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Overview
Visual storytelling is an important tool not only in communication at school but also in your career. Watch this short video to understand the importance of being able to communicate visually can have on a corporation, which can also apply to making a documentary and sharing someone's story.
This quarter you will be learning how to shoot quality video while visually telling someone's story through a short 3-4 minute documentary. Watch this good student example about a librarian.
Solid ThreeWatch the Three-Legged Stool of a Documentary video to understand the main aspects of a documentary. The access is very important.Your IdeaThink of someone outside of school who is not a YISS student who you could make a documentary on.
- You are creating a documentary on a person not a topic. For example, you would not choose a topic like the Korean War and interview a few people. Instead, if you wanted to focus on the Korean War, you would interview one person and share their story and perspective of the war.
- The person's story should not be a typical success story and should be interesting to the viewer. They could be famous, semifamous, or ordinary but they need to have a captivating story.
- You will need to film visual content that relates to what the person is talking about to show while they are speaking about it, which is known as B-roll. Therefore, if you choose your grandfather's story about fighting in a war, it may be difficult to film B-roll to visually coordinate with the interview so choose the individual and story wisely.
- The documentary can be in another language and use subtitles.
- Remember that your narrative arc needs an overall goal with conflicts along the way so make sure that your subject has these in their story.
- Viewer must be able to relate to it and have an emotional response while watching it. This could range from one or two of the following: laughing, crying, anger, sympathy, fear, etc.
- At the end of the documentary the viewer must have learned something new and challenged the person to live a better life or inspire them. We are not just making entertainment films but want cause positive change.
Pitch
Make sure you take the time to make a good pitch with a good subject (don't just make something or just the first person that comes to mind) because you will have to redo your pitch if it is not a quality topic. If you do not know the correct information then you need to investigate and ask the person. If you don't think their story follows a narrative arc then choose another documentary.
Make a copy of this document and complete the information. Make sure it is a public link and post the link to Schoology when it is finished.
After you email it to mark.heil@yisseoul.org he will reply back if it is approved. If it is not approved then you must edit or choose a new subject for your documentary and resubmit this checkpoint within 24 hours and wait for another email reply.
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