Instructor: Myles David Jewell, VFC Digital Media Instructor and Filmmaker
Price: $95

Visual media saturate our everyday lives, and video documentary--when well crafted and thoughtfully composed--can be a powerful means of sharing human experience. A basic understanding of the four phases of video production--Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production, and Distribution--provides a solid starting point for creating work that can have both rich social impact and documentary value. Although separated for the sake of discussion, in practice these four phases of production overlap and evolve during the process of creating a documentary work. Starting with brainstorming, predicting story structure, and organizing shoots, to the implementation of shoots and how to assemble a crew, through the editing and finally distribution process, this workshop is an introduction to the full process of creating a video documentary. 

Intended for anyone interested in the value of non-fiction storytelling, particularly in the visual form, the workshop is only the tip of the iceberg to beginning a much more intensive process. Intended for students, educators, community members, staff members of non-profit cultural, community and social-service agencies, the methods taught in this class will look at historical approaches to non-fiction media, and how form and content inform the process of storytelling. It will also look at the logistics and ethics involved in embarking on this process. 

Attendees will receive an overview of the four basic phases of producing documentary. This workshop will focus less on technical training, and instead look at the process as a whole. The day will cover each one of the phases as separate, but will demonstrate how each phase also has to be considered during all other phases. It will focus primarily on approaches to form and content, without the time consuming constraints of hands on technical training to equipment.