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21W.790 Short Documentary
Over the past two decades, filmmaking has been radically transformed by the proliferation of phone-based cameras and the opening up of a wide range of platforms for streaming and sharing video content. Video production is now accessible to virtually anyone with a cellphone. Each day billions of people across the world post, view, comment upon and re-post short videos via YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, TikTok etc., with some videos reaching millions of viewers within minutes. Content ranges from how-to, performance, and social (and/or comedic) commentary videos to documentation of incidents of police brutality and mass protest to concert footage, amateur music videos, fanvids, and more formal news, documentary, promotional, and political videos. In this class, we treat the phenomenon of short web- and social media-based video as a serious development in the history of documentary filmmaking. Over the course of the semester, we will make, watch and discuss short-form documentaries in order to understand, apply, and adapt traditional approaches of documentary production, analysis, and meaning-making to the emerging form. The class will be production-centered and participation-based. The core work will be the production of a series of web-based videos. Over the first nine weeks of the semester, each student will shoot, edit, and workshop two short documentary videos using a phone-based production kit and Adobe Premiere Pro. The first will be between 90-120 seconds, and the second, between 3-5 minutes long. Each of these short pieces will be centered around a specific assignment – to profile a person or place, to introduce your viewers to an issue or problem or to persuade them with a particular argument or point of view. Most class sessions will be run as workshops in which three to four students per session will present their work and the rest of the students will be responsible for providing detailed and thoughtful feedback and critique, both by posting comments directly after viewing each video in class, and then, after that, presenting their feedback and suggestions along with other students in a critique session around the seminar table. In the last third of the semester, each student will workshop, revise, and polish a slightly longer, 5-7 minute documentary. Throughout the semester, we will also have sessions in which we screen outside work and draw on this work to examine key elements of documentary film: narrative, style, special effects, pace, point of view, argument, character development.