DOC 150: Introduction to Documentary Storymaking

Fall 2017 Monday 7:00-10:00 PM 

Lafayette College, 248 North Third Street, Easton, PA

 

Andy Smith

Film and Media Studies

Lafayette College

248 North 3^rd Street

Easton, PA 18042

Office: #115 in 248 North Third St

Office Hours: M 2:00-4:00 PM & by app

610.330.5244

smitham@lafayette.edu

 

Course Description This course is an introduction to digital documentary storymaking. It merges the critical study of documentary media with the hands-on construction of documentary stories waiting to be found in local communities. Working with tools of the documentary arts—video, still images, audio, writing—students will acquire the foundational skills of media production and effective storytelling while absorbing and analyzing rich examples of documentary storytelling over time and place. Students will encounter a variety of notable documentary examples and forms, grapple with the ethics of documentary practice, practice documentary activities and produce documentary media. In short, this course is:

• A survey of traditions and issues in documentary media
• An introduction to documentary practices and methods
• A unique hybrid utilizing faculty, staff, facilities and equipment on 3 campuses
• A chance to apply documentary principles to disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts
• The start of a growing digital portfolio that enhances the student’s specific areas of study
• The foundational course for the LVAIC documentary studies minor
• An elective open to all students that is relevant and valuable to many academic majors

Key course questions What is documentary? What is documentary practice? * What are the purposes of documentary? * What are the elements of effective media storytelling * How are documentaries infused with political, cultural and social interests? * How does documentary interface with and impact communities? * What are the ethics of documentary?

Course Goals

1. Introduce students to critical approaches for studying documentary media
2. Introduce students to hands-on techniques and practices of documentary storymaking
3. Develop skills in analytical interpretation, research, fieldwork, and collaboration
4. Identify and develop stories connected to place and local communities
5. Produce original works of documentary media, share and reflect upon those works

Work of the Course Students will engage in a variety small assignments that will build—either in skills acquisition or in content or both—into longer projects. This work will be gathered into an e-portfolio that, if added to over time, will enhance the student’s ability to communicate in their major field of study. In general, you can expect that:

• Students will produce a portfolio of critical and creative documentary works
• Students will work in a variety of doc forms/styles
• Students will engage in fieldwork
• Students will work both individually and collaboratively
• For written work, students will produce both critical/analytical and reflective writing
• For media work, students will produce still images, audio, and video
• Students will revise, reimagine and share their work

Course Expectations All students are expected to come to class prepared, to complete all assignments by the due date, and to work steadily inside and outside of class on the course materials and activities. All students are expected to actively participate in all facets of the course, to make relevant contributions to the topics under discussion, and to respect the work and perspectives of others. Since collaboration is integral to media making, students will be expected to develop and strengthen their abilities to communicate, anticipate, collaborate, and follow through as a responsible member of a team. Every week is crucial.

 Written Texts  There are three written texts required for the course. Please acquire each text, preferably in the editions listed below, and bring to class on the relevant days listed in the schedule. Additional handouts will be supplied by the instructor.

1. Documentary Storytelling, 4^th by Sheila Curran Bernard. Focal Press. ISBN-13: 978-0415843300.
2. Directing the Documentary, 6^th ed, by Michael Rabiger. Focal Press. ISBN-13: 978-0415719308.
3. A New History of Documentary, 2^nd ed, by Betsy McLane. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN-13: 978-1441124579.

Media Texts We will screen and study a number of feature-length docs, but (depending on time available between production assignments) also documentary shorts, student films, photographs, web docs, audio recordings, multimedia projects, and podcasts. These works are not intended to demonstrate a documentary canon, but to function, instead, as useful artifacts that reveal important concepts in documentary storytelling. Fall 2017 will focus especially on the recent work of several visiting media makers. The concepts students encounter in these works will be informed, extended and complicated by readings and discussions, of course, but also by students’ own original doc storymaking. You can expect that each week we will screen extended excerpts of several films, taken from the list above. Additionally, you will be occasionally asked to view a full-length documentary outside of class, and blog about that viewing.

