Documentary Seminar 1

JOUR

73263

Documentary Seminar 1

This is the first part of the 2-semester Documentary Concentration which emphasizes both the theory and practice of documentary storytelling. The purpose of this class is to introduce students to the fundamental concepts of narrative storytelling and documentary filmmaking and to stimulate idea development for a 15-20 mins documentary. The emphasis this semester is on conceptual areas of documentary, including story structure, ethical issues, idea development and proposal writing and pitching. Students will analyze a number of documentaries and explore many issues related to them. They will write a paper comparing two films in terms of structure, style and content and they will also write a case study of a film and interview that filmmaker. Students will develop and pitch a documentary story idea, that will be work-shopped with industry professionals. They will also shoot a character sketch from their proposed film as well as a short work in progress trailer. In the summer, students will work with coaches and continue to develop and shoot their film, completing their film in the fall Documentary class. This class is divided between the lecture and lab portions, three credits each.

Fall, Spring

Graduate

Yes