There is a documentary training intensive coming up that is well-worth your time and money. If you’re looking to learn some very strong production techniques, story-telling techniques, connect with other producers in an intimate environment, and build on your networking circle then you should definitely consider taking this 2-day intensive offered by UC Berkeley School of Journalism lecturer. I took the course about a year ago and I not only came away with a great folder of notes and information that I consistently use in my production endeavors but I made some awesome connections with other producers. I feel like it is a rare occurrence that such a worth-while course is offered so when one does come along you know it’s a real treat. Note: this is not a ProTools or other type of technical course. It is more about how to construct, manage, and complete audio documentary stories and productions. But since this is such an intimate course you can easily ask others for more technical how-to’s.
Download the flier HERE (PDF).
audio documentary, audio tips, audio training, documentary studies, how to
learning, production training
I have to admit, I felt pretty bitter after not getting any favorable responses from a recent story pitch I sent to several radio programs. I know, I know, it’s all about ‘volumizing’ your pitching; that is, pitch lots of ideas and as often as possible because only a small percent will actually get picked up at any given time. I understand that and see the logic but that doesn’t take my bitterness away or answer the nagging question, is there a better way? Anyway, instead of dwelling on all that I just kept pushing with the story and now it’s taking on a new life. So, we’ll see what happens next in the process but it’s sounding good. The new wrinkle? I just got hired full-time for some rather mundane but good-paying, temporary, office work. The folks at the company are great so it’s a good thing…but now I ain’t got the time I had when I started this project. Oh life, you just love to be complicated don’t you? 
Forward Ever!
audio documentary, audio tips, audio training, documentary studies, the media
creative audio, creative process, learning, radio, radio diversity
[appended: 2/12/08] Below is a post I started back in August 2007. I was unemployed, frustrated and venting and because of that I just started a draft and apparently forgot about it. It’s interesting for me to look back at this six months later (today is 2/12/08). Anyway, instead of deleting it or even finishing it I offer it here as a way to document my mental landscape as I venture out as a establishing audio documentarian. You will read the beginning of what is a somewhat harsh criticism of the Social Documentation program that I graduated from in 2007. There are some truths to where I’m coming from but I’m largely very happy that I was accepted into the program and for what I learned in it. I will offer a more detailed account in the not so distant future…here’s to seeing ourselves in the past as we move into the present:
Okay, so the feedback hasn’t necessarily been flooding in but what I have received confirms my own feelings…I’m new at this audio thing! I have no technical training in audio documentary. The program I was in at UCSC (Social Documentation) provided zero technical training in audio documentary. I did learn documentary theory and basic construction but nothing specific to documentary audio and definitely not anything technical. While I did venture outside the program for as much technical advice I could find but alas I’m left with a project that is lacking in many respects and the radio folks I have talked with have been helpful in pointing the problems out. I’m not trying to ‘dis’ anybody but just…
documentary studies
I was forwarded a link to a WONDERFUL article on audio. Bringing into the fold ideas and questions like, “how do places speak,” and how do we create ‘place’ with audio; what is ‘place’? In a world over saturated with images and one overly reliant on “image” to relate space, time and place Andrea challenges with a positive assertion that sound can often be used to create these ‘images’ more thoroughly than can photographic representations. The article doesn’t deride image based work but speaks to the idea that knowing, learning, documentary is a ‘multi-lingual’ affair and far too often in our fast-paced, “want it now” society we simply leave out the power of sound. Sound asks us to slow down and listen…as is well articulated in her wonderful article!
Check it out over at JumpCut
audio documentary, documentary studies
You can now subscribe to the Documentary Primer reading list via your favorite RSS news reader (such as the free and functional “RSS Reader” for Windoze…or the one that’s probably built into your browser or whatever OS you are using). Just copy this link into your reader and you will get updates automatically.
http://www.hellasolutions.com/docprimer.xml
documentary studies
I was in a meeting the other day and someone had this book It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics
. It looks like a very good read on the story telling aspect in social documentary (something that I’m currently struggling with as I piece together my project). Unfortunately this is something that is missing from the Social Documentary program I’m in…storytelling approaches. What a crucial aspect, eh? Well, I better get reading! Another unfortunate thing is that Powell’s Books Online only has the hardcover for $47!!! Hey, amazon.com ain’t bad for that once-in-a-while purchase eh? Check it out here.
Activists and politicians have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. In early 1960 four black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. Within a month sit-ins spread to thirty cities in seven states. Student participants told stories of impulsive, spontaneous action—this despite all the planning that had gone into the sit-ins. “It was like a fever,” they said.Francesca Polletta’s It Was Like a Fever sets out to account for the power of storytelling in mobilizing political and social movements. Drawing on cases ranging from sixteenth-century tax revolts to contemporary debates about the future of the World Trade Center site, Polletta argues that stories are politically effective not when they have clear moral messages, but when they have complex, often ambiguous ones. The openness of stories to interpretation has allowed disadvantaged groups, in particular, to gain a hearing for new needs and to forge surprising political alliances. But popular beliefs in America about storytelling as a genre have also hurt those challenging the status quo.A rich analysis of storytelling in courtrooms, newsrooms, public forums, and the United States Congress, It Was Like a Fever offers provocative new insights into the dynamics of culture and contention.
About the Author
Francesca Polletta is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University and the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements and coeditor of Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics
documentary studies
It is probably legitimate to say that since moving pictures made their debut way-back-when, the world has been obsessively staring with child-like amazement at screens displaying an assortment of moving images. I know I’ve spent my fair share of hours at the television or theater. My question today is, just because of the popularity of moving images is it a fair treatment of the documentary school of thought that this medium be the default for what people think of and produce as “documentary?” I mean, it makes sense given people’s infatuation with the moving image but should we let this mindset just take over? Or can we call people on it? How do we do that? Who do we do that to? What are your thoughts?! …use the comments link below this post to leave your ideas and thoughts.
Off the top of my head these are just some of the central mediums of documentary:
1) Written documentary (arguably the oldest form of documentary work);
2) Photographic documentary (a very well known medium in the history of documentary yet still often plays second fiddle to film);
3) Audio documentary (another well-established medium in the genre);
4) Documentary film…(an overly praised medium?);
Two brief examples that I have that cause me a significant amount of frustration are: I was in the airport recently and was having a brief conversation with a woman who said her husband did documentary film. When I told her I was doing an audio documentary she looked at me a bit puzzled and asked, “What is that? How do you do an audio documentary?”
Another graver example is the fact that the Social Documentation program I am in has a heavy emphasis on film and studies the discipline of documentary largely using ‘filmic’ vocabulary and perspectives (my opinion here takes into account both the emphasis of readings and the professors we are most exposed to and does not include any “outside” the program or information we may find on our own and on our own time). While this criticism of my program stands I do want to put it in context and that is that the program is only in its second year and to expect that it can answer everybody’s needs right off is a high expectation. So, I offer my criticism with the hopes that this program will quickly expand past this Hollywood-love approach and use the existing model of such programs like Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies as an example of how to approach the institutionalizing of documentary studies (http://cds.aas.duke.edu/).
Anyway, I would love to hear people’s thoughts on the questions I proposed above. Again, click the comments link below this post.
documentary studies
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