Hone your collaborative, creative and business skills as a practising artist over an intensive 12-month programme. Victoria’s Master of Fine Arts (Creative Practice) is an industry-focused, practical degree that will help you build new contacts and networks in Wellington’s creative industries.
You'll take advantage of our capital city location and study at Victoria’s Kelburn campus—plus our film and music programmes get to use a new purpose-refitted facility at the Miramar Creative Centre.
Find out what the MFA (CP) offers you in your fine arts discipline.
The MFA (CP) includes a creative project in which you'll be mentored to complete work that showcases your abilities and encourages you to push boundaries in your field.
As part of the programme you'll also do an internship with an arts organisation. This will give you valuable work experience and provide you with all-important connections in your industry.
While your studies will be centred around your specialty area of design, film, music or theatre, you'll have opportunities to take an interdisciplinary approach to your work. If you're a Design, Music or Theatre student, you may also be able to take a complementary course from another fine arts discipline.
And, because all artists need some business knowledge, you'll complete a course in arts management and marketing as part of the programme.
Be part of Wellington's thriving and internationally recognised creative scene. During your studies you'll have opportunities to collaborate with your artistic peers and many of New Zealand's top arts professionals.
Become part of a community of talented and like-minded students from across all of the fine arts disciplines. You'll work closely with other postgraduate students in the programme to share ideas and inspiration.
Full-time students can expect a workload of 40–45 hours a week for much of the year.
This course is designed for composers aspiring to work in the media industry and wanting to learn more about techniques for composing and producing music for film and TV. Taught by experienced professional film/TV composers, it provides an opportunity to collaborate with filmmakers and animators, as well as the chance to write for ensembles.
Key features
You will compose music for moving image and work with filmmakers, screen designers and animators. You will analyse film and TV scores, exploring how music is used to create atmosphere, convey mood and depict setting, character and action. In addition, you will explore the relationships between composer and producer, directors and music editors. You will also study and practise the use of main themes, underscoring and the harmonic languages of soundtracks. There will be an opportunity to have your compositions performed by a professional ensemble, conducted to picture in a professional recording environment. You will also learn about the technology used to produce high-quality soundtracks for the music industry, as well as business and copyright issues.
Compositions, soundtracks, essays, presentations, research projects, and dissertation.
Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list.
Core modules
Optional modules
This unique programme trains students to work at the cutting edge of contemporary cinematic music, developing a range of technological and musical skills to produce high quality and innovative scores. Teaching staff include top Hollywood orchestrators who have worked on Oscar nominated scores, blockbusters like Hunger Games, Fast and Furious and the Die Hard series of films. The course builds on the foundations of traditional classical orchestration and then extends this into the rapidly evolving world of contemporary film and games scoring.
The programme team works closely with film, games and music industry bodies and practitioners, to ensure the currency and professional relevance of the programme. The prime purpose of the programme is to enable students to become effective and multi-skilled professionals, capable of meeting complex musical and technical challenges in the arena of film, games and television orchestration.
In this fast developing area of professional practice, the programme will offer substantial and sustained opportunities to engage with the research of others, stimulating interdisciplinary enquiry, furthering your knowledge and developing original solutions and insights into technical and creative problems.
To gain a Postgraduate Certificate students need to complete four out of the first five modules.
To gain a Postgraduate Diploma students need to complete all modules with the exception of the Final Major Project.
To gain an MA students need to have successfully completed all modules, including the Final Major Project (Dissertation).
This is an online course. You must have access to a good internet connection. The course is primarily delivered through the use of downloadable material, however there will be regular online webinars and tutorial sessions.
The MFA Professional Composition and Orchestration is a course run by the University of Chichester and ThinkSpace Education.
We train you for the industry of the future.
This is a course that combines advanced training in scoring and orchestration for film, games and other media with focus on both live and sampled orchestration. Course highlights include a recording session with a 50-piece professional film orchestra, recording sessions throughout the course with live musicians and a choice of inspiring real-world projects from film, television, games, animation and commercials.
You will acquire industry-ready professional skills, both creative and technical. The course will sharpen your powers of analysis and provide you with a much deeper and richer insight into both your own music and the work of others.
A master’s degree from the University of Chichester & ThinkSpace Education is a prestigious qualification and a major personal achievement.
It is validation of your ability as a composer and an internationally recognized qualification that establishes both your technical and creative ability.
All of the materials for PCO can be accessed through our online student campus.
Here you can download all of the course materials to your computer, module by module (yes, ThinkSpace lets you keep all of the tuition content, unlike many other online music courses/colleges).
You can also submit assignments to your tutors for marking and get access to unlimited support from our team of knowledgeable and experienced professional composers via the support ticket system.
PCO also boasts over 80 hours of audio and video interviews with top composers, producers and orchestrators, featuring composers such as:
Just as important are the interviews with producers and directors who tell you exactly what they are looking for and what they expect from the composers they work with.
Modules and themes you may study include:
For more information, please visit ThinkSpace website
Anyone hoping to enter the professional industry for the first time, or to uplift their career trajectory, needs careful guidance from people with knowledge of crucial developments, often completely invisible to those on the outside.
