Course Description
Foundations of Documentary Storytelling is a workshop-based course where students get hands-on experience in building documentary stories from start to finish. This course supports and cultivates curiosity-driven mindset and the technical skill development needed to produce compelling documentary media for innovative marketing and media production. How do you take a compelling topic and make it an engaging story? Documentary Storytelling will teach you to take stories, characters and themes and craft them into stories by breaking chronology, building emotional resonance and cultivating buy-in so that we want to know what happens and get invested in the outcome.
You will learn to craft character-driven nonfiction narratives while mastering the complete production process: research, story craft, video/audio styles and equipment use, field recording and interview techniques, film editing and constructing feedback. This course looks at both technical proficiency and ethical responsibility in documentary as well as exploring production roles, documentary industry standards, and the power dynamics inherent in capturing others’ stories.
Students will create multiple documentary productions with various crew structures and independent work which will be paired with guest speaker workshops and film case studies from award-winning professional documentarians. You will leave the class with a strong understanding of what is required throughout a production process through holding a variety of production roles. Get ready to deep dive on building stories from the world around you and explore how documentary techniques can transform your skills and repertoire as a communications leader.
This Course is Ideal for Students Who:
Aspire to integrate relational storytelling methods into their communication leadership practice
Seek project-based learning experience
Want to develop transferable core storytelling and editing skills
Are interested in understanding how documentary can successfully shift culture, policy and public opinion through storytelling
University of Washington
Department of Communication