 Warning: We will screen and sample serious works that focus on a variety of issues, many of them complex, serious, and even difficult to process. This is the territory in which we will work. An incomplete list of possibilities for the full-length works used (entire or in part) in the course are listed below. IN FALL 2017, our DOC 150 class will host a number of visiting media makers, most of them documentarians. These filmmakers will present their most recent work and be available to you to discuss current issues in documentary and the challenges facing all who work in documentary. PLEASE REFER TO THE EVENTS SCHEDULE PAGE FOR A LISTING OF MOST OF THESE EVENTS. The films and media makers visiting campus include: Kirsten Johnson, Cameraperson (2016); Kim A. Snyder, Newtown (2016); Sara Taksler, Tickling Giants (2016); author and radio host Brooke Gladstone, lecture “The Trouble with Reality”; Robert Seidman, screenwriter for multiple PBS POV documentaries; Ayesha Nadarajah, Associate Producer for Roger Ross Williams productions; plus multiple screenings of short student films, including work and class visits by DOC 150  and FAMS alums now working in the industry.

Stories We Tell (2012), dir. Sarah Polley; Nanook of the North (1922), dir. Robert Flaherty; Man with a Movie Camera (1922), dir. Dziga Vertov; Koyaanisqatsi (1983), dir. Godfrey Reggio; Daughter Rite (1979), dir. Michelle Citron; The Arbor (2010), dir. Clio Bernard; The River (1937), dir. Pare Lorentz; War Comes to America (1943), dir. Frank Capra; The Great Flood (2012), dir. Bill Morrison; Triumph of the Will (1935), dir. Leni Riefenstahl; Night and Fog (1955), dir. Alain Resnais; Primary (1960), dir. Robert Drew; Harvest of Shame (1960), dir. Fred Friendly; Don’t Look Back (1966), dir. D.A. Pennebaker; Gimme Shelter (1970), dir. David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin; Beaches of Agnes (2008), dir. Agnes Varda; This is Spinal Tap (1984), dir. Rob Reiner; Sherman’s March (1986), dir. Ross McElwee; Resisting Paradise (2003), dir. Barbara Hammer; The Five Obstructions (2004), dir. Jorgen Leth & Lars Von Trier; The Thin Blue Line (1988), dir. Errol Morris; Capturing the Friedmans (2003), dir. Andrew Jarecki; Tarnation (2004), dir. Jonathan Caouette; Waltz with Bashir (2008), dir. Ari Folman; Roger and Me (1989), dir. Michael Moore; Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004), dir. Shola Lynch; Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian (2000), dir. Anne Makepeace; Grizzly Man (2005), dir. Werner Herzog; The Battle of Algiers (1966), dir. Gillo Pontecorvo; Olympia (1936), dir. Leni Riefenstahl; The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993), dir. Ray Muller; Shoah (1985), dir. Claude Lanzmann; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997), dir. Errol Morris; Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), dir. Les Blank; War Photographer (2001), dir. Christian Frei; India’s Daughter (2015), dir. Leslee Udwin, 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets (2015), Life, Animated (2016); Man on Wire (2008), dir. James Marsh; Spellbound (2002), dir. Jeffrey Blitz; Twenty Feet From Stardom (2013), dir. Morgan Neville; Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994), dir. Frieda Lee Mock; CitizenFour, (2014) dir. Laura Poitras; Shored Up (2013), dir. Ben Kalina; Cameraperson (2016) dir. Kirsten Johnson; Newtown (2016) dir. Kim A. Snyder.

Grading Course assignments will be weighted in the following manner:

Individual Digital E-Portfolio (details below)                55%

Collaborative work                                                               20%

Blogging & Participation                                                    25%

100-90% (A to A-), 89-80% (B+ to B-), 79-70% (C+ to C-), 69-60% (D+ to D-), 59-0% (F)

 

Storymaking Materials We will typically be working in digital HD formats with equipment available through the student’s home campus, and work during the week should be done with equipment from your home campus. Our Monday classes will often contain hands-on workshops and project time for which we will use Lafayette facilities and equipment. You are not required to own cameras, lights, tripods, microphones or editing software for the class. Assuming we take good care of and share our institutions’ equipment, almost everything you need to make media will be made available. You will need reliable personal media storage—please acquire a personal external hard drive of 1 TB or larger.

Media Screenings Plan to view the films actively and take extensive notes at every screening. Ground rules for the labs are fairly simple. You should view films attentively, quietly, and keep distracting behavior to a minimum. Do whatever you need to do to be present and plugged in for the entire screening of the film or for whatever workshop activity we are working on for the evening. During screenings or workshops I recommend you take copious notes to remind yourself of important scenes, techniques, and examples so that you will have specific details with which to work when you have to complete a filmmaking action or discuss and write about a film later. For most people, even serious film lovers, taking useful notes on a film is an acquired skill—so developing your own system of logging details during a film screening is a must.

