DOC 150 Final Reflection assignment (2+ pages)
5:00 PM Friday, December 15 (via email to smitham@lafayette.edu)
Last Assignment (after all is done)
So, now then. 15 weeks of work. Screenings, readings, discussions, visitors, shootings, recordings, cuttings, commutes, journeys, interviews, collaborations, breakdowns, meet ups, responding, revising, rougher cuts into rough cuts reshoots, re-edits, screening—and breathing. We have made a good beginning.
This last assignment is your chance to process your experience in DOC 150. Please offer a thoughtful piece of writing in the form of a letter addressed to 1) your younger doc self, or addressed to 2) to beginning doc students. 2 pages plus, whatever space you need to say something of value. Say what you need, own what you say.
Be sure to address in some detail, two main components:
- Your individual work
- Your collaborative work
Of what are you most proud? What has changed for you? What films or readings or advice mattered most to you? What have you learned about how you function in a crew? What have you left undone? Have you identified any personal strengths? Weaknesses? Fears? What did you get right? What would you change about your contributions? What can you build upon? Which project did you kill? What surprised you? What fell short? Who needs your thanks? Where are you headed next?
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REFER TO LV STORY PROJECT CHART UPDATES FOR ADDITIONAL DETAILS AND PRODUCTION TARGETS
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Making Assignment: Project statistics and Making your Project more visible to Others
Due: by class Monday, November 27
As mentioned in class last week, please remember to compete the follow 2 group tasks:
1. post 5 statistics about your LV Story subject
2. put something new from your in-progress LV Story doc on the blog for us to see. This might be an interview, the beginning of your film, a section of the film that you’ve cut together, something. Something beyond the b-roll stories.
Making Assignment: Group Feedback on B-roll stories
Due: by 11:59 PM Wednesday, November 8 (via a clearly labeled post)
This assignment asks you to take serious responsibility for someone else’s work. Specifically, each group will examine another group’s b-roll story, then generate feedback about the merits of the overall work.
What did you notice? What is strong? What needs work? Did the work tell the subject’s story using B-roll video only? What is that story? What about shots? Transitions? Music? What themes emerge? What conflicts? What can you praise? What can you question? What can you suggest? Generate responses, then collate them. Be useful. Lend the other group your fresh eyes and your honest thoughts. Put your response in 1 post (for your group) to the other group.
| SOS—SAVING OUR SHAD | reviews and gives feedback on | I NEED HELP |
| I NEED HELP | reviews and gives feedback on | ART IN THE BANANA |
| ART IN THE BANANA | reviews and gives feedback on | CENTER CITY THRIFT |
| CENTER CITY THRIFT | reviews and gives feedback on | THE LOSS WE CAN GAIN |
| THE LOSS WE CAN GAIN | reviews and gives feedback on | NOT LIKE YOU |
| NOT LIKE YOU | reviews and gives feedback on | EASTON: WIN LOSE DRAW |
| EASTON: WIN LOSE DRAW | reviews and gives feedback on | PB ‘N LV |
| PB ‘N LV | reviews and gives feedback on | LAFARM |
| LAFARM | reviews and gives feedback on | SOS—SAVING OUR SHAD |
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Making Assignment: Storymaking with B-roll
Due: By class Monday, November 6 (3-6 minutes, 1 video per crew)
Group Assignment
With your collaborative project Lehigh Valley Story subject in mind, complete a 3-6 minute video in which you tell your subject’s story using B-roll video only. You may include music, ambient noise, sound effects, but no words, whether spoken or via cards or lower thirds, no interviews, no voiceover narration, no shots of interview subjects, etc.
Explanation
Remind yourself that so-called “B-roll” footage is really more accurately thought of as “A-roll” footage, because it is an important vehicle of meaning and emotion that can make or break a film. You have already consumed lots of useful examples and you have multiple models—from notable documentaries and from each other’s original work—of both successful and superfluous b-roll. This is an opportunity to secure good b-roll that you can use to jump start the storytelling process on your LV subject.
This is a group project, so please submit (place on the blog) one project per crew.
You have a short window to produce a visual story. While is it likely that you will use your b-roll in a different form for your final film—and shoot additional b-roll along the way—I recommend you embrace this task as an opportunity to be imaginative with (and not overlook) good visuals. Your obstruction for this assignment is to function without captions, narration, titles, authoritative voices and to make the visuals compelling, effective, clear. Remember your work with those cardboard frames? Remember your 5-images stories from early September? Remember when b-roll from a Kirsten Johnson film stopped you with an uncommonly beautiful, powerful, or telling shot? That’s what you are after—at the image level and at the sequence level.
Remember to vary your shots—low and high angles, level and canted frames, 5-feet off the ground, on the ground, from above. Still frames and mobile frames. Tilts, pans, tracks, zooms. Handheld and tripod and monopod. Shoot in various lighting conditions at different times of day. As you assemble the images into a progression, can you identify a beginning, middle, and an end? Is there the spine of a story? Does it get somewhere? Does meaning exist in individual shots? In a progression of those shots? In both?
