The World Through the Screen - Documentary Filmmaking
FYSEMR 68I
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
We carry cameras in our pockets every day yet seldom pause to consider what it means to encounter the world through their lens. We accumulate moving images into vast, often unseen personal archives, hidden away in clouds, but rarely do we return to them to examine the forms of meaning and lived experience they produce. Documentary cinema offers a way to re-engage with this material: to explore the world through film, attune ourselves to the unpredictability of reality, translate it into images and sounds, and shape those elements into a subjective cinematographic experience we can share with others. This practice-based seminar introduces students to the forms, techniques, concepts, and materials of nonfiction filmmaking.
Over the semester, we will engage a range of documentary approaches through assignments involving video and sound recording, editing, cinematography, and montage. Class sessions will incorporate studio time, hands-on equipment workshops, screenings of student work, and conversations with visiting filmmakers. Following a series of introductory camera, sound, and editing exercises, designed to introduce the range of expressive possibilities in documentary filmmaking, students will make a film in groups of two, which they will conceive, record, and edit. Films will be brought together into a collective work that will be screened at the end of the semester in the main theater of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
NOTE: This seminar meets Mondays, 12pm-3:30pm.
NOTE: This seminar does not require prior experience in filmmaking. There will be a weekly seminar screening in the Carpenter Center Theater 10-12pm on Thursdays, attendance is mandatory. The length of the class meeting will allow for in-class studio time and equipment workshops. All camera, sound, and editing equipment for the seminar is assigned to our class by the Art, Film, and Visual Studies department's equipment room and lent to the students for the duration of the seminar; there are no materials or equipment students need to bring themselves to class. Enrolled students will be given access to the shared video editing labs in the basement of Sever Hall.
Class Notes
First-Year Seminars are available only to first-year students. You may apply to both Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 First-Year Seminars via the FYS lottery between July 6 and August 6, 2026 at 11:59PM-midnight.
You may apply to as many seminars each term as you would like, but we recommend you apply to at least six in fall and three in spring.
As part of your application, you must provide a brief statement on why you are interested in each seminar. You will be notified of lottery results for both fall and spring seminars at 5 pm on August 11. If you are unsuccessful in the lottery, you may still join any seminar with open seats. A list of open seminars and instructions on next steps will be available on the First-Year Seminar Program website August 11 at 12 Noon.
Not Available for Cross Registration
