Program Overview

Our Documentary Film Production MA is an innovative course led by industry experts. It is designed to embrace traditional, new and emerging forms of storytelling. You will witness how the way we make and watch non-fiction film, television and online content is changing, and will continue to do so.

Documentary filmmaking is currently a very fluid medium. In light of this your specially tailored modules will cover a host of areas, allowing you to learn how to develop crowd-based productions, interactive and virtual reality content, as well as how to shoot cinematic content using the latest cinema cameras. With access to excellent equipment and resources, there is a strong practical focus to the course with a large number of hands-on workshops. These will ensure that you gain confidence in all technical aspects of the production process.

Our tutors and guest speakers for this master's degree in Documentary Film Production have extensive industry experience. They have had work commissioned and shown on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, and have won major industry awards. Course leader Robb Horsley is a filmmaker with award-winning documentary credits, both in the UK and internationally. He is joined by lecturer Suzanne Cohen, a highly experienced documentary specialist who was named Educator of the Year at the 2018 Into Film awards, and lecturer Louis Heaton, a former director and producer of factual content at Channel 4.

Under their guidance you will expand your knowledge and insight into how factual content is made and commissioned, in turn helping you to develop your own ideas into viable projects that appeal to audiences and commissioners. In 2019 two films made by London Met students were nominated for Royal Television Society awards, with one, Waiting for Tomorrow, going on to win the factual category.

Taught in the heart of London, the world’s third busiest city for film production, you will be immersed in the London film and TV industry through access to world-class archives, festivals, screenings and industry events. The master’s degree will also prepare you to work in film or in creative fields more generally. Both industries form a large and growing part of both London’s and the UK economy. There are nearly three million creative jobs accounted for in the UK and more than a third of these are based in London. There is a huge amount of both large-scale and small-scale film and audio-visual production in the city and a great deal of related professional work that surrounds and supports it.

You’ll find that this course comes in response to the exciting evolution of documentary and factual storytelling, a genre embracing new and emerging technologies and distribution platforms. Once considered a less popular area, this genre is currently experiencing a remarkable growth trend. Now, with game changers such as Blue Planet II, “the biggest show with young UK viewers ages 16 to 24”, documentary film has become a key commercial component in the industry. Coupled with viewing on demand from sites such as Netflix, the genre is only becoming more commercially viable. This prompts more content to be commissioned, something that would directly benefit you as you go into a career in documentary film production.