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Making Assignment: Watchable Interview Assignment
Due: M October 30-November 13
“To face another human being while making a documentary means to probe, listen, and obliquely reveal oneself and one’s purposes as you follow up with other questions. Often, by challenging someone to deeply explore an experience, you become a sounding board to realizations that lead to change. Thus, the interviewer subtly supports and directs—quite a responsibility.”
–Michael Rabiger, Directing the Documentary
PROJECT DUE DATES:
Interview pitch/planning/visualization: M October 30 (1 page)
Rough Cut: M November 13 (2-4 minutes on blog/link)
Fine Cut: W November 22 (2-3 minutes on blog)
Assignment Details:
Create a finished (edited) 2-3 minute interview that secures solid, high-quality sound, b-roll that advances understanding of the subject, and makes use of music, as/if appropriate. Please consider the following:
impose order/get somewhere
integrate the setting as part of the story/interview
use a tripod
identify the speaker
use title card
fade up at beginning and fade out at the end
be creative
Support Reading–“Working with Story” section in Sheila Curran Bernard’s Documentary Storytelling (123-230). Includes—Research, Planning and Pitching, Treatments and Proposals, Shooting, Editing, Narration and Voice-Over, and Storytelling: A Checklist
–“Conducting and Shooting Interviews” chapter in Michael Rabiger’s Directing the Documentary (201, 449-67)
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For Monday, September 18
Assignment–Making #3 (Making (Good) Sound Assignment (a beginning)
“Sound is one of the least appreciated, but most important parts of filmmaking.
It’s as much a part of telling your story as the cinematography…And if you screw it up, the audience won’t forgive you.”
–Anthony Artis, The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide
This is a collaborative assignment. Working with one other person in the class, complete the following assignment. Please reflect upon your collaboration and process in a joint-blogpost, and be ready to share your project in class on Monday, September 18.
Assignment Details: Collect 4 Distinct Sound Recordings (60 seconds or less total)
Using a devise other than the Tascam pocket recorders, record:
1) example of bad interview audio complete with your audio explanation for how you did it
Then, using the Tascam pocket records (or other quality audio recorders–not a cell phone), record:
1 good audio each of:
2) the human world, 3) the non-human world, 4) the made world
Support Reading
“Working with Story” section in Sheila Curran Bernard’s Documentary Storytelling (123-230). Includes—Research, Planning and Pitching, Treatments and Proposals, Shooting, Editing, Narration and Voice-Over, and Storytelling: A Checklist
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For Monday, September 11 (Instagram video)
Assignment—Making #2
- Make an Instagram Video in which you address/dramatize/explore some aspect of the reading in “Documentary Storytelling” (1-119). Please note that there is great flexibility on how you complete this task. The object is to creative a video that is useful, engaging, thoughtful, entertaining (or even one of those things) about some part of Bernard’s discussion. Your audience is each other. Please place on the blog, and be ready to share your work.
- Identify a “Lehigh Valley Story” you are interested in exploring and turning into a documentary short for your final collaborative project of the semester. Pitch this idea on the blog with a working title, a longline, and a one paragraph explanation.
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DOC 150: In-class Group Project 9/4/17
Assignment: Working in (mixed college) crews of 4 or 5 during class tonight, shoot, edit and screen a short documentary video that does the following:
–Uses interview footage of each group member
–Employs at least 2 cut away B-roll shots
–Runs between 60 and 90 seconds long
–Screens for the class beginning at 9:15 PM tonight
–Addresses one of the following topics:
- Grizzly Man
- “Some Ways to Think About Documentary” reading
- Pets I have known
- Politics
- The differences between Lehigh, Muhlenberg, and Lafayette
Crews
RED
Natalie Acopian LA
Kiera Kehoe LE
Nely Montina MU
Anna Golub LA
Ricky Peacock LA
GREEN
Andrea Bonilla LA
Ayanna CostleyMU
Donterrius Walker LE
Katherine Veghte LA
BLUE
Kenzie Corbin LA
Mekhi Bryant LE
Annie Diaz MU
Aidan Trevisan LA
PURPLE
Josh Kline LA
Devin Domeyer MU
Yannick Gbadouwey LE
Tracey Robinson LA
ORANGE
Marjorie Lewis LA
Reginald Lahens LE
Laura Pezzulich MU
Shreya Nebhwani LA
YELLOW
Lauren Mathisen LA
David Owalabi LE
Julia Ciciarelli LA
Lisa Salomon LA
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For Monday, September 4 (story with stills)
Assignment—Making #1
Tell a story using still images (no more than 5 images, please) and place on blog of:
- a place
- an example of social justice/injustice
- an artistic process