Teaching Documentaries by Making Documentaries


It's my opinion as a teacher that the best way to learn is by doing.  When it comes to documentaries, I can hardly think of a better way to teach such a film genre than by having my students make their own.  I will break the class up into several groups; assuming that the class has 25 students, I think 5 groups of 5 would work best.  Each group will then be assigned a topic (or, alternatively, they can do their own topic, with my approval) and asked to shoot a short film about that subject; they should be no shorter than 10 minutes and no longer than 20.  The idea is to get the students a) actively involved in the subject matter so they can learn while they shoot the video, and b) interested in the subject matter through repeated exposure to it outside the classroom on their own time.