MSJ$439$

Media&Studies&and&Journalism&Department&

University&of&Liberal&Arts&Bangladesh&

(ULAB)&

Summer&2010&

Documentary Production

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Focus of the Course This course covers the history and development of the documentary film from the genre’s beginnings to the present day. It will examine major films, movements, filmmakers and various types of documentaries from numerous national and cultural contexts. As the course progresses, it will become evident that there are many definitions, forms, political agendas and versions of reality represented by the term ‘documentary film’. Aims: The purpose of this course is expand and refine your understanding of the 'rhetoric' of audio-visual documentary (from formal aspects such as camerawork, soundscaping and editing, to professional practices such as selection of interviewees, to the explicit and implicit truth claims embedded in documentary discourse).

The course is designed both as an exploration of the skills of producing an audio-visual 'documentary' and as a contribution to the analysis of such texts, in relation to critical debates over epistemology, ethics, power relations, viewer address and ideology.

It should facilitate both academic and vocational approaches to the medium, by enabling you to identify, create and critique the range of technical, professional, formal and narrative practices through which 'documentary' has been constituted.

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Objectives: You will:

* build on existing skills of collaborative video production, improving your competence in the planning, production and editing of documentary films;

* develop an understanding of the history of documentary -- in terms of both theory and practice -- and deepen your skills in the critical analysis of such texts;

* learn to relate theory and practice, by creating certain rhetorical effects and analyzing the ideological, semiotic and ethical implications of your production decisions;

* enhance your ability to reflect self-critically upon the learning process of working on a video production.

Grading System

Attendance 20 percent

Mid Term 20 percent

Exercise in Criticism 20 percent

Final Documentary 40 percent

Total 100 percent

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Course content:

The course comprises two elements which are designed to mutually inform each other: a heoretical-analytical strand, and a practical project. The former is assessed by a 4,000 word essay, while the latter requires you to work as part of a group to produce a documentary video on a topic of your choice (to be agreed with teaching staff), and an accompanying, individually-authored production critique (see more on assignments below).

The course is largely centered on formal strategies and working conventions adopted within the institutional frameworks of the British and American film and television industries. While its central focus is on film and television documentaries, the course also extends to 'reality programming' and 'infotainment' formats on television.

The course covers: foundational thinking in documentary; theorizations of different modes of documentary; debates over documentary's truth claims; the porous and contested boundary between documentary and fiction; dramatization and reconstructions; 'infotainment' hybrids on popular television; the ethics of documentary practice.

Methods of Teaching and Learning:

The course will be conducted via seminar discussions, student presentations, video viewing, technical demonstrations, group workshops and individual tutorials.

Each week you will participate in both a practical workshop and an analytical seminar.

To support your participation in these two strands of the course, considerable reading, preparation and production work will be required.

You will be expected to check regularly for course-related e-mails. E-mails will be sent to you confirming your first meetings of term. You may also use this address to contact fellow students taking the course, or teaching staff.

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Course Organization:

1. Introduction to the Course &&&&What is a documentary film?

Documentary Films, strictly speaking, are non-fictional, "slice of life" factual works of art - and sometimes known as cinema verite. For many years, as films became more narrative-based, documentaries branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings - some of which have been termed propagandistic or non-objective

Documentary Production&

Course&Content&

Exercise&in&Storytelling&&&&&&

Course&Method&

Course&Requirement&&&EvoluIon&

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2. Documentary film/ defining the form of Documentary

Few examples

Documentary films have comprised a very broad and diverse category of films. Examples of documentary forms include the following:

'biographical' films about a living or dead person (Madonna, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali - When We Were Kings (1996), Robert Crumb, Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time (1992), or Glenn Gould)

a well-known event (Waco, Texas incident, the Holocaust, the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic)

a concert or rock festival (Woodstock or Altamont rock concerts (Woodstock (1970) and Gimme Shelter (1970)), The Song Remains the Same (1976), Stop Making Sense (1984), Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991))

a comedy show (Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy shows)

a live performance (Cuban musicians as in Buena Vista Social Club (1998), or the stage show Cirque du Soleil-Journey of Man (2000))

a sociological or ethnographic examination following the lives of individuals over a period of time (e.g., Michael Apted's series of films: 28 Up (1984), 35 Up (1992) and 42 Up (1999), or Steve James' Hoop Dreams (1994))

an expose including interviews (e.g., Michael Moore's social concerns films)

a sports documentary (extreme sports, such as Extreme (1999) or To the Limit (1989), or surfing, such as in The Endless Summer (1966))

a compilation film of collected footage from government sources

a 'making of' film (such as the one regarding the filming of Apocalypse Now (1979), or Fitzcarraldo (1982))

an examination of a specific subject area (e.g., nature- or science-related themes, or historical surveys, such as The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, or World War II, etc.)

