Documentary Particulars

As this documentary is a type of final product, demonstrating your mastery of the unit materials, it is graded rather heavily in the final evaluation of your grade.

There are two parts of evaluation for this final product. The pre-work for the documentary, which counts as 50% of this documentary project, and the finished product, which accounts for the other 50% of the documentary.

Remember that if your group is planning on using interviews, the permission form must be used prior to filming work is done! You must get the permission forms signed and dated or your documentary will not be eligible for showing at the festival!

In this pre-work students must bring evidence of completion of these elements:

1. Students are required to situate their documentary in a sub-genre of documentary styles and be able to identify why their documentary fits into this sub-genre.

2. Create a storyboard and tag lines of commentary for the documentary on the storyboard sheets posted to the class blog.

These elements of the pre-work for the documentary will be turned at the same time the instructor and documentary groups meet to review the final rough draft of the film on Monday, May 2--time to be determined by group and instructor.

The finished product will be evaluated for the following:

1. All group members must engage in the documentary-making process, whether it is by conducting interviews, script-writing, filming, editing, or participating in the film.

2. At least two members of the group must be present during the showing of the documentary and stay until the end of the presentations in order for that group to be eligible to win; in addition, at least two group members must be present for the group to receive credit. If you leave the presentations, your group cannot win.

3. Documentaries must be submitted to the instructor for review no later than class meetings on Monday, May 2, for M-W-F courses, or on Tuesday, May 3, for T-Th courses.

4. The documentary must be a minimum of 3 minutes and a maximum of 5 minutes.

5. The documentary must display these rhetorical principles and elements of the 4 Cs: a) a clearly defined main argument; b) a concise and professionally produced final product that demonstrates thoughtful application of pre-work, research, counterargument, and the four rhetorical appeals discussed in class; c) concrete research that adds to the scholarship on the topic; d) a current or flow through the documentary's "storytelling"; and finally e) application of the four rhetorical appeals: ethos, lexos, logos, and pathos.

6. A list of sources must be at the end of the documentary on a final, end credits-like slide that includes the locations where you did research and found images, who was interviewed for the documentary, and other pertinent research information.

Best of luck with these and if there are any questions, please let me know.