THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY in Spring 2025 (FM3063)

Documentary filmmaking enables a creative mode of inquiry about the world, a person, a landscape, an issue, or even ourselves. It encourages an open-ended layering of observations: visual, auditory, movement-based, historical and even fictional, as a rich backdrop to researching a topic. This workshop class will introduce students to a range of documentary video practices and impart technical skills to create their own documentary shorts. We will ask questions, watch, play, experiment, respond and explore how form contributes to content. We will engage issues in contemporary documentary practice from the avant-garde to commercial production as inspirations for your own inquiry into your ideas. Students will use research, framing, sound, duration, juxtaposition and different editing strategies to explore their ideas. While we will cover "traditional" documentary genres (interview-based, observational, essay, etc), we will also explore expanded and experimental documentary strategies.