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A LEVEL, CREATIVE

Media – A Level

Start Date : September 2026
Location : Telford 6th

COURSE FEATURES

01

Enhances creativity and practical skills

02

Provides insight into media industries and audiences

03

Encourages engagement with current affairs and digital culture

04

Opens pathways to diverse career opportunities

ABOUT
COURSE

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If you are interested in how the media works, how messages are communicated, and you like to work independently and use varied technology, then this is the course for you. You will look at nine different forms: TV, film, radio, magazines, advertising, internet and online media, music videos, newspapers, and video games. You will gain an understanding of how each media is constructed, and how messages are read by audiences.

The course develops an understanding of how the range of media forms have helped to shape cultural norms of life in the 21st century, encouraging students to analyse how meaning is constructed through choices made by media producers of representation, audience, and context. Students explore how theatre communicates ideologies and reflects social values, aligning with key media studies frameworks such as Hall’s representation theory and audience reception theory.

In the first year, the course combines key theoretical frameworks with practical production skills, including creating newspaper front pages, music video storyboards, film re-enactments, and podcasts. It explores advertising and marketing through set products from different times and places, alongside study of the international film industry, newspapers and news construction, radio history with a focus on podcasting, music video forms and meanings, and cross-media promotion through an NEA (Non-Examined Assessment) project promoting a new television programme.

Students also study magazines by comparing different types and analysing how they address and engage their target audiences. Television in the global age is explored through a comparison of two programmes, while media in the online age considers how vloggers and content creators have used the internet to achieve global fame and the financial rewards that can result from this visibility.
On completing this course, you can continue film and media courses – focusing on production or more on theoretical issues and debates. You can start a variety of careers such as an actor, writer, director, digital content creator.

Film studies fits well with a wide range of other courses at higher education. For example, students have combined this course with English, media, sociology or history and applied their collective qualifications into careers such as teaching, publishing, or events management.
A minimum of 5 GCSEs at grades 9-4, including English language and maths. If you have studied media or film, a grade 5 would be expected for GCSE.
Two exams – each worth 35% of the final A level One NEA (Non-Examined Assessment) – worth 30% of the final A level
The best thing about the course is being able to create your own short film for coursework which enables you to apply aspects of what is learned across a variety of the examined topics to a different context. Besides being your coursework, this could also be the first step on the road to producing a showreel to access future courses or jobs.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

If you are interested in applying for this course, please click ‘apply now‘ on this page or at the top of any page, and create a website account or sign in an account you have already created and complete the application form.

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