Every one of our tutors works in the industry, many at the cutting edge of innovation, working on major international productions in film, games and television.
In this creative and supportive environment, you have a unique opportunity to develop your own musical voice, a distinctive sound that can be key to unlocking your full potential.
When you become a PCO student, our team of composers are here to support you through all stages of your career.
We can offer help looking over contracts, advising on finding work and setting rates, assisting new purchases (ThinkSpace students are also eligible for student discounts on many pieces of music software and samples), assisting with technical problems & studio setup, and pretty much anything else you can think of!
In the UK an MFA involves 240 academic credits and each credit represents a notional 10 hours of work. That comes to pretty close to a full-time working week for a year.
For Professional Composition & Orchestration there are 30 projects plus the Major Project at the end of the course.
Practice based creative degrees are notoriously difficult to quantify in terms of how long they take to complete. To a large extent it depends on how fast you write music. Some students write 5 minutes of music a day while others write 5 minutes a week. If you work reasonably productively, i.e. 2-3 minutes a day, which is probably average in the professional working industry, you would complete the work in much less time.
The headline figure of 10 hours per credit includes absolutely everything – time spent watching videos, reading, and discussions with tutors and support staff. It also depends on how widely you choose to read around the subject, the depth of your research, the number of additional films you choose to watch and the amount of private composition you do to support your formal projects.
A well organized person, working productively, might be able to complete the course in two or three days a week, whereas another working slower might take 5 days a week. Assume therefore that a full time course lies somewhere between 2 and 5 days a week depending on your work rate.
For more information, please visit the ThinkSpace website
This is a one-year, research and compositional performance-based MSc with a focus on practices for composing music and sound for the screen.
The focus of the compositional investigations will include film/TV music as well as current computer multimedia production practices, such as for music videos, commercials, video games and web pages. You will become proficient in the technical, artistic and intellectual demands of composing music and sound for use in TV/radio/ film and other media environments, such as the internet. You will be able to experiment with new styles in media, and receive practical experience and timely feedback in collaborating with others.
The programme also provides an opportunity for students to enhance business and management skills in the media industry as they pertain to music and sound.
The Edinburgh Film Music Orchestra, an ensemble run by students and staff of the programme, currently performs film music and often features performances of compositions by MSc Composition for Screen students.
This programme is structured around four compulsory courses and two option courses. You will also complete a final project by creating a music composition for a screen-media environment, along with an accompanying written essay component.
Goals and outcomes of the programme include:
The rise of the internet and other multimedia platforms for film has significantly improved career prospects for composers. Your degree will not only set you apart from the competition, it will also provide you with a network of peers and industry professionals who can assist you in getting your work to the screen.
Students will work exclusively on real-life projects. They will tackle a broad range of technical and artistic challenges, looking at rich and vibrant areas of creative practice including scoring for commercials, documentary, animation, games as well as feature films. They will place media music in context and will also study the history and development of the form from the early twentieth century through to the present day.
Many composers at the top of the industry including Harry Gregson-Williams, David Arnold, George Fenton, Nicholas Hooper and many others, have contributed to the course materials. The programme team also works closely with industry bodies and production creative’s at the highest level to ensure the currency and relevance of the programme of study. The prime purpose of the programme is to enable students to become effective and multi-skilled film, television or games composers, capable of meeting complex musical and technical challenges when composing for the media.
In this fast-developing area of professional practice, the programme will offer substantial and sustained opportunity to engage with the research of others, stimulating interdisciplinary enquiry, furthering the student’s knowledge and developing original solutions and insights into technical and creative problems.
Over the past few years, we’ve redeveloped both of our campuses so that you have the best facilities available for your degree. We pride ourselves on the quality of the learning environment we can offer our students.
At the Bishop Otter campus there is an integrated approach to the provision of learning resources and support. We offer a substantial collection of books, journals and other materials to help you further your research. A range of study areas for group and quiet study including Wi-Fi areas for laptop use are available, or you can use our open access PC and Mac areas. We use an electronic learning environment with an expanding portfolio of online library resources from anywhere at any time.
The Learning Resource is the hub of the learning environment. It has two upper floors of library resources, one for silent study and one for quiet study, both of which have recently been refurbished. On the ground floor, you’ll find the Support and Information Zone, Media Centre, Otter Gallery, Costa Coffee and a variety of IT resources.
The Bishop Otter LRC also offers:
The Music department offers several soundproofed practice rooms for rehearsals and lessons, as well as lecture and seminar rooms. The Chapel is a fantastic venue for performances and rehearsals, and is the centre piece of the campus.
By undertaking this MA, you will gain the experience and qualifications needed to work on Media Composition professionally.
To gain a Postgraduate Certificate students need to complete four out of the first five modules, one of which must be Writing in Styles.
To gain a Postgraduate Diploma students need to complete all modules with the exception of the Final Major Project.
To gain an MA students need to have successfully completed all modules, including the Final Major Project (Dissertation).
Edinburgh College of Art: Postgrad study in Art, Design, Architecture, Music, History of Art
