DEADLINES
Monday, Feb 25. In-class production on rough cut of visual poem. (So make sure you bring all the footage you have to class!)
Wednesday, Feb 27. More in-class production. Rough cuts due by midnight. We will spend class time the following Monday screening and discussing them.
March 13. Breaking news assignment deadline. (More details to follow, but start being on the lookout for something to cover that week.)
Final cut of visual poem due Wednesday, March 20.
Pitch for video #2, a short doc, due Monday March 25.
Rough cuts of your docs will be due by midnight on Wednesday April 17, before we split for spring break. Final cuts, reels and portfolio websites will all be due by class time on Monday, May 13, which was originally scheduled to be the last day of class (now the last day of class is Wednesday the 15, thanks to the snow day). This will give us two days to get through screening everyone’s work.
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ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES
Requirements for Short Doc
The assignment: a roughly 4-minute short documentary. For those of you who are interested in getting into broadcast and being on camera, you are welcome to do a narrated doc that included you doing a standup to camera; just bear in mind that this means you will be writing a script, which is an extra step; please talk to me if this is your plan so I can give you a timeline on that and give you edits before you record your narration.
Your doc should be character-driven and should be a story that you follow over time; that means it shouldn’t be something you can shoot all in one day. This assignment WILL be journalistic in nature, meaning you can’t stage things or simply use friends or family members as subjects.
Requirements for Final Portfolio and Reel
You’ll need at least three main pages on your site: a Video or Home page where we can view your projects, a Reel page, and an About page where you describe yourself and your work (names/sections can vary, but that’s the general idea). Some people put their contact info on this page, while others choose to have an entirely separate Contact page. Those of you who have work they’d like to showcase from other classes or personal projects are welcome to create a Photography or Audio page… or organize it entirely differently if there’s another system that works for you.
You’ll want a nice professional-looking headshot taken for your bio page, or a shot of you in action reporting. I recommend taking advantage of having your school cameras to do this. And please make sure you proofread. I want to see a sentence or short paragraph introducing each of your projects, on the portfolio site if the template allows space for it as well as on the Vimeo page where the video is hosted.
It is recommended but not required for you to link the website to your own domain name. Most of the site builders listed above have basic options that will allow you to host your site for free if you have a ____.wordpress.com or a ____.weebly.com address; often your site will show up with advertisements unless you upgrade (the monthly fee varies). It’s up to you whether or not it’s worth it at this stage to pay for the more polished, professional-looking website that a personalized domain will give you. A domain name will usually run you about $10 a year and it’s fairly simple to link your portfolio site to it by going into the settings and making a few changes. Let me know if you run into any difficulty here and I’ll be happy to help you.
Bearing in mind that since most of you don’t have a huge amount of material yet to work with, your reel doesn’t need to be very long. One minute long is plenty. Longer than that is fine, but keep it under two minutes—basically you’re just taking your absolute best shots from everything you’ve ever filmed and cutting them together in an interesting way with music. Feel free to use this as an opportunity to showcase clips from old projects in past semesters as well.