Advanced Video Journalism

Thursday, March 24: Visual Poem Final Cuts Due

The final cuts of your visual poems are due today. We’ll screen them together.

 Upcoming Dates

For those of you who are doing the visual poem/five-minute doc trajectory this semester, your next and final major video assignment is coming up. Pitches for your five-minute short doc will be due next class, Tuesday, March 29, when we’ll workshop your ideas together in class.

And a reminder that your breaking news assignment must be completed this month. Since March 31st falls toward the end of the week I have extended that to include the weekend, meaning the assignment will be due by midnight Sunday, April 3. I recommend using WeTransfer to send me the dopesheet and video file.

Coming up, I want to schedule one-on-one editing sessions with everyone working on a 10-15 minute documentary sometime before spring break, which is in three weeks. Timing-wise, when would it be the most helpful for that to happen? It would essentially replace a class and/or I could hold it on the weekend. Let me know what makes sense.

VISUAL POEMS – GYM SOUNDS

Location:  Brooklyn, New York

People: Arafat Amin, Christian Diaz, Possibly more gym members

Timeline: March 10th to 20th

The sounds  of Gyms: Dumbbells drops for kick, Weights clashing for snare and members’ yells for melodies.

I would love to make a musical beats from the sounds of the gym. I would try to sync the actions of gym members according to the beat. If I make a kick from the action of an individual dropping a dumbbell then I would show that action of that individual every time the kick drops in. Using the similar method I would show every action of the gym members according to the sounds of the musical beat that would be created from the sounds of the gym and it’s members. While also showing the montage of people working out.

 

VP

 

Final cut:  https://vimeo.com/691888087

 

 

 

Draft:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FnKrbsiGdU&ab_channel=ShopnilRahman

Thursday, March 17: Short Doc Assignment

Upcoming Dates

The first five-minute cut of the 15-minute documentary will be due next class, on Tuesday, March 22. For those of you doing the visual poems, I’m extending the deadlines of your final cuts to Thursday, March 24.

For those of you who are doing the visual poem/five-minute doc trajectory this semester, your next and final major video assignment is coming up. Pitches for your five-minute short doc will be due Tuesday, March 29, when we’ll workshop your ideas together in class.

And one final reminder that your breaking news assignment must be completed this month. Since March 31st falls toward the end of the week I will extend that to include the weekend, meaning the assignment will be due by midnight Sunday, April 3.

 


Short Doc Assignment Details

Your documentary should be five minutes long, give or take a minute in either direction based on how densely edited and tightly paced it is.

It can be narrated, whether you would like to appear as an onscreen correspondent or feel that the narrative merits a voiceover (often a consideration if the story requires a lot of background and exposition). It can also be non-narrated, which tends to lend itself to a more character-driven, organic, verité-style story.

Narrated, newsy, complicated story with voiceover:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008249410/foreign-fighters-ukraine-war.html?action=click&gtype=vhs&version=vhs-heading&module=vhs&region=title-area&cview=true&t=352

On-camera correspondent:

Non-narrated:

 

The Art of Typeface in Documentaries

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/text-graphics-in-video/#Text-graphics-Definitions-and-applications

What Netflix’s Top 50 Shows Can Teach Us About Font Psychology [Infographic]

A Baruch doc (published on D&S) that uses typeface in an interesting way: