Documentary Storytelling

This course will give you a thorough understanding of the craft of storytelling in documentaries. Storytelling is as much at the heart of good and engaging documentary and factual films as fiction films. Through discussion and exercises you will explore answers to questions in documentaries such as: How do you create a story when you don’t know what’s going to happen? How do you create a narrative around a theme? Do interview-based themes have a story?

Taught by an award-winning tutor, it is aimed specifically at you if you have some filmmaking experience and wish to develop your understanding of storytelling for all forms of factual filmmaking.

Topics Covered

• Story structures
• Story stages from prep to edit
• Defining a story style
• Scene-based storytelling
• Theme-based storytelling
• Visual storytelling
• Characters and narrators
• Research and access
• Production and timescales

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course you should have:

• A deeper understanding of story structure
• Broader knowledge of storytelling in documentary and factual filming
• Confidence and ability to tell a story in a variety of documentary and factual filmmaking styles

Who Should Attend
This course is suitable for you, if you are a media professional, student or film enthusiast. You may be a filmmaker, journalist, artist of web-designer.

Level
Intermediate: You should have some basic filmmaking experience.

Follow Up Courses
This course can be taken along with Documentary Self Shooting: Introduction and Documentary Interview Techniques.