spoof documentaries, termed 'mockumentaries' (such as This is Spinal Tap (1984), Zelig (1983), and Best in Show (2000))

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3. History of Documentary Early documentary Robert Flaherty and the ethnographic film

The Earliest Documentaries:

Originally, the earliest documentaries in the US and France were either short newsreels, instructional pictures, records of current events, or travelogues (termed actualities) without any creative story-telling, narrative, or staging. The first attempts at film-making, by the Lumiere Brothers and others, were literal documentaries, e.g., a train entering a station, factory workers leaving a plant, etc.

The first documentary re-creation, Sigmund Lubin's one-reel The Unwritten Law (1907) (subtitled "A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy") dramatized the true-life murder -- on June 25, 1906 -- of prominent architect Stanford White by mentally unstable and jealous millionaire husband Harry Kendall Thaw over the affections of showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (who appeared as herself). [Alluring chorine Nesbit would become a brief sensation, and the basis for Richard Fleischer's biopic film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), portrayed by Joan Collins, and E.L. Doctorow's musical and film Ragtime (1981), portrayed by an Oscar-nominated Elizabeth McGovern.]

The first official documentary or non-fiction narrative film was Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), an ethnographic look at the harsh life of Canadian Inuit Eskimos living in the Arctic, although some of the film's scenes of obsolete customs were staged. Flaherty, often regarded as the "Father of the Documentary Film," also made the landmark film Moana (1926) about Samoan Pacific islanders, although it was less successful. [The term 'documentary' was first used in a review of Flaherty's 1926 film.] His first sound documentary feature film was Man of Aran (1934), regarding the rugged Aran islanders/fishermen located west of Ireland's Galway Bay. Flaherty's fourth (and last) major feature documentary was his most controversial, Louisiana Story (1948), filmed on location in Louisiana's wild bayou country.

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, better known for King Kong (1933), directed the landmark documentary Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925), the first documentary epic, which traced the travels of the Bakhtyari tribe in Persia during their migrational wanderings to find fresh grazing lands. The filmmakers' next film was the part-adventure, travel documentary filmed on location in the Siamese (Thailand) jungle, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), about a native tribal family.

Other European documentary film-makers made a series of so-called non-fictional city symphonies. Alberto Cavalcanti and Walter Ruttman directed Berlin - Symphony of a Big City (1927, Ger.) about the German city in the late 1920s. Similarly, the Soviet Union's (and Dziga Vertov's) avante-garde, experimental documentary The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) presented typical daily life within several Soviet cities (Moscow, Kiev, Odessa) through an exhilarating montage technique. And French director Jean Vigo made On the Subject of Nice (1930). Sergei Eisenstein's October (Oktyabr)/10 Days That Shook the World (1928, USSR) re-enacted in documentary-style, the days surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution, to commemorate the event's 10th anniversary.

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4. Documentaries of The War Years: Documentaries during the Great War and during WWII were often propagandistic. Innovative German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl's pioneering masterwork epic Triumph of the Will (1934) was explicitly propagandistic yet historical in its spectacular yet horrifying documentation of the Nazi Party Congress rally in Nuremberg in 1934. It was a revolutionary film combining superb cinematography and editing of Third Reich propaganda. She also documented the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the stunning film Olympia (1938) - with graceful and beautiful images of 'Aryan' athletes in competition. To respond to the Nazi propaganda, Frank Capra was commissioned by the US War Department to direct seven films in a Why We Fight (1943) series of narrated WWII newsreel-style films. The first in the series, "Prelude to War," a look at the events from 1931-1939, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1942. David Lean's and Noel Coward's In Which We Serve (1942, UK) was not a pure documentary film, although it boosted the wartime morale of the beleaguered Britishers.

The Oscar-winning wartime documentary The Memphis Belle (1944), directed by famed William Wyler (then a Lieutenant Colonel) and released by the War Department, presented real-life footage of dozens of Allied bombing missions by the Flying Fortress' B-17 bomber during the war. A Hollywood-style, sentimental version of this documentary, Memphis Belle (1990), starred Matthew Modine and Eric Stoltz.

