In this assignment you will work in small teams or individually to conceive, shoot, and edit a mini-documentary of two to five minutes in length. Your topic needs my approval. And you must talk to me and get my permission if your final film is any longer than five minutes.

A mini-documentary of two to five minutes. I’ll add a few additional requirements. Your mini-documentary should include three of the following:

• interview footage
• live footage
• still images
• music
• narration

And – like any film for public viewing – it should include an opening title, lower-third titles for interview subjects, and end credits.

We will show our films in a short film festival on the last day of class and invite along friends, classmates, and colleagues.

A note on rights and permissions. For all interviews that you use in your mini-documentary, you must have signed releases. (You may use either of the two releases on Moodle, or another that you write yourself.) For all music that you use, you must have permission and correct attribution. I do provide this workaround: if you feel like you need to use copyrighted material, you can submit a document with your final film that includes a list of all copyrighted materials for which you do not have permission. You should share source and copyright information in your end credits.

The rest is for you to decide.

Your time is limited, but you should approach this as you would any documentary project, as a set of distinct phases: brainstorming, planning, researching, shooting, gathering documents and images, recording narration, editing, adding titles. The end result will be a rough cut.

If you work in pairs or a small team all of you should take a hand in every aspect of the project. When I sit down to put a grade to your final project, I will ask you to evaluate your own contribution and the contribution of the rest of your team. As I said, I also give you the option of working on your mini-documentary individually.

My best advice: Have fun! Make of this what you will. Think of your audience (that’s us) and engage us.

I’ve written this as a serious of steps. But if you’ve been keeping up with the work of the course you’ve already done most of the work of your final film.

Step 1 – Conceive and pitch your project

Come up with an idea and figure out how you will shoot it. Pitch your project.

Step 2 – Plan

How are you going to make this happen? Plan and schedule your interviews, make a list of shots you need, do a bit of research, write a simple treatment, write narration, think a bit about the soundscape you have in mind, etc.

Step 3 – Shoot

Shoot your interview(s). Follow the guidelines we worked on for interesting composition and good sound. Be sure to have your subjects sign a release to give you permission to use their image and sound in your film.

Shoot your live footage. Be creative. Find interesting visual ways to tell your story. Improvise. You’ll get to decide what to keep when you get to the editing booth.

In everything you do, shoot to edit.

Step 4 – Gather Images & Sound

Gather the still images and the music that will be part of your mini-documentary. For photographs and archive footage, you can make use of copyrighted images and sound under the fair use exception. But you should acknowledge the copyright holder in your credits. For the music, you might include music from friends (asking for their permission), your own music, or music available under creative commons licensing, etc.

Record your narration, if you have planned for a voice-over narrator.

Step 5 – Edit

Watch your raw footage and organize what you’ve shot (whether with events and orders or favorites in iMovie). Compile your best shots in a project of “Selects.” Then watch this through to choose the pieces that you will use in your final edit.

Put together a “rough assemblage” of your movie. This includes all of the elements in order. Watch it through to figure out what you need to make it stronger. Tighten up your film, add titles, add music, add transitions, edit for sound levels. Now you have a “rough cut.” For the purposes of our final project, you are done!

Before you share, a checklist

When you think you are done, check the following:

• Is your film less than five minutes in length?
• Listen to film from beginning to end. Are audio levels balanced so that you can hear everything in the film?
• Do you have an opening title, lower-third titles of interview subjects, and end credits?

Export your film to .mp4. Watch it through quickly to make sure it looks good. Then upload your film to OneDrive and share with me – post just the link to the OneDrive file to the Moodle assignment.

And then what?

And then we’ll watch your movies in our last class/film festival and celebrate what we’ve accomplished.

But it can’t hurt to think of what would come next if this were a professional project and you kept on working. How would you get to a “fine cut” and “picture lock”? If you had more time, you’d show your rough cut to select audiences, gather reactions, think about what works perfectly and what has to be changed. You would also do some work to sweeten the audio and to balance the colors. Finally, you’d go back to the editing booth and polish until you believed your movie was complete.

And then what? You’d submit your film to festivals. You might start with one of the many film festivals that invite student entries and films from young creators. Then you’d go to the Cleveland Film Festival, to Maine Documentary Festival, to AFI Docs, to Sundance. You’d be out on the road, showing your film and talking to audiences. Before long, people of good taste and makers of opinion would think about the world in new ways. They would be calling you to hear your insights. You’d graciously respond to embarrassing praise. And you would notice the hundred plus things in your film that you should have done differently. But no matter, you’ll start to work on the next project you have in mind…