personal strengths and weaknesses. This module will seek to develop this self-awareness and to encourage a confident approach to the world beyond university.

Business Project

This module will explore examples of business projects in commercial and publicly funded arts. You will also look at the different marketing models and explore an overview of the evolving social and political cultures which have influenced the arts over the last 40 years.

Building on your experience so far, you will be expected to experiment with different approaches to your own marketing and general business strategies to extend your imaginative range within the individual projects.

One to One and Group Teaching

This module will introduce a range of techniques in structuring lessons, communicating expressive, musical concepts and problem-solving designed to create an exciting and stimulating learning experience for individual learners embarking on the early stages of study.

You will engage in workshop activity designed to explore the potential of strategies and materials that could be used in group teaching contexts, reflecting on relationships between this activity and individual learning.

A student-written and arranged piece played for a varied ensemble made of your peers, alongside additional workshop activity, will provide hands-on experience in gauging a musical level and managing a group.