Director Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (aka Nuit et Brouillard) (1955, Fr.) harshly judged the Nazis for inflicting the horrors of the Holocaust on the world. Marcel Ophuls' four-hour epic The Sorrow and the Pity (1971) (aka Le Chagrin et La Pitie), mentioned in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), used an interview technique and archival footage to tell the story of the Nazi occupation of France and subsequent French collaboration. Claude Lanzmann's unforgettable, eloquent 570-minute epic Shoah (1985) (Hebrew for 'annihilation') documented the personal experiences of several death-camp survivors of the Holocaust through interviews.

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5. Nature-Related Documentary Films: Disney's first feature-length "True Life Adventures" entry was The Living Desert (1953) - with incredible nature footage from the desert. Oceanographer Jacques Costeau's underwater explorations in the Calypso were captured on film in the Academy Award-winning The Silent World (1956) by filmmaker Louis Malle. Bruce Brown's thrilling The Endless Summer (1966) with a great score by the Sandals, was a popularly-received film about an around-the-world search for the 'perfect wave' by two surfers. The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), with spectacular close-up photography, was a pseudo-documentary about the world of predatory insects, including a warning about an impending showdown between humans and insects.

Other nature-related documentaries included the following: South African film-maker Jamie Uys' Animals Are Beautiful People (1974), with the tagline "The Secret Life of Wildlife", provided an entertaining view of the intriguing wildlife of the Namid Desert and how the animals often mirrored the behavior of humans. (Six years after completing this project, Uys went on to create The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981).) The groundbreaking French documentary MicroCosmos (1996) (advertised as "It's Jurassic Park in Your Own Backyard!") chronicled the world of insects - in close-up, with revolutionary macroscopic cameras and film techniques (similar to Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (1982)). The BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs (2000) (with narration by Kenneth Branagh) was a documentary series of films by Jasper James with incredibly-realistic CGI dinosaurs. The nature documentary Deep Blue (2003), derived from the BBC's Blue Planet TV series surveys how creatures from dolphins to penguins live and battle for survival against predators in the ocean.

The Oscar-nominated Winged Migration (2001) from French director Jacques Perrin provided a breathtaking documentary about many species of migrating birds. The highest grossing nature documentary ever made (up to its time), March of the Penguins (2005), narrated by Morgan Freeman in the US release, followed the perils of resilient Emperor penguins in their quest to mate and survive in the most inhabitable part of the world - deep in Antarctica near the South Pole. Warner Independent Films originally paid $1 million for this Sundance Festival hit when it was just a French-language nature documentary with the original title The Emperor's Journey. It cost $8 million to make and earned almost $78 million - it was the highest-grossing nature documentary, and the second-highest gross for a non-IMAX documentary.

The most straightforward, fact-based, troubling and frighteningly relevant film in recent memory was director Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth (2006), presented by lecturer, ex-VP and Presidential candidate Al Gore - it clearly exposed the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming and actions that could prevent it, with lots of evidence: numerous charts, statistics, graphs, maps, photos, and animations. Its surprising success during the summer of 2006 was underlined by massive heat waves baking the entire United States. It grossed $24.1 million - setting a record as the third-highest grossing non-IMAX/concert political documentary ever made (at the time). It was nominated for two Oscars and won both: Best Original Song ("I Need to Wake Up" by Melissa Etheridge), and Best Documentary Feature.&

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6. The Television Documentary Documentary seems to be a beast with many faces. During its century-long history, many authors have tried to describe the perceived essence of the genre as ‘the representation of the real,’ including the Lumiere Brothers in 1895 who saw it as ’Life on the Run’ and Grierson, thirty years later, coined the phrase, ’the creative treatment of actuality’. Many critics have since raised the issue of just how much ‘actuality’ is left after ‘the creative treatment’ has taken place.

In the second part of the twentieth century, Nichols suggested that documentaries present ‘an argument about the historical world’. This definition doesn’t seem adequate either, as many documentaries may not analyse the historical world or make an argument at all, even if his focus on the ‘historical world’ is understandable.

What makes a 'good' television or film documentary? What makes 'good' factual television? You will be asked to identify and describe current or recent examples of excellence in non-fiction film and television programming, and to examine your criteria for making these judgements.

'Reality TV' This week we return to debates over borrowings from fiction and entertainment forms, this time in what has been called 'reality TV' or 'reality programming'.

