DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING - MASTERCLASS IN PLANNING, WRITING AND SHOOTING YOUR FILM

In the fast-paced competitive video landscape we live in, the key to standing out is through masterful video communication — it's all about how we tell the stories we want to share. The stories that will resonate, inspire, and capture the hearts of the people who will be watching our stories.

This course is for beginner and intermediate level students who want some insight into how to create interesting, entertaining and educational content for documentary films that will hold your audience. The lessons focus on a step by step approach to documentary filmmaking production taking the student through all the stages from selecting a good story to focussing it, developing a narrative structure to tell the story, writing a shooting script listing all the people to be interviewed and what you hope they will be talking about and again all the time keeping the viewer in mind. The shooting script leads to a shot list ensuring that all the necessary filming will take place. From filming the course moves on to crafting an edit script using all the material you have collected. Finally we also touch on writing narration for documentary films.

I suggest that as you progress through the different lessons you start your own film project, work with the lessons and create your own film, a film that will show how successful you have been in taking on the project of making your own documentary film. Good luck and enjoy the course.

• Lesson 01 - Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking
• Lesson 02 - What is a Good Story
• Lesson 03 - Focus
• Lesson 04 - Narrative Structure
• Lesson 05 - The Shooting Script
• Lesson 06 - Shooting Your Film
• Lesson 07 - The Edit Script
• Lesson 08 - Writing Voice Over
• Lesson 09 - Summing Up