Documentary Studies - Fall 2023 Courses

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Index:

NOTE: Learn more about MDOCS Faculty on our PEOPLE page. All courses listed as DS count towards Skidmore College's Media and Film Studies Minor. 

Course Descriptions

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DS 119 - Contemporary Poetry Storytelling
Olivia McKee
Fri 12:20-2:20pm, (2 cr)

The contemporary poetry scene is vast, varied, and true. Drawing on oral storytelling histories, relevant contemporary art, and personal lineage, we will explore the canon's tender and honest edges, as observers and contributors. Students can expect to read, watch, create, and analyze poetry and performance while developing their understandings of poetic, literary, and performance devices as we ask, what does it mean to tell honest stories? Where are the lines between amplification, exploitation, and appropriation? What are our responsibilities as poets and storytellers -- to our communities, to our loved ones, to ourselves? 

Liv McKee is a writer and dancer, ranked 6th poet at the 2020 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Dallas, TX. 

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DS 110 - Storytelling Toolkit: Video
Jesse O'Connell
Wed 12:10-2:10pm, (2 cr)

Any storyteller, whether evidence-based or creative, needs a toolkit of skills to present a story. These skill-up classes offer students an introduction to basic production and/or post-production skills used in non-fiction or creative storytelling. For some assignments, students can bring existing content and apply the new skill, but in most cases will be creating new content. The course will also cover foundational ethics of working with documentary subjects and/or actors in front of the camera.

Jesse O'Connell is the Assistant Director of MDOCS and a documentary filmmaker whose work began at the award-winning Moxie Institute Film Studio + Lab in San Francisco, CA.

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DS 210 - Intro to Audio Documentary
Christine O'Donnell
Tue/Thu 12:40-2:00pm (3 cr)

In this class, we will study the theory and craft of audio production, documentary storytelling, and sound design, with a strong but non-exclusive focus on narrative, voice-driven storytelling, i.e. what we hear on public radio and in podcasts. In the course of learning the tools and techniques of the audio recordist/editor, sound designer/mixer, and radio writer/performer, we will produce a substantial portfolio of creative audio works, which we will extensively critique and revise. Meanwhile, we will engage with the history and breadth of documentary approaches to sound and become fluent with theoretical and practical issues in the business and art of contemporary audio storytelling. 

Christine O’Donnell is an 2x Emmy-Nominated TV journalist and Founder of Award-Winning Podcast Production Company turned Network: Bright Sighted.

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DS 251 - Intro to Documentary Filmmaking
Nicole Van Slyke
Mon 6:10-7:10pm/Wed 6:10-9:00pm (4 cr)

The world is full of stories waiting to be told, but what makes a story worth telling, who should tell it, and how one should tell it, are some of the most crucial questions any documentarian must answer. From initial concept through to the final edit, this course will ask students to grapple with this process of documentary development, in order to acquire a robust set of practices from which to tell the stories of the world around us. 

Nicole Van Slyke is a Digital Artist who specializes in Documentary Production and is a Producer/Editor at WMHT-PBS where she specializes in creating unique and moving productions.

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DS 251 - Multimedia Non-Fiction Storytelling
Tue/Thu 3:40-5:30pm, (4 cr)

This class is an exploration of form, and the ways that we can use different mediums in our storytelling practice. We will look at how artists have used different narrative forms to communicate their intention, and how each medium was able to do that differently. This ‘process’ class is a space where students can workshop their ideas — imagining and reimagining them in different forms/genres/mediums/intentions. You will learn narrative grammar—How do film, prose, soundscape, photography, and gesture perform as language? Understanding each medium as language will give you the tools you need to build narrative phrases that might begin as prose, continue as images, and end in audio/soundscape. We will focus on foundational principles for telling stories with each medium, with the goal of bringing these languages — visual, audio, prose, etc — into conversation. We will examine the ethical questions around the creation of a narrative, especially when using the material of another person’s life as a starting point. 

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DS 351 - Making Questions: Creative Research Lab
Angus McCullough
Tue/Thu 9:40-11:00am, (3 cr)

In this junior/senior seminar, we will strengthen the link between researching and making, specifically how to use materials in real space as a mode of thinking. The class will function as a working group, to expand skills, prototype and test new techniques, and will endow each student with hard skills to bring to projects in all aspects of their creative lives. 

We will explore hybrid models for making books, installations, videos/films, actions, and architectural interventions that exist in discourse with the present, i.e. create new data that fuels further experimentation. Meanwhile, each student will find a topic or theme close to their interests that they have not yet been able to pursue within existing academic frameworks, and develop that project over the course of the semester.  

Students will learn synthetic techniques of spatial inquiry, design and fabrication, idea organization, and collective critique. The semester will culminate in an installation on campus open to the public. 

Angus McCullough is an artist, designer and maker who works extensively with landscapes, structures, vehicles and events - in both physical and ideological terms. 

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DS 399 - MDOCS Internship Credit
Please write to Director Adam Tinkle for more information.
1-4 credits