In the increasingly de-regulated, fragmented and commercialized television landscape of the 1990s, 'infotainment' hybrids such as crime / rescue shows and 'docu-soaps' blur the boundaries between factual and fictional programming.

Why these have formats come under (academic and journalistic) attack, and are such concerns justified?

Set viewing:

Crimewatch UK Plus = Choose a docusoap from EH145 or from your own viewing

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07. (Auto) biographical documentaries

In this session, we look at directors who make their personal histories the subject of their work. The women’s movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s argued that the ‘personal is political’ and this resulted in a surge of autobiographical filmmaking as women struggled to question dominant media representations of femininity. How far did they, and the male directors who have used the autobiographical genre, succeed in questioning the conventional objectification of others in documentary discourse by focussing on their own lives and/or incorporating themselves into the film’s narration? To what extent are their own identities (self/other, masculine/feminine, white/black, mother/daughter, queer/straight) destabilised in the process?

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8. The 'Performative Documentary'

Documentary has been labelled (by Bill Nichols) a 'discourse of sobriety' alongside nonfictional systems' such as science and politics. Like those other discourses, it is concerned not only with 'real-world events' but (simultaneously) with story-telling for an audience. In this session we examine in detail examples of 'performative documentary' (Nichols' term again), which -- to an extent -- could be seen to self-consciously deflect attention away from the 'real world' of their referents towards the expressive and affective dimension of film.

Mr Death (1999) (Errol Morris) The Thin Blue Line (1988) (Errol Morris)

* Look in particular for: each narrative's stance towards the events and 'Characters' portrayed; similarities with 'fictional' genres, or with any of the four traditional documentary modes; relative degrees of 'authority', 'objectivity' and reflexivity; mode of address to the audience.

* Are there any dangers inherent in the dramatic / stylistic treatment of a 'real life' event, -- in these examples, or in any others that you can think of? (This debate is extended in our consideration of dramatization and reconstruction in week 5.)

The Leader, His Driver and The Driver's Wife (1991) (Nick Broomfield) Roger and Me (1980) (Michael Moore)

This two films can be thought of as 'performative' in a slightly different sense from that meant by Nichols. Each film appears to abandon any pretence at 'transparency', not so much in order to flaunt stylistic expression, but to flexively scrutinize the film-making process, thus fulfilling Stella's Bruzzi's formulation that "a documentary is its own document". (Moore's Roger and Me has also been termed "investigative verite" by John Corner.) Bruzzi uses the term 'performative documentary' to draw attention to what she sees as a tradition neglected by theoretical writing, one which sees the 'truth' of documentary as located in the unpredictable moments of interaction between the camera crew and its subjects

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9. Political uses and critiques of realism: As Brian Winston, among others, has pointed out, theoretical attacks on 'realist' screen texts for their alleged complicity in bourgeois ideology have produced a "crisis of legitimation" for mimetic representations in general, and for the documentary in particular. A second critique draws on theorizations of the postmodern to argue that documentary's generic truth claims are futile and insupportable. This week we explore these two theoretical arguments. Does audio-visual realism inevitably naturalize and confirm the status quo, or can it be mobilized for critical ends, and to empower disadvantaged groups?

If we can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction, what is documentary's purpose?

The activists: political documentaries

Documentaries that shook the world:

For the power of documentary resides not only in its veracity as a record, but also in its persuasive vision (Mark Cousins)

Brecht: ‘Art as a mirror held up to society or art as a hammer acting on society to change it’.

John Pilger: ‘Telling people things they don't want to know’.

In this session, we will cover a long history of political filmmaking. We will discuss the documentary traditions which were considered to be ‘revolutionary’ in form and in content.

In the early twentieth century, using archive material to create ‘a compilation film’ changed the meaning of the original footage. Speech in film was new and could be used to be a radical political voice.

Since the documentary movement of the thirties, working class people have often been the subject of factual filmmaking. Could the history of documentary be described as the history of how the middle classes have seen the working class?

Does journalistic/political motivated documentary have close links with Grierson's mission to engage the citizen in national and international debates?

Or do these documentaries express a new dogma, a different form of propaganda? Are they a truly critical and creative analysis of our society and an invitation to cultural and political change?

This session will address both mainstream and alternative documentaries which were made with the intention of making audiences aware of injustice, discrimination and human animal and ecological exploitation and invite to envisage a ‘better’ world.

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We will reflect on a long tradition of filmmakers who wanted to change the world into a better place and reflect on why this political discourse is so dominant among documentary filmmakers.

