Assignment 18: Keep It Interesting

[Filmmaking 101 overview]

Purpose: To craft a documentary story from footage you have.

Basis: Documentaries are powerful films. They are also easily biased and too often rather untrue. The skill of “tellin’ it like it is,” convincing your audience to care and then act, all while maintaining a firm grasp of reality may be too tall an order for most people. But for now, the important thing to learn is how to use someone else’s words to tell a story.

Directions: Use your Assignment 17: Talk to the Camera footage and rustle up whatever other images and sound bytes you can to write a compelling--albeit extremely short--documentary on the subject your subject discussed.

Looking Forward: Start editing when you’ve figured out how you’re going to tell the story in your documentary... you’ll finish this next week.

What to Watch: ”Intel Visual Life - Michael Wolff” A solid short documentary that encourages curiosity and appreciation. Color and action is all around us; as filmmakers, we get to help people see the world as we see it.

Watch Samples: Go to Assignment 19 to see the finished videos.