Documentary Filmmaking from Scratch

Documentary Filmmaking from Scratch

“We made it to the end. We hope you had a great time learning from us. We certainly enjoyed teaching this course. Let's get to the nitty-gritty, though. We will talk you through the final project, which is making an audiovisual film of your own. We will also do an overview of what you have learnt, and also give some advice to make the best use of your newfound skills. The most important thing is to make a film that is unique and special to you In our final project, we took all of the elements we discussed and brought them together. We talked a lot about how to develop your story, and how to find something that you find fascinating. We chose Ryan London, as he built a small business himself, as we did with JRVisuals, and he has turned his craft into a business. We wanted to tell this inspiring story. We then explained the basic concepts of visual storytelling and a little about the short documentary genre. The success of the whole production relies on understanding well your chosen genre before making any content or style decisions. We kept this very much in mind when shooting Ryan, to get the effect we wanted within the conventions of this film type. Then it was time to discuss approaching your subject, scouting your location, and putting all your ideas on paper. This stage is pivotal, as a shoot day has a limited time frame, and the more prepared you are, the better the shoot will go. We moved to our set once we were fully prepared, which was Ryan’s small leather shop in Greenwich. We explained equipment basics, camera settings, lighting, and how to capture the best interview and b-roll. Then we did the fun part, shooting Ryan’s interview. Finally, we showed you how to work with your rushes, edit your piece, and export it. On that note, we encourage you to make the most of the submission area, Upload stills of your work producing the short, and some reflections of the process. As for the footage, attach a link to the outlet where you have uploaded (Vimeo, YouTube). We are not only interested in the feature, but also the making-of. That is what constitutes the final project of this course. So, once you have all your pieces ready, click on "Create your project" and submit your work. We are so looking forward to seeing it. Also, engage in conversations with your fellow coursemates. We have created an array of tasks aimed at sparking meaningful conversations. Rolling! And... action! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final Project In this lesson we'll look at your final project. We'll explain how to bring all the elements you learned together. Thank you for joining the course. It's been a pleasure for us to teach you some elements about filmmaking. We've approached the course talking about technical things, but we love to cover more the conceptual stuff like going there and finding your own story, being inspired, doing it differently, using your point of view, being unique, because that's the way to become a real artist and filmmaker, to find your own path and not copying others. I hope you enjoyed the ...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Documentary Filmmaking from Scratch

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (157)
• 6784 students
• 5 units
• 18 lessons (2h 5m)
• 3 downloads

• Category

  Photography & Video

• Software

  Adobe Premiere

• Areas

  Audiovisual Production, Film, Filmmaking, TV, Video, Video Editing