Type of qualification
Level of study
An undergraduate qualification is usually the first one you study.
Our courses follow the New Zealand Qualification Framework (NZQF) levels.
Time to complete
Where you can study
International students
International students are not New Zealand citizens or residents.
Study a Bachelor of Screen Arts with Honours – BSA(Hons)
The Bachelor of Screen Arts with Honours replaces the Bachelor of Creative Media Production and offers exciting new opportunities for Aotearoa New Zealand’s emerging screen artists.
Gain the skills and creativity to realise your vision across a wide range of screen-based specialisations. This four-year Honours qualification also has an exit point at third year for students who wish to graduate with a Bachelor of Screen Arts.
With an emphasis on production, you’ll take projects through development of initial concepts and narratives to a completed and distributable work. You’ll respond to briefs that combine creative studio practice, storytelling, professional practice and portfolio development, using industry-standard production facilities, studios and labs.
In your second and third years, you will explore your chosen medium in depth, exploring both how it operates and what it means to tell your stories in your way. You will then advance your production skills with media production practices. You’ll learn about media business and the creative economy, and how to evaluate and develop ideas for the marketplace.
In your final year, you will have the chance to develop a year-long collaborative creative project. Your student-led team will work with industry mentors on a real-life client project through the key stages of planning, pre-production, production and post-production.
Learn from industry professionals
BSA(Hons) is taught by people who know the industry, including former staff of Weta Digital, Weta Workshop, Park Road Post, TVNZ and the BBC.
Get the full picture
A BSA(Hons) is a good fit if you:
- want to work hands-on with projects across a range of screen and digital media
- want to benefit from the college’s extensive industry connections
- want to master industry-standard production facilities
Entry requirements
Admission to Massey
Specific requirements
There are no specific entry requirements for this qualification, outside of university admission regulations.
English language requirements
To study this qualification you must meet Massey University's English language standards.
Prior learning, credit and exemptions
For information on prior learning, exemptions and transfer of credit or other questions:
- review the Recognition of Prior Learning regulations
- contact us through the Get advice button on this page.
Maximum time limits for completion
There are maximum time limits to complete some undergraduate and all postgraduate qualifications. If you do not complete within the maximum time, you may be required to re-apply for the qualification if you wish to continue your studies.
Time limits for Honours, Distinction and Merit
If you complete this qualification within the stated time limit, you will normally be able to graduate with a class of Honours.
Look for further information under ‘Student Progression’ in the regulations for this qualification.
More information
- Read the regulations for this qualification thoroughly
- Contact us through the Get advice button on this page if you have any questions.
Structure of the Bachelor of Screen Arts with Honours
The first year introduces you to the basic skills, technologies, professional practices and concepts needed to commence your learning as an emerging creative practitioner in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas.
The second year develops these skills further, utilising the specialisation production courses as the place to embed learning around exercises and smaller, focused individual works, while the specialisation project courses function as the site where you will work together on production-based projects and where the works undertaken are of a more substantial scale than those in the production courses.
The third year continues to develop major specialisation skills and provides an opportunity for you to collaborate with fourth year students on honours projects while developing your own work within the production and project courses.
The fourth (honours) year provides you with the opportunity to focus on a more ambitious year long, research-informed creative project.
More information: Undergraduate Course Guide
Courses and specialisations
Key terms
- Courses
- Each qualification has its own specific set of courses. Some universities call these papers. You enrol in courses after you get accepted into Massey.
- Course code
- Each course is numbered using 6 digits. The fourth number shows the level of the course. For example, in course 219206, the fourth number is a 2, so it is a 200-level course (usually studied in the second year of full-time study).
- Credits
- Each course is worth a number of credits. You combine courses (credits) to meet the total number of credits needed for your qualification.
- Specialisations
- Some qualifications let you choose what subject you'd like to specialise in. Your major or endorsement is what you will take the majority of your courses in.
Credit summary
480 credits
- Compulsory core courses – 180 credits
- Compulsory course selection – 45 credits
- Major courses – 180 credits
- Electives – 75 credits
Ensure that overall, you have:
- Not more than 165 credits at 100 level
- At least 90 credits at 200 level
- At least 105 credits at 300 level
- At least 120 credits at 700 level or above
Course planning key
- Prerequisites
- Courses that need to be completed before moving onto a course at the next level. For example, a lot of 200-level courses have 100-level prerequisite courses.
