MA Orchestration for Film, Games & Television

Full Time - 12 Months (30 hours/week)
Part Time - 24 Months (15 hours/week)
Part Time - 36 Months (8 hours/week)

If you want to write uplifting, epic orchestral music for film, games or television, this is the course that will give you the technical and creative skills to turn that dream into a reality. Orchestration for Film Games and Television takes you from first sketch through sampled mock-up, then onto the final recording with a live orchestral session, giving you all the knowledge you need to turn a musical idea into a professionally recorded live orchestral score.

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Course Details

Students on this course go on to work as a film and games composer, composer’s assistant, additional music composer, orchestrator or copyist. If you are already a working composer, this course opens up a wider range of work involving live orchestra and professional grade sampled mock-ups. If you’re looking to start a career, then by graduation you will be ready to tackle real-world composition projects involving both sampled and live orchestra.

On this course, you will learn:

To create and orchestrate awe-inspiring live and sampled orchestral film and games music.
Contemporary commercial standard practice where the emphasis is always on speed and efficiency.
How to work with sampled instruments, technical skills involving creating and balancing your template, instrument placement, use of reverb, and using controllers to enhance realism and orchestral mixing.
How to produce professional-quality scores using Sibelius or Finale and record-ready Pro Tools sessions.
To write to picture using live and sampled orchestral resources. Your optional film scoring assignments will be drawn from real-world film and video game projects.
How to arrange for different sized orchestral ensembles.
The research and critical thinking skills to help you put media music in context.

Having my home studio be my main studio is just one of the top things that ThinkSpace provided me with.

I loved my course: there is just so much information packed into each module.

Robert Rodriguez

'MA Orchestration for Film, Games & Television' Alumnus

Student rating: (4.8)

Teaching Staff

Our tutors are all current working professionals, many involved at the highest level in the business.

The tutors who will be giving you individual feedback, either in writing or at the student workshops, have composing and orchestration credits including:

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Iron Man Armoured Adventures
Die Hard 4
Angry Birds
Pokémon Movies
Robot Chicken
Batman: Arkham Origins and hundreds more.

They’ve worked for every major film and game studio and networks and production companies including Disney, Dreamworks, Marvel, Universal, Warner Bros, Sky, BBC, ITV, NBC, ABC and many others.

See All Teaching Staff

Guy Michelmore

Composition / Orchestration

Stephanie Taylor

Composition

George Oldziey

Composition / Orchestration

Bill Boston

Orchestration

Erik Desiderio

Composition / Games

Allison Piccioni

Composition

Douglas Black Heaton

Composition

Charles Fernandez

Composition / Orchestration

David Denyer

Composition / Orchestration

Student Stories

Our students are working in every corner of the industry from features films and television, to video games and trailers. Setting out on their careers as composers, orchestrators and sound designers, they continue to receive active support finding and pitching for work in the months and years after graduation.

Our recent students have gone on to work at Mojang, Creative Assembly, Frontier, Dam Busters and many more. Our graduates have worked on the score for Spiderman PS4 and scored the latest Battlefield 1 Apocalypse trailer.

See our student 'Hall Of Fame'

Course Structure

Your course falls into eight modules plus a final major project which lasts three months. Each module focuses on a different section of the orchestra or lineup, while at the same time developing specific compositional, technical and business skills.

The string section is the largest and most important section of the orchestra. String instruments are also amongst the most flexible, with a vast range, both in terms of pitch and articulations. In this module, you will delve deeply into contemporary professional practice to develop a critical awareness of these issues and the innovative technical and creative solutions proposed by those at the forefront of the profession.

The woodwind section is perhaps the most dexterous of all the orchestral ensembles. Instruments have the ability to play incredibly fast runs and make huge leaps in pitch. There are many technical challenges to consider when writing for a woodwind instrument or ensemble, making it a very technical area of orchestration. Whilst one is attempting to imitate the other, in reality the practices of using sampled woodwind and writing for live musicians are technically quite different but equally important, therefore both are covered in this module.

This module introduces some essential in-depth technical skills and knowledge that a modern professional orchestrator or composer must possess.Here you will be introduced to sampled instruments, how they work, the numerous technical challenges they present, how to balance the demands of the instruments with the available resources and how to make virtual instruments sound more realistic. Sampling technology pushes computers and software to their limits and a detailed knowledge of how they work is essential for any cinematic orchestrator hoping to bring scores to life using samples alone.

This module explores brass, harp and percussion writing and how classical orchestration techniques are adapted to fit the needs of cinematic orchestration. All three present significant technical challenges to the orchestrator, challenges which those in the forefront of the professional have met with skill and ingenuity.

Both brass and percussion writing in film, games and television are very different from its classical counterpart and therefore, a detailed knowledge of how film composers and orchestrators have developed these sections is important. You will delve deeply into contemporary professional practice to develop a critical awareness of these issues and the innovative technical and creative solutions proposed by those at the forefront of the profession.

This module looks at the treatment of the whole orchestra by cinematic orchestrators and composers and the differences in approach between large and small ensembles. You will examine the different approaches to orchestration possible through specialized recording techniques such as split sessions and combining live and sampled instruments. We also deal with approaches to creating convincing mock-ups of large and small ensembles.

The journey from finished orchestration to final recording is a complicated one involving a combination of musical and technological skills. This module takes you through the complex process of taking a finished arrangement and preparing for the live recording session. This includes producing musician’s parts, conductor’s scores, preparing pre-records, click tracks and Pro Tools sessions. You will also learn about session planning and budgeting for live recordings.

This module is an opportunity for students to gain more experience of scoring for a variety of ensembles and creating live and sampled scores in different styles, receiving feedback from their tutor and cementing the skills learnt in earlier modules. Students should aim to hone any skills with which they are not fully comfortable, with a view to perfecting these skills before embarking upon their final major project.

