CREATIVE MEDIA PRACTICES (II) - 2026/7

Module Overview

This module runs as a continuation from Creative Media Practices (I), to give you a range of specialist workshops in important techniques in contemporary moving image media production in addition to furthering and practicing your general abilities in 2D and 3D animation. You will be equipped further to develop your proficiencies in film, animation and digital media arts production methods, and in particular explore newer techniques in audiovisual content creation. Indicative methods could include virtual production, real-time rendering, procedural animation, performance capture, and generative AI through our Topaz AI licence. You will also engage with contemporary VFX tools and technologies, encountering and consolidating skills in compositing packages such as (in an indicative, non-exhaustive list) Nuke and Da Vinci Resolve Fusion. You will also become familiar with tools including (as an indicative, non-exhaustive list) Unreal Engine and TV Paint. Your project might require research and development, and this module can accommodate exploration and skills development in a newly identified tool or technique not previously encountered. This may include evolving research areas: an indicative, non-exhaustive list could include automated digital character animation, applied denoising diffusion probabilistic models, location-based interactive installation and augmented reality techniques. Your access to tutors, both university staff and industry specialists, will continue.

Module provider

Music & Media

Module Leader

WEINBREN Jon (Music & Med)

Number of Credits: 30

ECTS Credits: 15

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): 20

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• Narrative Film Production (camera, lighting, working with actors etc)


• Unreal Engine


• Virtual Production


• Compositing and VFX


• Advanced Animation (2D & 3D)


• Digital Performance


• 3D modelling / animation


• Generative AI techniques in Audiovisual Content Creation

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to give you the opportunity to demonstrate creative and technical proficiency with tools and techniques covered by the module, as applied to your creative portfolio.

• Creative Portfolio

• Formative assessment is given through timetabled group critiques and individual tutorials, as well as more informally during workshop sessions. You can discuss and develop both creative and technical aspects of your work through regular open interaction with tutors and peers, as well as through specific tutorial sessions with specialists.

Module aims

• Facilitate your development of advanced creative media practice tools and techniques.
• Develop the deep skills necessary for your final project, and your subsequent future professional practice.
• Complement the advanced development of creative projects.
• Help you develop tools (verbal and electronic) required to conceptually frame your practice and help you communicate clearly and critically.
• Explore film, animation and digital media art works media projects in a variety of forms and formats and understand the procedures and processes involved in their creation.
• Cultivate your ability to research and develop potential projects in depth and articulate these in proposals, documentation and realisations.
• Working alongside specialist tutors, develop the deep skills necessary for execution of Final Projects, and for ongoing future practices.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to support you as you create a digital media portfolio making use of the artistic, technical, critical and production skills you developed over the previous semester.

You will work with one or more specialist tutors, who will help you experiment with approaches, technologies and workflows.

You will receive guidance in exploring relevant artworks and existing media from a range of forms, formats and genres to situate and contextualise your creative work. Presentation and moderated peer review will be developed as an essential tool for project development.

The course is taught through a combination of presentations by the course tutors, peer review, group critiques, and one-to-one tutorial sessions.

Module content will be delivered through a combination of:

• Demos, creative exercises ('workshops')
• Group seminars, presentations, critiques ('seminars')
• Personal tutorials

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: DMAM004

Other information

Embedded alongside the specific knowledge, skills, abilities and experiences facilitated by this module are more general attributes which the university has identified as an ambition to develop in all students across all subjects and disciplines on offer. These are:

• Employability
• Resourcefulness and Resilience
• Digital Capabilities
• Sustainability
• Global and Cultural Capabilities

The following is an account of how this module addresses these pillars.

Employability

Because this module is delivered by tutors and specialists with significant industry experience and contacts, it boosts your employability, raises the level at which you can gain positions and roles within the industry on graduation, and addresses well documented industry skills gaps. Your employability will improve because of your exposure to a variety contemporary and popular software, in tuition sessions led by experts where possible. You will also develop your artistic and screenplay writing skills, or discover those you never knew you had, to assist your development of characters. You will become used to working in a team regarding both animation and writing: a necessary part of any production involving a studio, film company or outside sponsor. We also facilitate plenty of networking opportunities, so that you get to meet and interact with future potential employers, collaborators, funders and commissioners. We also assist you to enter events and festivals so that your work can be promoted and seen, widening opportunities and providing valuable peer esteem.

Resourcefulness and Resilience

As you encounter new and unfamiliar working practices along with robust, fair and helpful criticism, you will develop inventiveness and flexibility to cope with these elements of your course, including the ability to research your own solutions to given problems. We encourage you to pool knowledge and work collaboratively to come up with innovative methods to achieve a particular creative or technical goal. The studio environment and unfettered access to facilities and software facilitates this.

Digital Capabilities

The FADA programme is built on the very latest techniques and technologies available to mainstream studios and animators. In this way, digital capabilities are an integrated part of what you learn. Contemporary media production is an inherently digital affair but we include more traditional techniques such as drawn animation, and drawing practice, as part of the offering.

Sustainability

By offering you digital equipment made to the most recent energy-saving standards throughout your research for this module, we will enable you to use best practices to minimise pollution and waste. We also work closely with the University of Surrey's Institute for Sustainability to explore and promote the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. You are shown best practices such as LED-based lighting, virtual production technologies to minimise crew and talent travel, recycling of sets and other materials, better transport choices, minimising of waste, and awareness of environmental and social effects on local communities and landscapes. These are embedded in various current industry initiatives such as BAFTA 'Albert', the 'Screen New Deal' production sustainability plan, and others. Furthermore, from a content viewpoint, many of the creative projects you develop on the programme address environment and sustainability issues as part of their subject matter. 

Global and Cultural Capabilities

Film-making is inherently an international pursuit, crossing not only national boundaries but also, very importantly, cultural boundaries. Your colleagues among students will be from many nationalities and cultures, whose expertise and enthusiasms will naturally encompass broad ranges of international and intercultural influences. Your tutors will welcome your embrace of cultures outside your own, especially regarding experimental, contemporary and historical contexts. In this module's storytelling opportunities, your tutors will encourage narratives and subjects outside your own national and cultural experience.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2026/7 academic year.