Readings Readings will constantly inform our progress and will typically be discussed on the day they are listed in the schedule below. These readings are crucial supplements to the readings in our books and the other written texts. As you read, I recommend you take extensive notes on your readings—you might underline passages, write in the margins of your book or article, or transcribe passages into a journal or notebook. I also recommend reacting to and prioritizing your thoughts about a reading or screening in a notebook or journal before coming to class, and then working from those notes to organize your thinking for class discussions. For many of us, active posting and commenting on our class blog will be an effective way to center and extend our thinking on a topic and to prime ourselves for the next discussion or assignment.

Blogging You will contribute regularly to a class blog. Everyone in the class is a co-author of the blog, and thus co-creators of the knowledge we construct there. You will contribute responses to films, readings, and workshops, plus engage each other as you shape your thinking over the course of the semester. Blogging will be to keep our discussions going (and going farther) and give you multiple opportunities to advance and share your ideas, and to troubleshoot and brainstorm about the challenges of filmmaking. Regular blogging is a must, but blogging that merely goes through the motions is deadly. As a rule of thumb, you should think about posting 2 or 3 times per week and commenting on someone else’s post once or twice per week.

Documentary Storymaking Assignments You will complete several digital media assignments, both individual and collaborative. In general, you should expect to complete some production-based assignment every week, with the work getting more complex as the semester progresses. The assignments include:

• Instagram story & Storymaking with Stills (5%)
• Storymaking with B-roll (5%)
• (How to make) Good Sound (5%)
• Doc LV Story research & pitch  (5%)
• Watchable Interviews (produced in class) (5%)
• Provide feedback on LV Story footage you did not shoot (5%)
• Individual (2-4 minute) Portrait of a Person in  a Place (20%)
• Collaborative (5-8 minute) video of a LV Story (20%)
• 2 page + refection on your process and product (5%)

E-Portfolio In the first week of the course you will begin construction on an individual e-portfolio, a resource that will have a digital afterlife well beyond the course itself. This resource will demonstrate your accomplishments and your growth over time, plus enable you to sharpen your ability to communicate effectively in your chosen discipline. Assignments will be graded individually. Then, after the chance to revise and reimagine, your e-portfolio will be evaluated as a whole.

Class Participation When you are in class, I will expect that you have something constructive and relevant to contribute. Come to class prepared—that means having read all the assigned material for that day, having watched, taken extensive notes and reflected on the media screened, and be ready to actively contribute to discussions. In my mind, good and successful participation means that you are much more than a silent presence. Quality participation means you are actively engaging the material, visual, aural and written, contributing to class conversations and advancing your ideas through regular writing, listening to others’ comments, and building outward from what you already know. In addition, successful participation means you are striving to be an energetic and responsible team member, both on your own media crew, and with the larger community of the class.

Attendance Attendance for all classes is mandatory. If you do need to miss a class, it is your responsibility to inform me before the class you will miss and to follow-up with me concerning what you missed. If you miss a screening, it is your responsibility to view the film you missed. More than one unexcused absences (lab and/or class) will lower your participation grade; more than two unexcused absences will lower your course letter grade. Repeated tardiness will be treated as absences.

 Late Work All assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day they are due—after that, they are considered late. Late assignments are subject to a grade reduction and less feedback from the instructor.

Academic Honesty In accordance with the Lafayette Student Handbook guidelines, I expect each student to do his or her own work, to struggle with and complete all assignments honestly, and to uphold the intellectual integrity of the college, the course and his/her own mind. This includes understanding and displaying proper citation for all source materials in your written work. Refer to the St. Martin’s Handbook for proper citation formatting and ask me if you have any doubt. I will respond to examples of academic dishonesty in accordance with the specific guidelines of the Lafayette Student Handbook.

Academic Accommodations In compliance with Lafayette College policy and equal access laws, I am available to discuss appropriate academic accommodations that you may require as a student with a disability. Requests for academic accommodations need to be made during the first two weeks of the semester, except for unusual circumstances, so arrangements can be made. Students must register with the Office of the Dean of the College for disability verification and for determination of reasonable academic accommodations.