My Providence“Think you know Providence? Then put your movie where your mouth is.” Over the next few weeks, the Documentary Production class is working on videos for the Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism’s “My Providence” video contest! Frankie On MusicVideo by August P for 2011 Media Lab Documentary Production class Media LiteracyOn March 28 we talked about media literacy. We started out discussing what we mean when we say media, and from there we picked several categories of media we engage with regularly (YouTube, text messages, etc) and designated M&M colors for each category. Then we sorted M&Ms based on how many times we engaged with those different forms of media over the past weekend to get an idea of how much and how often we are exposed to (and influenced by) media in our lives. The results made everyone think.
We moved on to talking about literacy, and why literacy is important. We took a media literacy quiz quiz together, and talked about the various ways you can create (and recognize) persuasive or subjective media. We ended class by watching and discussing Outfoxed, a documentary on Fox News… while we ate the M&Ms. Documentary Class updateThe last several weeks have been very productive for the Documentary Team! On February 14, we focused on interviews. We watched and talked about the below videos, and then practiced interviewing each other. We set up our interview shots to convey different moods, via lighting, focal length, and camera angle: warm, scary, intimate, and distant. Fifty People, One Question And see more photos here. February 21 we watched and talked about the documentary Rip: A Remix Manifesto. We only planned to watch a portion of it, but it was so captivating that we couldn’t stop! The class had a little homework: To find and bring in a short, interesting documentary piece to share next week. On February 28, we started class by looking at short documentary films everyone watched over the week and used them to talk about structure and shooting styles. We then watched some other films (below) to learn about different filmmaking concepts, and ended the day doing some storyboarding for films to be shot over the next two weeks. http://www.icateens.org/fast-forward/gallery – #1 (music video), #4 (bird one), #5 (teasing), #7 (apples) Our next two meetings (March 14 and 21) were work days. We learned how to edit in iMovie 6HD and got to work. Our pieces will be finished soon – stay tuned! First meeting of the Documentary ClassWe kicked off the first meeting of the documentary production team today with some laughs and some serious conversation about the nature and ethics of documentary work. The class will be co-taught by Jori and Justin Rosengarten, a RISD-trained filmmaker. We talked about what it means “to document,” the Latin root of documentary (docere, which means “to teach or instruct”), and about a documentary continuum that ranges from simply capturing reality (like videotaping the Super Bowl) to the way TV news channels often slant stories to a particular point of view. We talked about filming surreptitiously (and about what surreptitious means) / the ethics of recording when someone doesn’t know you’re recording. We arrived at a definition of a documentary as “a film about something real you want to explain/talk about/explore that you present with a particular point of view.” After talking we practiced interviewing each other, something we will do more of as the semester progresses, which we prepared for by talking about “closed” vs “open” questions and figuring out how to use the audio recorders. The rest of our time together was spent watching short documentaries complied by Justin here: http://cmwdocclass.tumblr.com/ We’re all looking forward to next week! Special thanks to Justin, Laura, and to sound artist Stephan Moore for hanging out with us today. |
