SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION
CMNS 448-4 D2.00 & CMNS 882-5 G1.00
(undergraduate & graduate students)

ADVOCACY VIDEO DOCUMENTARY PRODUCTION

Prerequisites:

60 credits, including at least two CMNS upper level courses, and permission of the instructor. Students must have taken a course on basic video production (e.g., CMNS 226) or have relevant experience. CMNS 226 is being offered in Summer Semester for those students lacking video production experience. Contact Dave Murphy (davidcot@sfu.ca 291-3623 AQ 2002) for info.

Overview:

From research to rolling credits, participate in the production of a major, half-hour documentary entitled: "Water, water, everywhere...", a topic that is becoming more familiar to media audiences. Some commentators believe that water will increasingly have the strategic and economic importance that oil had in the 20th century. Fresh, clean water will be transformed into a valuable commodity to be subject to international agreements like any other commodity. How will this effect ordinary people? This topic will be explored with guest lecturers/interviewees and researched collectively by instructors and students. As well, we will examine documentary history, ethical and storytelling theories and documentary editing theory. You will work in: research, writing, interviewing, directing, shooting, recording and editing. The "fine cut" of the documentary you produce will be evaluated and critiqued by an NFB producer and the resulting cut will be shown in public and evaluated by the audience toward the end of the semester.

This course is designed to use the process of documentary video production as a pedagogical tool to learn about the social impact of water. This is a participatory production course that employs co-operative learning.

Required Texts:

- Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins, Imagining Reality. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. ISBN: 0-571-19202-5.
- Barry Hampe , Making Documentary Films and Reality Video.
- Maxie D. Collier, Digital Video Filmmakers Handbook. Hollywood ifilm, 2000. ISBN 1-58065-031-7.

Grading:

(will be announced at the first class)

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to “Intellectual Honesty”, and “Academic Discipline” (see the current Calendar, General Regulations Section).