Five reasons to study Film Production and Broadcast Engineering at Surrey
What makes our Film Production and Broadcast Engineering degree different from the rest? Subject leaders and students reveal the secret behind our graduates' success and why you should put Surrey at the top of your UCAS form..
1. Ranking and our reputation
We’ve got rankings to be really proud of:
- ‘Cinematics and photography’ is ranked 2nd in the UK for overall student satisfaction* in the National Student Survey (NSS) 2024
- 2nd in the UK the National Student Survey 2024 results for overall satisfaction* for cinematics and photography.
- Ranked 11th in the UK for drama, dance and cinematics in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025.
- After winning the Bill Vinten University award last year, Surrey had the honour of hosting the annual Guild of Television Camera professionals (GTC) student film award ceremony for 2024. At the awards, our Film Production and Broadcast Engineering students won the University award for the second time (two years running).
- Nomination for the Royal Television Society Young Technologist of the year, for placement work at ITN.
* Measured by % positivity across all questions for all providers listed in the Guardian University Guide league tables.
2. Employability
A huge part of our employability success lies in the strength of our third-year professional placement connections. These are not your regular run of the mill experiences. We’re talking working as a post-production engineer at Pinewood Studios. An audio post-production engineer at Sky. Field assistants and trainee engineers at ITN – working calmly in fast paced ever-changing environments of General Elections and live broadcast satellite trucks. Making promotional videos as a Creative Producer for the National Geographic TV channels at the Walt Disney Company. You’ll struggle to find credits like ours anywhere else. We can shout about over 70% employability with companies including Sky, Disney, Techex and NEP.
We’re also accredited by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET).**
** Accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as an Incorporated Engineer and partly meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer.
3. Facilities
- Our new £1.2-million facilities upgrade was completed in 2023, including a new studio floor and sound stage with an operational height of 4m and over 120m2 in size in total.
- The acoustics have been designed for the sound stage with a floating concrete floor, acoustic treatment on all walls and ceiling and correctly specified acoustic doors.
- Our newly installed lighting grid houses the latest lighting technology from Arri.
- The production gallery is furnished with talkback and monitoring from all gallery positions and the latest Sound Control Room and Vision Engineering Control Room are well equipped to teach all the professional skills required for broadcast operation. The gallery areas have the function to remotely control productions across the campus, with fibre connections extending to the Performing Arts Technology Studios (PATS), University Hall, the PATS Field marquee and many other areas.
Throughout my uni-life, I have been involved with StagTV. It has been an amazing complement to my course, allowing me to experiment and put into practise what I have learned in a more relaxed and carefree environment, while also creating awesome, national-award-winning content. StagTV has helped me learn and network with amazing people and has offered me great opportunities to be involved in productions and award shows I wouldn’t have known of otherwise.
Irene, Film Production and Broadcast Engineering BEng student4. Lights, camera, action!
Students studying on our course are instrumental in organising, producing and delivering major live streaming events encompassing all areas of the University and beyond. Every year, they put on the UK’s largest student production, Univision; inspired by the Eurovision Song Contest. It aims to bring students together from universities across the country who are passionate about music, live event production, broadcast, and everything in between.
In conjunction with the the student TV station, Stag TV, students also produce and live stream Strictly Come Surrey, where staff members are paired with dancers from the Ballroom and Latin Society.
5. Taught by experts
- You’ll be taught by award-winning teaching staff from across the film, streaming, broadcast engineering, computer networking and recording sectors:
- Alan Haigh – responsible for technical support at huge film premieres including 'Spiderman', 'Casino Royale', several from the 'Harry Potter’ series, and 'Mamma Mia'.
- Susan Pratt – worked with all major broadcasters including roles as vision mixer, sound mixer, visual effects operator, assistant producer, lighting director, vision control engineer, floor manager and camera person in a range of departments at the BBC.
Explore our Music and Media programmes in Film and Broadcast Engineering, Music, Music and Sound Recording and Creative Music Technology.
