DT&L Documentary Resources for Students
This page will be updated throughout the semester. Last updated 9/6/2023.
About this Assignment: Why a Documentary?
Together with your team, you will create a documentary film and a collection of multimedia artifacts to communicate a message about your assigned topic.
A documentary is more than a playback of captured video. It is a multimedia production in which a storyteller (your team) combines photos, videos, and audio with interviews, narration, text, and graphics to deliver a message, invoke an emotional response, and suggest action. There are often companion materials, such as a website, podcast, and written materials, which expand the creator's reach to a greater audience. There are social media promotions, ads formatted in video, audio, and still image, and printed marketing materials. Each facet of the production uses meticulously-designed typography, logos, art, and graphic styles to communicate the tone and mood of the content as well as establish brand identity.
The purpose of this assignment is for you to demonstrate your learning by creating a series of multimedia artifacts that form a cohesive product that communicates your ideas to a target audience. Unlike a traditional essay or discussion board, this assignment allows you to take on new perspectives, produce real-world content, and explore your voice as a scholar and global citizen. By creating digital artifacts in the form of text, audio, video, and images, you are developing your ability to communicate across a variety of digital platforms, amplifying your voice and ensuring your marketability in the future workforce.
Throughout the semester, you will use Adobe Express to independently create a series of multimedia artifacts related to your team's topic. Over the course of the semester, you will submit at least three artifacts (One from Level 1, one from Level 2, and one from Level 3) by publishing them to your Gretzky Portfolio. Each submission is a potential "building block" that you and your teammates may chose to include in your final documentary production and/or on your Team DT&L Portfolio. To complete the first artifact deliverable, read the directions and browse the leveled menu on the Getzky Portfolio example site.
As you work with your team to create your final project, you should share, discuss, and evaluate one another's individual artifacts. Bring together the best artifacts, elements, and ideas to form a cohesive, compelling multimedia production, which you will publish on your Team DT&L Portfolio.
But, Why A Documentary? TL;DR
In "the real world", it won't be enough to have good ideas and a worthy message: You have to be able to communicate in a way that your audience can understand.
Assignment Guidelines
Your documentary voiceover should be a well-scripted "what" and "why" to describe the nature and scope of your project. In other words, your documentary transcript should serve as an executive summary of your research findings, analytical viewpoint(s), and message.
Adobe Resources
Principles of Shooting Video (Slide Deck from Adobe Creative Careers Curriculum)
Documentary Video (Slide Deck from Adobe Creative Careers Curriculum)
Activity: "Where do I start?"
Watch a documentary film. While you watch:
• Identify the B-roll/A-roll and notice how each contributes to the story. Consider how you might be able to use Stock Images and Videos (alongside new captures) to create a similar storyboard.
• Describe how interviews and first-hand accounts are used as narration.
• Identify how the digital media types (video, audio, images, etc.) are woven together to create a harmonious piece.
• Describe how the creators used guests' nonverbal communicators (captured in interview a-roll footage) to tell "the" story.
• Identify any "fourth wall breaking" and explain how it contributes to the intended message.
• Recognize digital information graphics. Describe their role in communicating the message. Are they in motion, or static? How do they represent data and/or research while making it visually friendly and accessible for the target audience?
By the end of the film, you should be able to answer the following:
• Who is the target audience?
• What is the storyteller's central message?
• Identify 1-3 main ideas (essential takeaways, enduring understandings) from the film.
• Identify 2-3 pivotal multimedia components (i.e. artifacts) that contributed to your understanding of the main ideas and central message?
Then, make a plan for how you will use what you have learned from this exercise when creating your documentary and multimedia digital artifacts.