Assignments
Seminar Participation
Please come to class having read or watched the material for that day, ready to discuss that material or other material you have found on your own, and be a regular contributor to discussion and debate, and you will do well on this portion of your grade. Failure to do so may not only result in the lack of credit on this portion of your grade, but the rest of your grade in the course as well. In a word, seminar attendance and participation are paramount.
Course Readings (Self-Report)
You will report on the completion of the readings on the syllabus. This portion of your grade will reflect the extent to which you read the material seriously in order to learn principles and practices of ethnographic filmmaking.
The Reading Self-Report Form can be found here.
Lead DP on 3 Memory Cards
During the production phase of our collaborative ethnographic film project, you need to serve in the role of Director of Photography for at least 3 memory cards. This means that you are directing the filming for the content on those cards. It does not mean that you are not collaborating or working with others on the content for those cards. But it does mean that you are the driving force behind the content, setting up shots, coordinating how to capture ethnographic engagement with camera and sound, etc. We will discuss what this means in detail, but for the purpose of this course, you need to produce at least three memory cards of content on which you were the DP for that content. The cards need not be full, but they need to have ethnographic substance.
Topic Transcription Logs for Every Memory Card
It is critical that we log the important contents of each memory card for audiovisual data collected on this collective ethnographic film project. In order to organize this, each group will collectively submit one "Topic Transcription Log Chart" for each memory card that was collected by your group. This is a place to distill the most important notes about the contents of each memory card (whether Video, Audio, or Photos). Please work with your group to complete the log, and only turn in one log per card. However, for interactions where you were recording on multiple devices, please note the related cards in the Log Chart. You do not need to replicate the log on different charts for different media, but include notes about how the cards relate to each other, and put the interaction log on the chart related to the card that has the most substance for that interaction.
The Topic Transcription Log Chart can be found here.
Note: Each of these projects needs to be accompanied by a written analysis that describes how the medium illuminates the ethnographic material it deals with, including a synopsis of the analysis that the medium provides (ethnographic insights, etc.). It is also advisable to do all three major projects (photo essay, soundscape, and short film) on a single cultural community or related phenomena. The reason for this, as we will discuss, is that ethnographic filmmaking requires a degree of cultural immersion and insight that sets it apart from other forms of documentary filmmaking and multimedia work.