10. Ethics and controversies in the field of documentary:

Explores the ethics of documentary film making, and considers controversies over 'consent', authenticity, manipulation, restaging, and 'audience deception'.

What ethical issues have you confronted in your own production work?

Set viewing:

On Air: The Truth About TV (episode 2) Titicut Follies (1967) (Frederick Wiseman)

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11. Cinéma Vérité & Direct Cinema

Free cinema, Direct Cinema and Cinema Verite: Observing Others

Errol Morris: When we talk about our intuitions of non-fictions and fiction, what we are really talking about is controlled and uncontrolled. Hence ‘auteur’ theory is fiction, where we sort of imagine everything is controlled, script, lighting, acting, set, photography, you name it…. Kind of that dream of ‘cinema verite’ where everything just unfolds and the filmmaker and the camera do not interfere with what it is observing. I think the real truth is that all kinds of filmmaking contain elements of both. ..There is that uncontrolled aspect in all great filmmaking, in my opinion. I have just done something different in documentary than the other guys, than brand X, if you like. I draw the line somewhat differently. I draw attention, I like to think, to the line’ .Http//www.combustible celluloid.comeintmorris.shtml

Observational films have been ground-breaking in documentary history. The technological developments of the Fifties made it possible for the first time in history to record with lightweight

16 mm cameras. This new form of film-making created a distinct approach to documentary film-making; long takes followed the subjects with no interviews and no interventions in the events filmed. Non-intervention would lead to a greater ‘evidentially’ of the film and establish a reputation of it being ‘real’ documentary.

The ‘direct cinema’ directors in the US and in the UK, such as Pennebaker, Drew, Wiseman and Kopple argued that by following on-going action with the camera, it would render the act of filmmaking invisible and would give the viewer a feeling of having unmediated access to reality.

In France, Cinema Verite was given a different direction by Jean Rouch and his colleagues. Open intervention was visible on camera and they described themselves as ‘agents provocateurs’. Rouch and his colleague, Edgar Morin ‘manipulate and condition’ the film at every turn, most importantly by insisting that the topics they thought to be significant were dealt with by the other participants. If something was missed, they arranged a meal and, again, on camera, bullied the others into discussion’ (Winston 1995:185)

We will discuss the ideological premise of this approach and its strength and weaknesses as a film text.

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12. The esthetic possibilities of the documentary

‘The contemporary use of ‘document’ still carries with it the connotation of evidence. This evidential status was passed on to the cinematograph and is the source of the ideological power of documentary film’ (Winston, 1995:11)

How would you define a documentary? Why do documentaries matter (now)? What is their role, and what makes a successful documentary or an unsuccessful one?

We will consider the distinctions drawn by critics and practitioners between six ’modes’ of documentary, each of which has been seen to construct ’realism’ according to certain formal conventions. What are the grounds for 'the claims on the real' made by photography, and subsequently by documentary film?

In Representing Reality, Nichols distinguishes between:

• Expository mode • Observational mode • Interactive mode • Reflexive mode • Performative documentary (a term that has been added to this range in his later book

Blurring the Boundaries) • Poetic mode

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13. Truth, evidence and reality These sessions will focus on camerawork in order to familiarize yourself with the cameras, improve your ability and increase your confidence in using a variety of shooting techniques in your film.

Exercise: Shoot a portrait of a building, a car, or a tree in nine shots. You are expected to use a variety of shot sizes, angles and durations. Be brave and try out different shot angles and camera movements

Please use basic documentary shooting techniques (see info sheet- covering a scene): shoot nine shots, which incorporate wide shots, medium shots and close-ups. Use both handheld and tripod shots.

Try to define a visual approach to the car; for instance focus on the design and style, or on the technical advanced characteristics of the car. Alternatively take a car and create those shots that at the end demonstrate that it is a miracle that it still drives.

• Handheld camera shooting exercise: Moving Crowds In pairs you are expected to shoot a two to three minute piece on the theme ‘Moving Crowds’.

Plan your approach while using basic documentary shooting techniques.

Think about the library, restaurants, pubs, shopping mall, market or the campus.

