MA Screen Acting

This is a highly specialised course for actors with previous acting training and/or experience who wish to further explore techniques relating to camera and screen.

This vocational course provides advanced training in screen work. It focuses on refining performance techniques, understanding the nuances of camera work, and mastering the art of storytelling. Students engage in workshops, on-camera exercises, and industry seminars to develop their screen acting skill set and knowledge. 

The curriculum includes voice and movement training, script analysis, and character development, alongside practical experience in filming and editing. 

Graduates will be well-prepared for professional acting careers in the screen industry, equipped with both technical skills and artistic insight.

Course highlights: 

A number of film productions over the academic year

• A collaborative student-led film production 
• Workshops on varying practitioners such as Meisner, Viewpoints, Chekhov and Laban
• Screen Combat Training
• Voice Acting Training
• Devising opportunities with MA Directors and Writers
• Tutorials providing individual performance feedback

Course structure
This course is highly practical, featuring reinforcement of the ‘foundations of acting’ through text analysis, improvisation and character development. There will also be practical application of integration of screen acting techniques in your role as an actor.

Movement classes will enable you to develop control and presence, while voice classes will provide vocal clarity, range, and expressiveness.

All students have the chance to be in BOVTV film projects during the course, which generally have a week rehearsal period and a week of filming. You also work on  monologues and duologue filmed scenes to contribute to your prepared portfolio, which is the culmination of your training. 

These are as a full-scale professional production as well as your monologue. 

Other classes include on screen acting such as self-tape technique, seminars and talks with industry professionals, and self-promotion and marketing to support the piecing together of your Spotlight profile and collating material to be seen by industry.

The final module is an Independent Project, whereby you will be part of a production team, working towards a student-led project with student directors and writers.

There will be classes on the cinematic form, looking at how to edit as well as scaffold-ed classes that challenge you and encourage you to consider yourself as an independently thinking artist with the flexibility to work across performance media specialising in screen acting.

Launching your career
You’ll leave the course with a Spotlight profile and a showreel of recorded material. As well as screen acting techniques that have you prepared at an industry-standard level. 

Graduates of MA Screen Acting have gone on to work on projects for Disney+, Netflix, Paramount, Apple TV and the BBC. 

Read more about the early career successes of our recent Screen Acting graduates on our alumni pages.