This fall I have the amazing good fortune to teach a class in documentary. This one is titled Interactive Documentary Production, a class that I had developed and proposed almost two years ago. Due to budget and enrollment issues, the class was canceled last fall. But this fall it will be running, with 10 students…
Tag: interactive documentary
A Memory Box and an Interactive Documentary: Now What?
In recent weeks both my colleague Amy Lauters and I have been blogging about turning a box of memories she received during her research on wives of farmers into an interactive documentary prototype. We both have perused the box’s contents and have made a loose inventory of what was inside. The general contents included the…
Discovering the Raw Materials of Personal History for an Interactive Documentary
In last week’s posts, my colleague Amy Lauters and I both wrote about starting an interactive documentary prototype project based on a memory box she had received during her research on farmers’ wives. Her post provided more of the context, while my post provided an overview of the project’s procedures. This week and last week…
Procedures for Making an Interactive Documentary
My colleague Amy Lauters recently gave me a box she received during her research on farmers’ wives. A family had sent it to her with the hopes she might find it helpful or interesting as part of her work. I took a quick peek at the box’s contents. It contained pictures, a geneaology, newspaper clippings,…
Notes toward an Interactive Documentary Production Class
This post offers a thinking through of an interactive documentary production course’s possible assignments and a bit about their rationales.
Revisiting Teaching Op-Docs
Op-Docs refers to the short documentary video series curated by The New York Times. Op-Docs showcase an array of documentary storytelling styles and address a diversity of social issues. I have used Op-Docs as a pedagogical model for short documentary production and am considering them again as I develop an advanced multimedia production class proposal….
Answering the Call from Herman in ‘The Deeper They Bury Me’
Sometimes a story is so tragic that it needs multiple media versions to encompass its depths and traumas more fully. Herman Wallace’s more than 40 years of solitary confinement offers just that kind of story. Solitary confinement isolates a prisoner within a 6-by-9-foot cell for 22-24 hours a day. Prison guards provide the only human…
Navigating Violence and Alma’s Story in an Interactive Documemtary
In order to make interactive documentary reviews more focused and systematic, I will use the following outline: platform(s) used, story and structure, user role, navigation directions, navigation execution, and overall comments. Released first in 2011, Alma: A Tale of Violence represents my first application of this approach. Alma: A Tale of Violence is an interactive…