Remember a handheld camera doesn’t have to stay on a shoulder. This exercise is meant to improve your ability to use a handheld camera in a variety of ways while at the same time record sound and keep an eye on what’s going on in the pro-filmic scene. At the end you need shots you can edit in week 7. Please don’t shoot more than five minutes of material. Please rotate roles

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14. Ethnographic film Documentary is a colonial approach to the world' (Trinh.T.Minh-ha) Practical Skills -Demo sessions

We will discuss the observational interview exercise and you will be introduced to the Avid editing suite in order to digitise your footage of ‘Moving Crowds’

Self- directed

Digitize footage editing make paper edit for ‘Moving Crowds’

From the early beginnings, documentary film makers have been fascinated with filming in non-western countries. The American, Flaherty filmed the romanticised and gone by life of the Inuit in Alaska (Nanook of the North, Flaherty,USA,1923) and Basil Wright went to Ceylon and made Song of Ceylon(Wright, UK,1934), which celebrates community life and solidarity.

What’s the fascination and how can it be understood in its political, cultural and economic contexts? In which ways have black subjects been constructed as objects of a white gaze in documentary film and video? How have non-Western and non-white filmmakers challenged this regime of representation?

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15. Documentary Audiences: View of the World

Documentary Audiences

Audience perspectives on screen documentary remain under-researched, and have been given even less attention than audiences for fiction film, or, more recently, for factual programming and ‘reality television’. If screen documentary is generally organized around the promise of delivering what Bill Nichols has called ‘views of the world’, it seems odd that scholars have for so long ignored one crucial way in which documentaries exist in the world – via audiences’ engagements with them. This week we explore audience responses, and return to the thorny question of whether, and how, documentaries might impact on their viewers’ opinions and behaviors.

Documentary Futures This week we look at contemporary developments in the market place, changing conditions of production, including new digital recording/distribution technologies (Internet, I-pod, Museums), and the opportunities and constraints of documentaries online.

Demo session

Editing - discuss paper edit

In this session we will discuss technical and administrative requirements of your assessed work. We will discuss the nature of the production critique and how you can reflect on your work in the context of the theory you have familiarized yourself with this term.

The production critique is a notoriously difficult piece. Don’t underestimate this piece of work. You will need to read relevant theory to your produced film and some general documentary theory. Above all you need to show evidence of your individual study of relevant films and texts, especially which relate to the observational mode and be able to comment on how your critical viewing and reading has informed your approach to your own project and how you evaluate it.

You are expected to read the two examples in the reader and we will discuss the relevant issues for your film and possible ways of addressing them.

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16. Project development 01

We will discuss the project brief, assignments and the structure of the course. We will also address the characteristics of short documentaries.

Followed by a discussion on narrative structures and structuring devices in documentary filmmaking especially in relation to your final project.

Self-directed

Find a suitable location for your film project and prepare to pitch your idea in the group. Please read the info-sheet to prepare yourself. Pitching is an art in itself and mastering the art of pitching has become more and more important for media professionals whether you make films, write books or scripts or sell photos.

17. Project Development 02

Pitching of your film ideas in the group

This week, production groups will be formed. Projects will be selected on the basis of available production time, access, visual qualities and possibility to shoot observational footage (cooperation of subjects).

We will continue our exploration of the different narrative structures commonly used in documentary film making: classical realist cinema; avant-garde tradition; essayistic and non-linear narrative structures.

Issues we will address:

- what do we want to tell, to whom and why - Does the content dictate the form?

- The different uses of the voice-over

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18. Project Development 03

We will discuss the results of your initial research and finalise your concepts of the films.

You will be introduced to the script techniques and a professional documentation with which to develop your film

Information on working in a group and we will finalise the different production roles and the different tasks. We will discuss the legal context of your film: copyright, location and personal release forms.

Self-directed:

Continue to research your project and write a first draft of your script. This is a working document which your group will develop over the coming weeks.

19. Project Development 04

We will discuss the results of your research and the first draft of your shooting script.

We will look at:

- ethical issues in dealing with your subjects - how to deal with your subjects - production planning techniques

20. Project development 05: group tutorials

This day we finalize the shooting script, prepare a shot list and finalize the production schedule.

21. Project Development 06: group tutorials

This day we discuss your progress and try to solve any problems occurring during your shoots on location.

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22. Project Development 07: Group tutorials

Group tutorials to discuss your footage and your ideas about the edit

23. Project Development 08

All production groups will have a group tutorial with their tutor to discuss their footage and paper edit. We will discuss selection of shots, sequencing and structure, and soundscape of your film.

Preparing your submission

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Syllabus designer & Faculty

Razibul Hossain

Senior Lecturer

Media Studies and Journalism Department

University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB)

Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh

Razibul.chithi@gmail.com, +88 0173 83 01 003