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Have your students become recorders of reality and create documentaries
Creating documentaries is a challenge. It requires that students understand an issue, its complexity, and the multiple perspectives through which different people view the subject.
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Students who create a documentary on a topic will be challenged to understand their topic from multiple perspectives, and they will have to represent those realities accurately through video. In an excellent documentary, students show the viewers different perspectives through carefully chosen video clips and have the viewers arrive at their own conclusions.
Encourage your students to consider carefully the subject of their documentary and find footage that supports their assertions. If they are doing a documentary on solid waste or recycling, they should have footage of a landfill or recycling plant. There should be interviews with people on all sides of the issue, and the students have an obligation to try to represent everyone’s reality with accuracy. It is a difficult task, but one worthy of the effort.
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Grade level:
9–12
Subjects:
All subjects
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Time needed:
5–10 class periods or as an outside class assignment
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Materials:
Optional Materials:
- Tripod
- External Microphone
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Objectives
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Have students work collaboratively to create a documentary.
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Instructions
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- Determine the ability of your students to produce a video, and your time limitations, and plan the video project accordingly. Younger students will need more structure in the process while older students may be given more flexibility. In either case, the more flexibility you give to the project, the longer it is going to take the students to complete it and the more variable the results will be. If time is limited or the students require more direction, think about assigning topics and presenting them with a template for you inspect. For example, you may require an introduction to the issue shot at an appropriate location, followed by two interviews with people on opposing sides of the issue, with four cutaways to B-roll footage during each of the two interviews. B-roll footage is the sequence of alternative scenes used in place of the A-Roll footage of the interview, like footage of a landfill used when the interviewee is talking about landfills.
The more detailed assignment you give the students, the less they will have to plan, which will lessen the instructional time that you will have to devote to the project.
Once you have planned the lesson and have a vision for the final product, design an assessment rubric that communicates to the students how you will be grading their projects. Click here for a sample rubric. Share this rubric with the students so that they are clear on what elements you will be holding them accountable for and their relative value to the entire project. You should also consider giving two grades for each student, one a group grade and the other an individual grade. Video lends itself well to group and individual assessment because, within a video crew, each student can be given an individual responsibility, such as camera operator or talent, as well as collective responsibility for the entire production.
- Set a schedule that includes preproduction, production, postproduction and give a grade for each phase. Click here to learn more about the preproduction, production, postproduction process.
- Have each video crew complete a Student Video Proposal Form and turn it in to you. This form will help them think about the project as a whole and impress upon them the many different steps that will be needed to complete the project. It will also list individual crew assignments, such as those for camera operator or director which will allow you to grade each student based on responsibilities. Check these forms to make sure the projects meets your expectations and do not exceed their ability.
- For the preproduction phase of the project, have the students create a two column script and a shot list and turn them in as an assignment due on the preproduction deadline. Scripts are more difficult to create for documentaries because you are not sure what the interviewees are going to say or what you are going to find out when you get into the topic. Nontheless, a script provides the students with an outline for their projects, dictates their opening remarks, and place their interviews within the context of the entire production. The shot list is also very helpful. Here the students must think about the visuals that they will need to tell their stories. They can tick them off the shot list as they capture them during production.
Before they launch out interviewing people and grabbing footage, the students must understand the topic at hand. They will ask better questions of the interviewees and choose more relevant images if they are well informed on the topic. For these reasons, having your students make a documentary as a culminating activity to a unit of study makes a lot of sense.
For additional tips on how your students can make their video productions look more professional, click here to go to the digital imaging tips.
- For the production phase of the project, have your students show you the raw footage they have taken for their video. You will have the script and the shot list so you should be able to match those two documents with the raw footage presented. Make sure that they have most, if not all, of the footage needed to meet the production deadline. Students are prone to putting off projects and attempting to cram them in at the last hour. Video projects are not easily completed at the last minute because of the planning, complexity, and logistics necessary for a video project. Help your students by insisting that they have their footage together before they start editing and grade them on it to prove its importance.
- The postproduction deadline is the date on which your students are required to turn in their finished videos. For two reasons, this should not be the same day you plan to show the video. First, you will want to screen each video privately before it is shown to the entire class. And, second, you will want to have the video in hand when you plan to show it so your day’s lesson plan is not disrupted by the students’ arriving without it.
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Discussion
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Have each crew introduce their video to the class and tell them about the process and what they have learned. Ask them to discuss any difficulties they encountered and how they overcame them.
Watch the video and have the students take notes on the content. The object of this video is to teach the students something, so ask them what they learned. Have them critique the video for content as well as its production value. Ask the class to comment on things in the video that worked well and made them learn the material. In this way you will be asking them to think about their own learning. Also ask the class to think about possible improvements in the video.
If time allows, watch the video one more time so that the students can revisit the video and confirm or take notice of the substance of the previous discussion.
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Evaluation
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Use the assessment rubric(s) you designed for the video projects to assign grades. Again, consider developing two rubrics, one that assesses the collective effort of the group and focuses solely on the final product, and another one which assesses a student’s individual efforts and contributions.
You could require the students to keep a journal of their experience, which would serve several purposes. First, it would force the students to think about their learning process and their role in the collaborative process. It would also give you insight into their learning processes and the inner working of the video crews.
You could require a self evaluation from the students which would allow you to hear what they think about their role in the project, as well as offer you their assessment of their peers.
You could allow the class input in the grading process and have them evaluate each project for its effectiveness.
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Supporting Material
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Vocabulary:
Preproduction — The phase of a project spent writing a script and developing a shot list
Production — The phase of a project spent shooting the footage of the video
Postproduction — The phase of a project spent editing the footage into a finished video
Production value — The quality of a video production from an aesthetic standpoint, how professional it looks
A-roll — The primary footage such as the picture of an interviewee. This footage carries the primary information of the video.
B-Roll — Footage that is used to cut to from the A-roll to provide additional images that are important to the video.
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Additional resources
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www.action-in-the-classroom.org — a website dedicated to the implementation of video in education
DigKids digital video tips
“Making documentary films and reality videos: a practical guide to planning, filming, and editing documentaries of real events (1st ed.).” Hampe, B. (1997). New York: Henry Holt and Company.
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Credits
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