Learn Documentary Filmmaking while Mentoring Refugee & Immigrant Teens

FTV 301H Digital Filmmaking and Community Media Outreach (3 credits)
Spring 2019, M/W noon-1:50pm
Professor Beverly Seckinger (bsecking@email.arizona.edu)
School of Theatre, Film & Television

This class is an accelerated introduction to digital filmmaking for honors students from all majors. (For FTV majors and minors, FTV 301H counts in the BA as a Production elective, and counts in the FTV minor as an upper-division minor course). Drawing on your diverse academic backgrounds and research interests, you will gain camera, sound and editing skills, and learn how to represent your observations, experiences and point of view through a series of short creative non-fiction projects.

Using DSLR cameras and Zoom sound recorders you will learn how to create and interpret sounds and images, and then to edit your work using Adobe Premiere. Class meetings will consist of brief lectures, discussions, lab tutorials, group exercises, screenings, project work, presentations and critiques. Through class critique, you will learn how to process feedback and use it productively to revise and strengthen your work. 

The class also includes a significant community engagement component. After developing skills in documentary media storytelling, you will work in teams on our community-based youth enrichment program, DocVisions, mentoring refugee and immigrant teens in media production. Participating in a project that nurtures creative expression among youth from diverse cultural backgrounds, you will not only sharpen your skills in media production, but also develop teaching/mentoring skills and learn about refugee and immigrant populations here in Tucson, while contributing to the students’ language learning, acculturation, skill-building in media production, and self-expression. 

FEEDBACK FROM PAST CLASSES

“The biggest takeaway from this class for me was how much I learned about our local community. I have been living in Tucson since 2006 and I had not once been as involved with the community as I was during my time in the class. The projects you assigned forced us to get out into the heart of the social justice efforts that surround us." 

“I didn’t realize how unaware I was of the efforts going on in my own community until I took this class. Getting out there and being involved with issues I care about has been one of the most satisfying college experiences I’ve had.”

"As my final semester of college comes to an end, I look back on all the experiences and opportunities that have made me who I am today, and the ways in which they will shape my future…This class has been the culmination of that experience."

Join our activist media collective this Spring!  To see examples of the films made in 2017 and 2018, check out our YouTube channel.