The final major project is a major piece of work that will take 12 weeks to complete. Either picking from the provided projects or delivering their own functional project, that has been approved by the course manager. This is a substantially longer piece of work than any other so far. It requires both solid technical skills and a much broader and deeper creative insight into the source material.

Students will be expected to research their chosen genre, developing a critical awareness of creative and technical problems faced by composers at the forefront of professional practice. Students will be supported by formative assessment from their tutor at points throughout the dissertation. If students decide to deliver their own project, they are responsible for its functionality and the delivery of the project.

If instead of the Final Major Project you would prefer to produce a piece of written work that reflects your accumulated knowledge, then you can choose to submit a dissertation. The dissertation will represent your research into an area of music intended for media consumption. It is an extended piece of scholarly written work and you will still have the same 12 weeks to complete it as you would if you were completing the practical Final Major Project. It is intended to represent the culmination of your academic, analytical and research skills, as well as taking advantage of your practical experience. This module will cultivate your intellectual and scholarly independence as a specialist in this area.

Schedules

We offer 3 different schedules, and students are able to pick which suits them best.

Full Time - 12 Months (30 hours/week)

Part Time - 24 Months (15 hours/week)

Part Time - 36 Months (8 hours/week)

These are estimates of the time a student will spend on each schedule. It will vary from student to student, depending on your rate of work. This includes live workshops, one-to-one tutorials, reading and watching the course materials, and time spent on assignment projects.

Learn More About Your Time Commitment

Finance

Total course price:

£10500

UK and International students pay the same. Exact price is subject to exchange rate fluctuation for those paying in other currencies.

We offer interest-free payment plans from £231.94 per month, where you can spread the cost of your course across the duration of your studies. The payment plan you are on depends on the schedule you are on.

Students will be required to pay a deposit on enrolling. For more information on this, visit the Student Finance page.

Learn More About Finance Options

Applications

Before applying for one of our courses, we highly recommend getting in contact first. It is useful for us to hear your current musical abilities, and this also allows you to ask any questions you may have about studying with us. Please get in contact at

postgraduate@thinkspaceeducation.com

To find out more about the application process, visit the Applications page.

Learn More About The Application Process

Live Sessions

The Orchestral Session

Working with a live orchestra is an unforgettable experience. At the end of your course, some of your music will be performed by a live, professional, 50-piece film orchestra. You are welcome to attend in person or follow the session over the internet. This is included in the price of your course. Sessions take place in Europe (most likely Prague or Budapest) subject to availability.

Live Instrumental Sessions

Throughout your course you will have the chance to have your music performed by some of the world’s best session players in our live solo sessions. You write a cue, they play it, we film the session and the player gives you feedback and advice. You get a world-class performance for your demo reel.

Interested?

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*To submit an application, there will be an application fee

Frequently Asked Questions

For more FAQs, and more information please visit the Applications & FAQs, Student Finance and Study With ThinkSpace pages.

Ideally, applicants will have an undergraduate degree in music. However, there is an option for those who do not have a degree, taking into account real-world work experience of making music, and non-degree professional development courses. This Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), as it’s known, is always assessed on a case-by-case basis. It also depends on how many other students are using this route during this stage of applications, as there is a maximum percentage of students we can take through this process.

On successful completion of your course, you will be awarded a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chichester. All UK, including those gained degrees are recognised worldwide. The qualification is fully accredited in the UK and subject to regular quality control, review and external invigilation to ensure the highest academic standards are maintained.

The graduation ceremony takes place in Chichester each year where you will receive your degree alongside your fellow students and the rest of the university’s graduates. If you cannot attend the ceremony in the UK, we can send your certification to you through the post.

We expect you to have a competent knowledge of one digital audio workstation. You need to write music fluently and productively. You should be able to produce roughly two minutes of music in a day. Your demos should be of good quality and we are happy to listen to your music and give you an opinion on this before you apply. A high level of music theory is a big advantage but we appreciate there are many different ways to create a great score and you will be judged principally on the potential shown in your portfolio.

The latest Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) capable of importing video files, and a copy of Pro Tools. In addition to the required Pro Tools 11 (or newer), We are able to provide extensive support for:

Cubase 8 (or newer)
Logic Pro X

Sample libraries are a must-have for the course. There are literally thousands of libraries, many of them capable of creating outstanding quality demos and we could have chosen any number. Most of the libraries listed below are available at a significant educational discount.

Here are some sample library suppliers that we recommend:

East West
Vienna
Spitfire Audio
8Dio
Heavyocity
Native Instruments

For our base orchestral libraries, we suggest:

East West Quantum Leap – Symphonic Orchestra Gold
VSL Special Edition – Woodwinds
8Dio – Adagietto
Heavyocity – Damage
Soundiron – Emotional Piano

You must also have a reasonable to top performance computer (Mac or PC) as well as at least a basic orchestral virtual instrument library (we can advise you if you’re not sure about your setup).

PC:
Minimum Spec:
Intel/AMD Quad Core Processor 2.6GHz
8/16GB RAM

However we would recommend:
Intel i7 Quad Core 3.2GHz (equivalent or higher)
32GB RAM

Mac:
Minimum Spec:
Intel Processor Quad Core 2.6GHz
8/16GB RAM

However we would recommend:
Intel i7 Quad Core 3.2GHz (equivalent or higher)
32GB RAM

You will also need:
Monitoring headphones and/or speakers

We also recommend:
External audio interface
MIDI Keyboard

Have a question?

Let’s chat…

That’s how most of our future students start: an informal conversation about where you are and where you want to be. No pressure, just getting to know you and how we might be able to help.

Get in touch with Tim Johnson the course manager (and film composer).

postgraduate@thinkspaceeducation.com