University degrees: Postgraduate
Course length: 2 years full-time
Could you develop, finance and produce a feature film or major TV drama?
Could you develop, finance and produce a feature film or major TV drama?
This course trains creative producers in the four key skills they will need to succeed in the industry: creative development; hands-on producing; finance and business affairs; and distribution/sales.
Recent Graduate Emily Morgan won this year’s BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a Writer, Director or Producer for I Am Not A Witch.
Our students lead teams made up from the other disciplines at the School to produce at least three films to industry standard – with all production costs being met by the NFTS. They also undertake a Cannes Festival work placement and are individually mentored by a successful producer through the second year of the course.
Course alumni move on to work as producers or as executives in the UK and internationally. Typically, new graduates combine their own project development with paid employment in various roles across the film and TV industries (assistants to producers, development associates, producing short commissions).
All NFTS students can attend the School’s masterclasses programme, with recent guests including Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve), Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna, Diego Maradona), Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here, We Need to Talk About Kevin), Louis Theroux, and M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Glass).
This course is industry recognised by ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for the UK’s screen-based industries, and carries the ScreenSkills Select quality-mark which indicates courses best suited to prepare students for a career in the screen industries.
Development skills: script analysis and script editing; developing a project from source material; working with writers and directors; pitching; negotiating the deal.
Producing skills: budgeting and scheduling; casting; managing the production; post-production techniques; editing, sound and music, business skills: publicity, marketing; sales, distribution; financing, co-production and legal/business affairs.
Television-specific strands include: developing a drama proposal to a broadcaster’s commissioning brief; understanding the television commissioning process; financing a TV drama series; the international market for UK drama; HETV tax credits.
Industry placements for students are encouraged in the summer break of the First Year, and Second Year students are formally teamed with individual industry mentors as well as undertaking work placements at the Cannes Film Festival. More than 30 senior industry tutors contribute to the course with specialist seminars over its two-year span, and students undertake visits to leading companies in the market such as Aardman Animation, NBCUniversal and ITV.