- Corequisites
- Courses that must be completed at the same time as another course are known as corequisite courses.
- Restrictions
- Some courses are restricted against each other because their content is similar. This means you can only choose one of the offered courses to study and credit to your qualification.
Schedule A: Core courses
Compulsory courses (Choose 180 credits from)
Course code: 289100 Introduction to Creative Media Production 15 credits
Students will be introduced to the challenges and responsibilities facing a new practitioner of the production of film, television, animation, visual effects, games, augmented reality, and emerging media. Through the lenses of intention, ethics, and reception, students will critically investigate their course work methodologies and products, gaining a greater understanding of their own values and processes as a creative practitioner.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289205 Intermedia 15 credits
In this course, students work collaboratively with a range of production technologies to create examples of intermedia arts practices. Students work across disciplines integrating extant technologies and developing new technologically-focused practices in order to better understand how experimental electronic arts practices can integrate new and emerging media technologies.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289702 Critical Frameworks for Creative Media Production 15 credits
Students become competent in situating their work within research methodologies and principles to support their development as critically-informed creative practitioners. Students learn to frame and present their creative practice as research via the development of critical reflexive and analytical skills, and engage in the development of a research proposal for their project.
View full course details45 credits from
Course code: 289102 Visualisation for Media Production 15 credits
In this studio course students develop visualisation and rendering techniques to enable them to give visual form to abstract ideas and concepts. These visualisations will be applied to a range of formats including storyboarding, concept visualisation and character development.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289103 Introduction to Computer Animation 15 credits
In this course students will be introduced to industry standard digital tools for 2D and 3D computer animation. Students will gain a creative and technical knowledge and understanding of character, movement and rendering processes essential for the production of computer animation.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289104 Introduction to Visual Effects 15 credits
In this studio course students will develop and apply digital special effects techniques to a range of disciplines within visual effects production. Students will acquire fundamental skills with a range post-production tools including dynamics, particles, fluids, lighting and rendering.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289106 Introduction to Game Technologies and Mechanics 15 credits
In this course students will be introduced to industry standard digital tools for games. Students will gain a basic creative and technical knowledge and understanding of game mechanics, concepts and production processes essential for the production of games platforms.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289112 Introduction to Scripted Film and Video Production 15 credits
In this course students will be introduced to industry standard techniques for scripted film and video production. Students will gain a creative and technical knowledge and understanding of lighting and digital recording processes essential for the creation and development of externally-based (non-studio) scripted productions.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289113 Introduction to Prototyping for Creative Technologies 15 credits
This course introduces students to industry standard prototyping techniques for creative media projects. The content covers hardware and software development, which includes basic electronics design, manufacturing processes, and micro-controller programming. Students can create software and hardware for a range of emerging media.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289116 Introduction to Immersive Media 15 credits
Students will be introduced to industry standard digital tools for immersive media. Students will gain a basic creative and technical knowledge and understanding of immersive production technologies and concepts, and a critical understanding of a wide range of immersive applications.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289120 Working with Scripted Material 15 credits
Students will be introduced to the processes of reading, interpreting, and working with scripted content with the intent of realising the material through various creative media production practices. Students will work with scripts and student-created material for film, television, animation, game, augmented reality, and other emerging media, engaging with them through lenses of production, interpretation, self-reflection, and indigenous making.
View full course detailsSchedule B: Majors
Some qualifications let you choose what subject you'd like to specialise in. Your major or endorsement is what you will take the majority of your courses in.
Completing a major is compulsory. A major requires 180 credits.
Schedule C: Elective courses
Course code: 289190 Creative Media Production Special Topic 1a 15 credits
This course focuses on a particular aspect of creative media production at introductory level focusing on digital platforms or technologies to result in outputs that demonstrate creativity and/or innovation. Offerings change from year to year and the course may not be offered in a particular year.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289191 Creative Media Production Special Topic 1b 15 credits
This course focuses on a particular aspect of creative media production at introductory level focusing on digital platforms or technologies to result in outputs that demonstrate creativity and/or innovation. Offerings change from year to year and the course may not be offered in a particular year.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289192 Creative Media Production Special Topic 1c 15 credits
This course focuses on a particular aspect of creative media production at introductory level focusing on digital platforms or technologies to result in outputs that demonstrate creativity and/or innovation. Offerings change from year to year and the course may not be offered in a particular year.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289290 Creative Media Production Special Topic 2a 15 credits
This course focuses on a particular aspect of creative media production at intermediate level focusing on digital platforms or technologies to result in well-developed outputs that demonstrate creativity and/or innovation. Offerings change from year to year and the course may not be offered in a particular year
View full course detailsCourse code: 289291 Creative Media Production Special Topic 2b 15 credits
This course focuses on a particular aspect of creative media production at intermediate level focusing on digital platforms or technologies to result in well-developed outputs that demonstrate creativity and/or innovation. Offerings change from year to year and the course may not be offered in a particular year.
View full course detailsCourse code: 289390 Creative Media Production Special Topic 3a 15 credits
This course focuses on a particular aspect of creative media production at an advanced level focusing on digital platforms or technologies to result in professional standard outputs that demonstrate creativity and/or innovation. Offerings change from year to year and the course may not be offered in a particular year.
View full course detailsAny other University course
Careers and job opportunities
The 21st century is all about media convergence and change. Games, apps, web, film, TV, video, animation, visual effects, audio, immersive and media technologies – are all evolving rapidly. The Bachelor of Screen Arts with Honours sets you up for the new world. With your industry experience, critical grounding and practical know-how, you’ll hit the ground running when you graduate. You’ll have the flexibility to push the boundaries, re-inventing your craft and your media many times over the course of your career.
Related study options
Bachelor of Creative Media Production (Honours) – BCMP(Hons)
Push your creative skills by producing your own creative media project from conception to completion.
Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours – BFA(Hons)
Discover how to produce work that makes people think and feel, act and react. Whatever your mode of art-making is, we’ll help you find and develop your own creative voice.
Certificate in Visual Arts – CertVisualArts
Massey’s Certificate in Visual Arts is a flexible programme that will introduce you to the basics of art and design - creative thinking, visual communication, specialist skills, and critical awareness.
Design – Master of Fine Arts
Embed yourself in a rich dialogue about your creative practice in Massey’s transdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts (Design) qualification, for artists and designers.
Diploma in Visual Arts – DipVisualArts
You’ll study with art and design degree students in a range of studio and lecture-based courses covering everything from critical and contextual studies, to social media, painting, and digital fabrication.
Expressive Arts – Bachelor of Communication
If you love being creative and want to study a selection of theatre, performance, creative writing, and digital media production, and you also want great career prospects, the Bachelor of Communication (Expressive Arts) is for you.
Fine Arts – Master of Fine Arts
Embed yourself in a rich dialogue about your creative practice in Massey’s transdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts (Fine Arts) qualification, for artists and designers.
Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts – GDipFA
Massey’s Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts is for skilled graduates who want to gain new knowledge and skills in fine arts.
Master of Creative Enterprise – MCE
Combine research and practice to give you the skills you need to make your mark in the highly competitive creative industries.
Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts – PGDipFA
Extend your creative practice and begin your fine arts journey. Massey’s Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts gives you the opportunity for advanced study in contemporary art.
Visual Communication Design – Bachelor of Design with Honours
Visual communication is one of the most universal forms of design. It is at the heart of how our world works; guiding, informing, persuading, and inspiring us every day.
Visual Communication Design – Postgraduate Diploma in Design
Go beyond your bachelor’s degree and advance your visual communication design thinking with a Postgraduate Diploma in Design.
Visual Communication Design – Graduate Diploma in Design
Develop your visual communication design skills and learn to think like a designer.
Without Specialisation – Master of Fine Arts
Embed yourself in a rich dialogue about your creative practice in Massey’s transdisciplinary MFA qualification for artists and designers.
Useful planning information
Key information for students
Compare qualifications and academic information across different New Zealand institutions. Learn more on careers.govt.nz